Hi. First time here. I’m a keyboard player, composer/arranger and music teacher. I’ve recently discovered the tin whistle and find myself wondering why I never knew anything about this field before!
My interest is primarily educational. I teach primary school children, and for years have struggled with using recorders for early instrumental work, which I find unsatisfactory for several reasons. Most of the songs I teach are purely diatonic - often only pentatonic - and don’t need a fully chromatic instrument. The 6-hole simple-system whistle & flute family seems much more straightforward, logical and easy to match to childrens’ singing range, to me, so I’d like to make a big push to incorporating it into my teaching work.
However there’s a lot I don’t know. I’m not even a wind player of any kind, so any guidance is gratefully received:
Can anyone clarify for me, or point to a site that does, the nomenclature of all the different instruments? Irish flute; transverse flute; flagolet; fife etc… to me these are all “things you blow through”! I go into specialist shops and they seem to have a vast variety of tubes with six holes in them, some of which cost a few quid and some several hundred. And then I get confused and go out again…
Does anyone have any ideas about a logical order in which to try and learn some of these instruments? Starting with the tin whistle seems to make sense. It’s cheap, easy and I can buy lots of them for my students to use. But are there relative levels of difficulty and or usefulness beyond that?
It seems that once you move beyond the tin whistle, practically EVERYTHING is in D. Why is this? My problem with this is that I need the instruments to coordinate with simple tuned percussion, which is all designed in C. I’m also really interested in the connection between simple-flute construction and music theory. The fact that you just uncover one whole each time and go up the scale is very elegant. And of course in teaching theory one starts in C, not D. I can easily get whistles in C, but not sure how possible it is beyond that.
First off, welcome aboard! I agree simple whistles and flutes are a great teaching tool for kids.
Tin whistle/penny whistle/flageolet are all the same.
A fife is a smaller flute. Many fifes are cylindrical bore, but some modern ones are conical and aimed more at folk music than military playing.
Irish flute is just a simple system flute (e.g., pre-Boehm/silver flute). Any side blown flute is a transverse flute. Irish flutes are also called wooden flutes and simple system flutes.
Definitely start with whistle. Flute or fife is much harder to play, and they are much cheaper to buy for students. I donated a half dozen basic whistles in varying keys to my son’s school which made the music teacher very happy.
Your confusion afflicts most of us when we start playing flute and whistle. D whistles and flutes are non-transposing instruments - play a D on a D flute/whistle and it’s the same D you find on a piano. However, they are tuned to the key of D (hence the F# instead of F if the instrument was tuned in C). C whistles would be your best bet for the price, but there are some simple flute/fife makers who make reasonably priced instruments out of PVC or bamboo (Doug Tipple, Billy Miller, Tony Dixon come to mind).
I understand that D whistles and flutes are non-transposing. It’s just that teaching the very beginning of solfa and music theory the way I do is much easier in the absolute key of C. You can relate absolute pitches to their staff notation without having to worry about sharps. You can branch outwards from C to show how you add one sharp to make G, or one flat to make F. Songs with a range mostly from Do up to So are easier to sing. (The A that is so in D major may not seem that high, but it can be a stretch for 5 year olds, especially boys). Xylophones and metallophones are all in C, supplied with spare F#s and Bbs, but no C#s for playing in D. It’s white notes only on keyboards…
It just makes sense all round that C Major is the home key for Lesson No. 1. I don’t want to have to be telling my kids about F#s when they’re first getting to grips with the sound and structure of the scale itself.
So C whistles will definitely be my starting point. C simple flutes seem really rare though.
You may be doing your students a disservice by teaching them to play C whistles or flutes. A student that learns to play from sheet music on a C whistle will have a hard time learning to actually play most of the music associated with it. A C whistle or flute is, in practice, a transposing instrument. When you put all six fingers down, you think “D”, even if you’re on C, Bb, or F whistle.
Your approach would be like teaching someone to play a tenor saxophone as a non-transposing instrument. They could learn to play, and to read music written in C, but would have to completely unlearn their fingerings when it came time to actually play normal Bb parts.
I suppose you are thinking of Irish trad tunes, for which the majority is notated in signatures of D and G. But of course there is loads of other music, and C is probably the most useful key. So I think the choice of a C whistle is very reasonable, and never mind it is not the most used of whistles in ITM. And never mind that in ITM circles people talk D-centric. The plain C major scale is certainly more friendly for teaching beginners.
