Finally, at about 5:30 this afternoon, UPS deigned to show up with my Dixon soprano D–my first ever real whistle. (I live on the wrong end of town from the UPS warehouse.)
My first reaction was, “It’s tiny!” My second reaction was,“But at least it’s black.” (I once covered the silver parts of a camera with black plastic electricians tape, because I wanted an all-black camera. Glad I didn’t have to do that with my first whistle.)
The Whistle Shop folks had kindly mounted the thumb rest on it for me, but following the advice of vast numbers of folks here, I proceeded to remove it. It was a bit too stiff to just pop it off, so I had to slide it off. In spite of my best efforts, I also ended up removing the little bit of gold paper tape decorating the end of the whistle. Oh, well…now it’s totally black. I like that.
Next, I thought maybe I should blow some air through it. Frankly, I wasn’t overly impressed with the sound, but after maybe two hours of steady work, it began to improve. By the time my family began to insist that I quit, it had developed a very nice tone. It just needed a little encouragement. I believe I’ve managed to improve its self esteem quite a bit by showing it that I cared.
I had a great time with it. At first I tried a couple of tunes from the book that I got with it (which turned out not to be the one that I thought I had ordered), but I soon gave up on that and started playing some stuff I knew by ear. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play a jig, a reel, or a hornpipe, but I’m sure I can play the kind of stuff I like on it.
One thing that surprised me when I was first looking through tunes in the book was that I was able to play most of “The Rights of Man” hornpipe from memory, although I’m sure it’s been 30 years since I learned it on the mandolin and guitar (from Robin Williamson’s “English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish Fiddle Tunes”), and at least 20 since I last played it. I played the first two bars from the sheet music, and the rest of it just kind of poured out. What fun!
It seems that if I have a tune in my head, and if I can figure out which note to start it on, I can play large parts of it without too much struggle. I did try a few that turned out to be tricky, though–mostly songs with funny jumps between octaves, like “The Flower of Sweet Strabane”. Tomorrow I’m going to spend part of the day on “She Moved Through the Fair”, which may also be a bit tricky. “Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore” is another. After Lee Marsh told me about JC’s Tune Finder, I found all three of those there. Then I found a nice little ABC application for my Mac, called “BarFly”. That should help me work out the odd parts that aren’t quite right in my wee brain. (Thanks again, Lee.)
Lots of slow, mournful Appalachian folk songs work really well on it, though–and my head is chock full of those. It’s almost like it plays itself, which is great, because that lets me concentrate on tone.
Of course, it’ll take months or, more likely, years to develop a good technique, but it really is a great little whistle, and I didn’t have to fight with it too much before I convinced it to cooperate. I do intend to try to learn some proper Irish style. I’ll just have to fight my tendency to turn slow airs into some kind of shakuhachi jazz.
I’m stoked! (Hey, I’m on the California coast…I get to talk like that.) Don’t know whether I’m high on adrenalin, or whether it’s just hyperventilation.
Thanks for all the good advice everyone has been heaping on me. It’s already helped me with my attitude, as well as with things to do and not do.
, and its bore is larger than most (same as a Mellow D) so its more comfortable for me. It’s quiet too, a good late night practice whistle, but it does need to be blown gently, that D breaks into the second octave very easily. Definitely not good for blasting away on. Mine is non-tunable.