I am a celtic fiddler. So perhaps that makes me not so new. But, up to this point I have never blown into anything. No sax, flute, nothing. Birthday candles, is about all.
I want to learn to play the penny whistle. I read music now, but I am interested in getting a real good whistle? Anything you can tell me would be great. What to buy? New or used? I don’t care how much, cash is not an issue. I am in Canada so shipping should be easy enough. They sell almost no decent ones in Edmonton Alberta. Cheap 10.00 whistles and nothing that sounds good, I have a cheap one now. But its tinny…Hmm is that even a word “tinny”?? So where do I start? What do I do? How do I become good…and fast!!! hahaha…
You’ve got a huge advantage over, say, a wind player coming from a classical tradition. You know what “lilt” is and a lot about what a tune should sound like.
THe very first thing I would do after getting a whistle is ask another whistler or fluter how to do cuts, taps, and rolls. They aren’t hard, just a time investment.
What type of whistle do you have? The cheapie vs. “nice” whistle debate is an old one. Get an experienced player to try yours to see if it’s an instrument issue or a technique issue.
Hey benamoz—Here are some on-line tutorials you might find helpful. I myself don’t think you can get good fast on anything. I found a wind instrument to be a very big change from piano and guitar. Anyway, welcome and see what you think of the below:
Some really good web pages. Thanks. I am going to see if I can make some noise. I just bought a “mellow dog” on Ebay. Not sure how long it will take to ship. I paid a smidge extra just to see if I can get it sooner. So what are a few songs that are sort of “must learn for newbies”?? Thanks for all the help thus far…
markanini and benamoz, it looks like I killed two birds with one stone!
I think for awhile you wouldn’t really need to worry about “must learn” tunes—just work your way slowly and accurately through the tunes in the tutorials to build your skills.
The “must learn” tunes seem to depend a lot on what group of people you play with—each group might have a bunch of tunes it plays a lot. There are books with titles like “100 Session Tunes You Should Know”, but there are many books like that and many different tunes. I don’t know much about this end of it, so I will let someone else give advice on that.
Wonderful choice of the Mellow Dog: you did your homework.
I just bought the Low Whistle Book (Mel Bay, 39.95 Can, Long and McQuade Music) and it strikes me as something I should have had long ago. Some of the tunes sound great on low D whistle, but all of them are great on regular (high D) whistle. Good explanations of ornaments, too.
Doesn’t replace listening and Chiffandfippling, though.
I’m befuddled by this sentence. More specifically, it makes me want to see what went through your mind just before you typed it, and how it was turned into it’s current form.
I make these kind of mistakes occasionally, usually when I’m tired, and I can never figure out exactly how the crap I came up with such strange strings of phrases and punctuation.
I am one of these analytical types. I am an Engineer, pilot, skydiver, musician, theologian, and chess master. As such my mind often gets caught meandering at least a hundered miles off the beaten path. Discovering how different things interelate and blend together or some such sillyness. It use to be annoying when I was young, my parents often caught me daydreaming about things, they what ask me to write down what I was thinking, and when they discovered it was mozart in my head, while I wondered what speed the water ran down the given slope of a roof, they sent me for further testing…hehe. How interesting that you of all people would notice this…good catch…
My whistling is coming along. Slow, but I am managing to produce some clarity. It would be an interesting study to discover why people are attracted to music, specifically the simplicity of something such as this “tin whistle”…While I tend to go on rants and play the violin/fiddle for hours…and gleen its seeds with violent candor, the whistle is slow yet and forces me to take baby steps once again…I like it…Yes, I like it…