The reason why there are few six-hole C flutes is that they are bigger and more difficult to handle. Certainly not children friendly, one needs big hands and a big stretch. OTOH six-hole G flutes and whistles could work well in a school band setting, and can work well together with C whistles.
I always thought whistles are transposing instruments.
If I pick a whistle in the right key I can automatically play in a different key than it is notated.
If a beginner learns to read notation on a D or a C whistle is just a matter of habit. Certainly D is more useful for ITM, but C is for much other music.
And anyway it is preferable to learn ITM by ear, so reading music for a D whistle is not required and could come in the way of learning by ear.
You could teach them without absolute note names at all. It is all in the intervals. Note names could come much later, after intervals and modal scales.
You could adapt a six hole whistle to become a pentatonic whistle by taping over holes 1 and 4 (cutting out the fourth and seventh of the major scale). Then expand this four hole whistle to five and six holes later.
Hans - the terminology around transposing instruments and keys of whistles is very confusing. But the original “D” flutes were orchestral instruments and when you play a C on one, you’re playing a true C, or D, or G. All the other whistles/flutes do transpose…at least that’s my understanding of the situation. You play a “G” on a G whistle and you don’t get a G on a piano. OK, now I’m starting to get confused!
I do think a C instrument is easiest for a music class…especially at first. Someone must make a cheap C fife out there out of PVC pipe. Heck, you can make one yourself for the cost of the CPVC. Mark Shepperd has a nice eBook on make simple system flutes.
If you want to break it down to its simplest form, perhaps looking at the woodwind section of the Hornbostel-Sachs system will help you group instruments.
I think Tony Dixon will be the only maker that will have something that fits the criteria. His DX026 - Duo-Head High Whistle/Piccolo would cover both a whistle and a traverse flute (piccolo) at a low price in an easily sanitized material. Unfortunately I have not played one and cannot comment on it further.
Yamaha and Aulos both make “C Fifes” that would be inexpensive and easy to get a hold of. The problem is that the Yamaha (and I think the Aulos) fingering charts are different than either whistle or recorder fingerings. I think the Yamaha is designed to mimic Boehm flute fingerings.
There is a chrome plated fife one will find in C made by the American Plating Company. DO NOT BUY IT. It is poorly made barley playable, and I believe to inconsistently made to play in tune with others of its owe make.
Many of the fife makers make C instruments, but I doubt that they would be suitable for this project due to the price (most over $100) and the design (designed for upper register).
I’m not an expert though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed something.
Thanks Eric! I had a wrong concept what “transposing instrument” meant.
“A transposing instrument is a musical instrument for which written notes are read at a pitch different from sounding note concert pitch, which a non-transposing instrument, such as a piano, would play.”
So it all depends how music is written. If I play some tune notated in D on my C whistle, as if it is my D whistle, I apparently have a transposing instrument. And if I play a tune notated in C on my D whistle, as if it is my C whistle, my D whistle is transposing. In the end I don’t care much about this, since I like to play by heart and not depend to read notation.
But it was useful to at least learn rudimentary (?) to read music for playing both D and C whistles. I have not managed for any other…
I hadn’t considered Hans’s point about C flutes being less common because of sheer size. That would of course be a particular issue with kids.
I can see too that the transposing issue is more complicated than I’d thought. I understand now that whistle parts are sometimes written in D even when intended to be played on a different key whistle, for pieces in other keys. In these cases, the whistle WOULD be a transposing instrument. How common is this? Is it the standard way of doing things?
To be honest I don’t think the traditional factors of Irish folk music will enter into it, because that’s not really how I’ll be using them. It will just be to play simple folksongs and childrens’ songs in general - mostly British, but anything really. Actually, as someone suggested, I DO start with learning the scale by relative degrees (“do, re, mi” etc.) rather than absolute pitch names, since that provides a smooth transition from vocal work to instruments. It’s just that once the absolute names are introduced, what they are called needs to match what is actually played and heard. And to start, this will be the notes of C major.
Love this idea of taping down holes for pentatonic songs. I do exactly the same thing with xylophones - removing the bars that are not in use. Nice little practical tip.
You can make the kids think that they’re playing a C, when in fact they’re playing a D
Or you can say that it is actually a C whistle, but very very very high pitch…
See how for indians is much easier, they call Sa the fundamental note and simply go up the scale, whatever note that may be.
