I know that when you play the whistle, there is no hard and fast rule as regards tonguing. However, I would like to know what other people’s thoughts are.
I have been going to a teacher who plays the wooden Flute, Oileann pipes and whistle and he prefers to teach his students not to play this way.
I don’t agree with him, and of course, I told him.
Your thoughts are welcome…
Flauta Dolce.
By the way, I just got a Killian O’Brion D’ whistle, has anyone of you ever used this? It’s lovely and sweet in tone.
I have been playing for a number of years and have had tips from a number of whistle players and tutors and am generally against tonguing. It is not necessary as all the articulation comes from the fingers. The only time I tongue is if I double or triple tongue and roll at the same to time to give some mean ornamentation to some notes. Admittedly I only ever do that in one tune cos I generally forget about my tongue the rest of the time.
Tonguing can make you sound like a recorder player.
With a name like Flauta Dolce, I think she IS a recorder player
I play with tonguing, although not a huge amount. I may not be totally trad, but I believe that anything that you can add to your armamentarium to add interest to the music is great, if done with moderation.Flutter tongue? Why not? 'course, I’m a recorder player too!
Before I played recorder I took about a year of lessons on concert flute. Talk about tonguing! When I started playing recorder, I had to learn to tone it down or I’d overblow everything.
I think you can’t discuss whether you should tongue or not without referencing the style of music you want to play. Find someone who plays that style, and listen to them to see whether or how much they tongue.
Apart from that, I would agree with your teacher that you should not tongue for a while when you learn: It’s a very useful thing, because even those Irish Trad whistlers who tongue a lot will tend not to tongue in very specific places that recorder players will want to tongue (like down beats). Being able to play without any tongue at all will also force you to get your finger movements precise and will put you in a position to make a choice about where and when to tongue.
I believe it depends on the piece you are playing.
Paul Brewer, you’re not the guy that makes those wonderful Busman whistles, are you? I tried a lot of them two weeks ago and they are wonderful. Didn’t you make a D’ whistle out of African Snake Wood, and Maple wood ? Beautiful instruments!
Regarding playing the recorder, your observation is correct. The first thing my teacher asked me when I started was did I learn recorder before the whistle.
I think Bloomfield’s advice is good, but note that he said it’s good to try to play without tonguing “for a while,” for the reasons he stated. Eventually you should introduce tonguing back into your playing, but sparingly and in the “right” places, which I think is best learned by listening to good whistle players to see what they do.
When Irish music is played on the whistle without any tonguing at all, it can become blurry and driving without any lift. Now granted, I don’t listen to a lot of whistle players, but I can’t think of any good ones who don’t use some tonguiing for articulation. There was a guy in the Boston area named Billy Novick (a jazz clarinetist who took up the whistle) who recorded a whistle album in the 1980s…the jazz pieces he did on whistle were wonderful but the Irish stuff was a dud, precisely because he didn’t use his tongue at all. There was no rhythm or lift to the music, just a bunch of highly ornamented notes strung together in a rush.
What you want to avoid is tonguing every note the way a recorder player would. There’s a happy medium between tonguing that way and not tonguing at all, and to me the best way to find it is to spend time listening to whistle players that you like and try to learn from them. Listening is a big part, maybe the most important part, of learning Irish traditional music.
I use tonguing. I initially learned to play whistle 30 years ago, and tonguing was part of it, as well as half holing rather than alternate fingerings. It is very natural to me now, and I really don’t even think about it unless I’m trying to show someone else what I’m doing. I don’t think I do it to excess, at least no one is giving me the evil eye over it.
Seamus Ennis comes to mind. Like the (old) Copperplate on 40 Years. No noticable shortage of lift there. (I think he’s playing a Generation F in that one.)
That would be me-- many thanks for the kind words. My name is actually Paul Busman: brewer refers to my old hobby of homebrewing which I have not had time for since starting to make whistles
I made 4 from snakewood, all of which unfortunately cracked. Luckily I was able to fix these pretty undetectably: the cracks look just like some of the grain lines! I still use a lot of figured maple: birdseye and tiger.
Where did you see “a lot” of my whistles? It still blows my mind, having these instruments literally around the world!!
I think of tonguing as an ornament or in the same bucket as taps, cuts, rolls, slides, etc… For the a ‘well rounded’ piece its nice to pull different things from the bucket. Depending on the piece you’ll pull more things than others.
But to tongue most of the time in all the tunes you are playing (for ITM) I definately think would be a mistake. Irish music has a lazy/Rolly feel to it which can’t be gained by excessive tonguing.
Ah well, there’s always one that won’t run with the pack
But really, if you listen to Micho Russell, Donncha O’Briain, Mick O’Brien (Donncha’s brother, the well-known piper), Mary Bergin, Joanie Madden, Mike McHale, Tom McHale, Josie McDermott, Larry Nugent, and most other well-known whistle players, they’re all using their tongues quite a bit. Brid O’Donohue uses a lot less tonguing than the others but I think I hear a few subtly tongued notes here and there.
Imho, just play the way you think it sounds nicest… for example, on my first whistle lesson, my teacher demonstrated playing without tongue (because I tongued way too much - a typical beginner error) so he played through “kid in the mountain” without using his tongue once. Later that lesson he played the tune the way he usually plays it, with a lot of variation etc, with a bit of tonguing too. Personally I found the no-tongue version sounding much more beautiful - hence, I now play the tune with almost no tonguing… It’s just a personal preference I suppose… but that might change when I get better and heard more styles of playing
I met a guy from Vancouver named Broc in Glen ColmCille Co. Donegal at an Irish Cultural Course and he showed me an extensive collection of your whistles. I played your African blackwood whistle, lovely! The pinky coloured snake-wood looks amazing, and nearly too good to play.
I think I saw about 10 of your whistles belonging to this guy so you must know him.
The Maple wood smells beautiful and plays wonderfully. There’s a great volume from them as well.
I saw your website before and I was aware that your whistles were being sold in the States.
I hope this is good advertisement for your whistles because they’re wonderful to look at and to play.
Yes, I (a beginning whistler) have found this incredibly helpful. It makes fingering and blowing mistakes really stand out and makes you think about when tonguing might improve your performance — which is hard if you start by tonguing every note.
I don’t think there has ever been any arument for tonguing every note. Moderation (not necessarily moderator ) is the rule. Most anything can be good in small doses.
Right; people don’t usually argue for this, they just sometimes do it without giving it much thought. (I did when I first picked up the whistle.) When you are just starting it actually sounds better since your fingering is so bad. That doesn’t mean that you should do it, but it’s easy to go down that road if someone doesn’t tell you to “moderate.”
