Oh come now, did they have whistles when God invented tongues?
No, but we had tongues when God invented whistles.
Uh oh. 
Finally an answer to the age old question, “Which came first, the tongue or the whistle?”
Flauta, Your praise of Busman whistles sounds very sincere. It’s nice to read that. I’ve seen posts here where I just know if my soul that the person posting the praise is either realated in some way, or is one and the same person as the whistle maker.
I’m sure they are excellent. I wish I could afford one.
On topic: I found it very hard to quit tongueing. Now that I’ve quit I usually don’t do any of it except on one Carolan piece (Receipt for Drinking). I can’t imagine how hard it would be to quit after learning recorder. I play with ear plugs in. When it’s quiet around me I can hear something happending (unintentionally) in my throat on about 10% to 30% of notes, the ones I would have been naturally inclinded to tongue. It gives a tiny amount of percussive intro to the note, probably unnoticed by listerners. I wouldn’t notice it myself if it were’n for the ear plugs.
I played a Maple Busman recently. It is a beautiful whistle in every respect. I believe tongueing is not wrong but it is easy to overdo.
Ron
A few months ago I begin playing whistle with the praise band at my church. I tried playing with and with out tounging and they said to keep on playing with out that sounded better. But I have a question about consecutive notes. As an example the tune Roddy Mccorley has three 1/4 D,s in the sixth and tenth measure. play as three beats- tongue-control with throat-or other?..
That particular tune is traditionally played only when the musicians are stark roaring drunk, to the point of being unable to play anything sensible. That precludes the nicer forms of ornamentation, as well as artistic subtlety. I therefore recommend tonguing those three notes. It is unlikely to matter, however, since you will not be audible next to drunk singer and the even drunker middle-aged men in the audience who are singing along. Unless you play a Susato, that is. 
I never really took to tonguing. I guess I’ll give it a try.
Well then I will put that tune aside till I Susato again. There it is another name of a tune. 
Hey, I like songs with shining pikes and stalwart bands in them. I say keep playin’ it.
I picked up a whistle and played Roddy McCorly and didn’t think about what I was doing. I ended up just puffing out those 3 d’s. No tongue. On the third d I lifted my finger from the first hole (6th?) and did a quick cut. (Bloomy must be laughing now. Next week we’ll be ornamenting Row Row Row Your Boat).
I met a great whistle and uilleann pipes player from Donegal here in Dublin a while back and I asked him this very same question. He replied that he NEVER tongues but uses grace notes instead. I can’t understand this though because I really can’t see how you could possibly play the likes of the Rakes of Mallow without some tonguing, it would just sound terrible. I didn’t get a chance to discuss it though.
Personally I think it’s down to the piece you’re playing, I would use a fair amount of tonguing in some tunes and little or none in others. On the tunes that I do put some tonguing in I would usually either tongue the first note of a set of notes or use a grace note instead. I would often even tongue some of the grace notes to give a bit of lift to them. Again depending on the tune I would sometimes tongue 2 or 3 notes that are the same, instead of putting in cuts or rolls. I think you really need a bit of both to add some variety.
I’ve only been playing a few months though and never had a teacher or played another instrument so I might have this all wrong! But this is the conclusion I came to from listening carefully to the same tunes played by different people. Maybe it’s just the case that uilleann pipers say ‘Slur’ and recorder players say ‘Tongue’ and everyone else makes the best of both worlds.
That’s just so true. That’s why uilleann pipers never play tunes like the Rakes of Mallow, Garrett Barry’s Jig, or say An Phis Fluich, all of which have repeated notes in them. And since it is physically impossible to tongue the pipes (at least while playing them) it follows that uilleann pipers can’t do it on those tunes, so they just never play them.
NicoMoreno
I know you’re just joking around…because I know at least 2 pipers who play An Phis Fhliuch…Willie Clancy and Liam O’Flynn IMHO that tune is a piping tune. Garrett Barry was a piper himself, so obviously “his” tune was played on the pipes. Additionally, your’re right in saying pipers cannot tongue…but they can play “tight” style.
Yes, it’s called sarcasm. I guess I wasn’t laying it on thick enough.
You see, if pipers can figure out how to seperate three notes in a row (for instance see the two piping tunes, Garrett Barry’s and An Phis Fluich) without tonguing, I see no reason why whistler’s can’t. It was in direct response to Blaydo’s post wherein he stated he didn’t see how it was possible to make tunes with three notes in a row sound good.
Note: Most of the time, I leave off smileys. Including here. This is not an unhappy post.
I don’t know if you can explain it to a whistle player, but if you didn’t want to use the same way of separating two notes in a row, like two cuts in a row would be boring so a whistle player might tongue one and cut the other, how would a piper do that?
Tipping (closing the chanter between the notes) is one way, alternated with cuts for variation.
Or, maybe not separate the notes at all but just hang on to the note.
Whenever I have repeated notes, insted of tounging, I throw the whistle up in the air end over end and shout “Thank you sir may I have another!” in between the notes.
Some tunes wind up being really really hard to play. Pretty much any tune with repeated notes, for that matter.
But in fact uilleann pipers have at their disposal something that’s quite similar to the effect of tonguing, which is the ability to stop the chanter between notes. Highland pipes can’t do that, and in my experience many highland pipers who play the whistle do so without any tonguing, whereas many uilleann pipers who play whistle do use their tongues.