One could use Do, Re, Mi, Fa, … that way, as relative names.
Unfortunately C, D, E, F, G … are too absolute.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, ie. first, second, third, fourth etc. would work too,
and tie in with western music theory.
I think it is fairly common when accompanying a singer, since the singer likes to pitch a song to suit her voice, never mind how it may be notated. Then one needs to pick a whistle to suit the singer’s pitch.
Or playing alongside another instrument which has a set diatonic scale, which is not necessarily the scale of the notated music.
I do understand what you are saying, Wurlitzer, about your baseline use of C. However, I would caution you against using C whistles as your basic tool because, although kids do tend to be able to overcome such things, you would be setting an extra hurdle for any of them who might later take up another woodwind instrument.
Think of it like this. Although they are not transposing instruments and are nominally “in C”, the modern Bohm flute and the modern oboe are, just like their ancestors, acoustically “in D”. They have a 6-finger note of D and the “break” between their registers (where they start using harmonics) is between C# and D, not between B and C. Their fingering, though made more C-centric and readily chromatic than their definitely diatonic D-based predecessors, is still D based in many senses. Even the (descant) recorder’s fingering has more in common with the D whistle than the C
For someone who has learned D whistle to transfer to a modern orchestral flute or oboe only involves re-learning 2 or 3 fingerings (plus learning extras, of course), but many basic patterns and where you change register remains the same. A C whistle is a step out and on changing to a standard orchestral instrument would necessitate relearning (in notation and fingering names terms) everything if you have learnt it with at-pitch note-names, i.e. not as a transposing instrument.
This isn’t a total contra-indication, but I do think you ought to take account of it in the balance of what you are trying to achieve. Because your kids are learning with probably note-name labelled glocks/xylophones etc, even if you taught them sol-fa names for their C whistle fingerings, especially if you are also teaching them to read staff notation, they are going to make the associations. If it were me, I’d find those F# and C# bars for the tuned percussion and go with the D whistles! (You could always buy extra C and F bars and retune them yourself by cutting/filing a bit off)
I’m afraid the over-dominance of the keyboard in Western classical music of the last 200 years and its white note C-centrism is really a rather unhelpful musical/historical phenomenon!
Excellent point jem! This is what I miss from not being a wind player - I didn’t know that the orchestral flute and oboe were based on the same D-fingering. Is this also why the saxophone has that register break between written C# and D? I’d heard that it was based on oboe fingering.
It’s funny you mention that. One of my reservations about the descant recorder is that the low C is so hard to produce - impossible for beginners. So you end up usually starting in G with the left hand notes only, which doesn’t give you much range, and maybe later in D. And even once they do manage to produce a C, you’ve got the stupid fingering for F to consider.
It seems from what you’re saying that the entirety of woodwind construction is pretty much based around the scale on 6-hole D. And there’s not really any way I can get around that.
I might have to rethink where I’m going with this. I don’t mean abandon the whistle idea altogether, just rethink how it connects (or not?) with the beginnings of music theory.
I’m afraid the over-dominance of the keyboard in Western classical music of the last 200 years and its white note C-centrism is really a rather unhelpful musical/historical phenomenon!
Indeed. Just imagine if Bach and Mozart had played the penny whistle.
ah, sax uses Boehm fingerings. Yes the break is always between, what the player calls, C# & D. Even if the horn is in Bb or Eb. (ignoring the odd C melody ones)
Well, actually, I think the deification of the piano didn’t really kick in until Victorian times - they had a better sense of proportion about it before that. Then things got really hide-bound in the C20th. C isn’t a very good key on anything bar keyboards - guitars (in standard tuning E/A orientated) and fiddles etc. don’t especially like it!
You’re part right about the Sax - he based his mechanism on Bohm’s flute system. (Of course, in fingering terms an Eb member of the sax family is really in F!) FWIW, the clarinet is an exception because, being a one-close-end cylinder, it overblows at the 12th - has only odd-numbered harmonics available. Therefore its fingerings/note-name correlations are different in each register - its equivalent of the 6-finger note is G in the lowest (chalumeau) register, D in the central (clarion) register.
I shouldn’t overstate the C/D thing with the modern flute and oboe - most folk who play them quite happily never think of them as being other than in C. But the structure of the fingering is, as I said, D based with clever mechanical fudges to provide almost-straight-off-in-order fingering in both C and D (one reason why they are easier chromatically than their ancestors.)
