Just curious as to the tongueing technique most of you use while playing. The whistle is still somewhat new new to me & I find that while playing various whistles I tongue differently on each one. On some I actually touch the tip of my tongue on the tip of the mouthpiece & sometimes on the roof of my mouth. Mainly depends on how large the opening of the airway is. If it’s larger I tongue using the roof of my mouth.
I “tongue” according to Hammy Hamiltons book “like a underdeveloped cough” or a guttural ‘UH’ When i read it, it clicked for me, and that is what works/sounds best for me by far.
Tonguing by touching your tongue to the windway entrance will increase the moisture buildup in the windway itself, which is not desirable.
Recorder players use a vast range of tonguing consonants, sometimes combined as words, played as if saying the consonant without vocalisation. The most common is a soft d. Because of the way a lot of whistles (and some recorders) are voiced, hard tonguing (using t or k) will tend to introduce chiff into the note - a short unfocused transient sound at the start of the note - which you may or may not like.
Whistle technique is very different from recorder technique, and the recorder is designed for very different kinds of music, but I think any whistle player could probably benefit from reading a good book on recorder technique (like Anthony Rowland-Jones’ books), just as a lot of what Quantz has to say about playing the flute is germaine to music making in general.
As far as I know, the glottal “throating” technique Mr. Blackwood mentions is unique to Irish music - is that right?
Brother Steve’s thoughts;
http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/tonguing.html
As I said in another thread … If there’s a technique that’s possible, you’ll find someone using it.
I think Bro Steve has it about right, and KTM, too.
Variants of TA/DA tonguing will cover 90% of your basic ITM whistle tonguing needs. Add HA breath push to begin phrases and glottal stops to end phrases, and you’ve got much of the rest.
For softening, I sometimes alter the TA to something approaching a palatalized “CH” sound, or something akin to a Welsh “LL” or Nahuatl “TL”.
I suspect that Hammy was discussing the coughing articulation - throating - in the context mainly of flutes, not whistles. It works well on flute, particularly for huffy-puffy. On whistle, not so much IMO. In fact, it usually sounds to me like a flute player trying to play whistle like a flute, rather than approaching the instrument on its own terms.
KTM, you know that I tend to draw a very bright line between whistle and recorder as different beasts. But I agree that studying the classical articulation techniques can be useful, or at least interesting. After all, Irish trad style has roots in baroque art music.
Thank you to everyone for all the great input. I checked out the Brother Steve site & found it very informative. As I mentioned in my first post I seem to have a different technique depending on which whistle I’m playing.