i am part of the folk group at my church. the keyboardist’s son-in-law was visiting and was a guest musician with us. he played a brass whistle with a green top. i loved the sound. you folks taught me how to play. thanks.
Sheesh… we’re still waiting for the trees to get ‘fuzzy’, and needing a fire in the woodstove! Spring is is as elusive as a March Hare.
The subject of what got us started has been broached before, and there are some great stories, but I can’t seem to find the proper search words to locate the thread(s).
I got hooked waaaaaaaay back in the mid 1970s after hearing recordings of the Chieftains, Battlefield Band, Boys of the Lough, etc. My mom set me up for it though, by making sure I had a very broad base of music to listen to as a child, and especially Scottish Pipers. Unfortunately, the drive to actually practice did not arrive at the same time as the desire to play… so, although I ‘started’ some 30 years ago, I have actually been concentrating on playing and technique for only a few years.
We are well into spring here in Greece. Blossom is falling and trees beginning to leaf. Today I watched sparrows nesting. It was warm enough to wear shorts.
My brother was an oddball instrument geek growing up (as well as a map-drawing, language acquiring, etc…geek.) He had a concertina, and a jaw (jew’s?) harp, and a small steel drum.
So, in the yearly quest for interesting Christmas gifts, my mom ended up giving my brother and me Gens (he got a C, I got a D,) and a copy of Robin Williamson’s Penny Whistle Book. Roughly 1979, I guess. (my sister wasn’t so musical, but I scratched around with piano and viola and that must be how I merited the pennywhistle. Can’t remember what my sis got instead. Probably a book.)
I lost that red-topped Gen sometime in the years of decluttering baby paraphernalia. Later bought myself the Ochs book and whistle, which I never liked too well. (the whistle that is.)
Cannot for the life of me remember WHAT possessed me to go on eBay and bid on an Overton low D. A very strange non sequitur as far as I can tell. I’d never heard of Overton. Got the Overton. It was in researching Overton, and what the heck had I bought(?) that I stumbled across C&F.
Here I is.
I loved the sound of the Irish whistle I heard playing in the background of some movies, even before I knew what instrument was making that beautiful sound.
It hadn’t occurred to me to try to learn to play the whistle until a couple of years ago. I bought an inexpensive Sweetone - and became obsessed. I now own a Burke brass narrow bore D, but because I smooshed most of my fingers in machinery a while back, for the time being I can’t play it. 
Typing with 2 +1 fingers works, but trying to play the whistle that way doesn’t.
On a trip to Ireland a few years back, I purchased a Waltons Little Black Whistle and book after attending a music show in Dublin. I didn’t do anything with it until after attending an Irish music concert here at home where I was quite impressed with the whistle players ability. I then dug it out and started playing around with it. On a musical ability scale of 0-10, I’m about a 1, so I will never be very good, but I have progressed much further than I ever thought I would. I really enjoy my whistles and I can count more of them than tunes I can play from memory.
Blame it all on my brother.
He gave my kids The Ocarina of Time, and after 3 years of kicking their butts on it I got a Lark of the Morning catalog and wound up getting 3 ocarinas for us all.
Then I saw a zholomiga on eBay for $10 bucks, and my WhOA kicked in with a twist—I was hooked on ethnic whistles as a form of playable folk art. Thanks to a pair of teens, a nightshift hubby who needs to be kept on schedule and my entry into nursing school, I’m learning very slowly----I have more whistles then I know songs to play on them.
I have the Bill Ochs book, a Clark (high D) which I can play near silently to avoid disturbing him, and a Whistlesmith (low D).
When I first saw the Irish Rovers in concert back in 1970, I loved their music and Will Millar made the whistle look so easy. A few years later I bought a whistle and book, and got the most god-awful squawks out of it! Kept trying off and on over the years but never really learned how to do a whole lot. About 5 years ago I decided I wanted to try it again but couldn’t find that whistle. Then I was at a folk festival and someone was selling Megs for under $3, so I bought one, figuring if this was just going to be a toy there wasn’t any sense spending a lot of money on it. Actually managed to get some songs out of the Meg, then stumbled across C&F. Asked my husband for a good whistle for Christmas a couple of years ago and he got me a Clarke D. I also have a C now but I use the Clarke more. Still not good enough to let anyone outside the family hear me, and I’m terrible about practicing. Somehow after I get home from work around 7:30pm and have supper, I don’t feel like “working” at anything - I’d rather just get on the computer and relax. Besides, if my husband is watching TV in our small house any other noise bothers him.
Maybe I’ll get more practice time in when it gets warm enough to be outside in the evening - that should be, oh, around August 15 up here!
“… and he won the heart of a Laaaaaaaaaady…”
Yup, them too…
I started playing flute when I was 6 or 7. I played through high school and college, and was quite good, even a leader, but not ‘professionally skilled,’ which is fine by me. I tried joining a community band, which didn’t work out so well, due to a lot of things, but mainly because some of the older members somehow managed to smoke cigars, drink beers, and play trumpets at the same time - I just don’t know how. No offense to smokers, but it really set off my migraines, so I couldn’t stick around for long.
So I was trying to find an outlet for music, and I’m not opposed to learning new instruments, and I was intrigued by the fifey sounding instrument in Flogging Molly. So I found out it was a pennywhistle - figured it’s got the same semblance of lifting the fingers to go up the scale as the flute did, so I could associate similarly.
So last week I trotted on down to the closest session I could find (only 1/2 hour away, closer than my office!) I think it’ll be fun. Though my hubby’ll be out of luck for musical outlet - the trombone doesn’t exactly translate so well, I’m afraid. (Edit: I know lots of sessions are in bars, but I’m fortunate that the one I found is at our Irish center, and as far as I can tell, it’s non-smoking. Not to mention that I believe that the local county is trying to pass one of those smoking bans… for better or for worse.)
The awesome, soul-bending configurations of the Slow Irish Air. They help relax the riddle of life in this world. o, yah…
Star Trek
Am I the only one?
Live long and prosper
Warning - long story:
I’ve always loved the sound of high woodwinds - I don’t know why. This led to my choosing the flute as my band instrument in 6th grade and I played it through into college (though outside of the tiny town in NW New Mexico where I went to school before that I was certainly nothing special). Engineering school put an end to my college musical studies.
Along the way - high school - I made my first tentative acquaintance with recorders as my school bought an SATB set and then I got myself an Adler soprano (which I now know is a truly lousy recorder) and the Trapp Family book. (that would be around 1973)
I dabbled with that offhandedly for some time but finally got to where I could play well enough to join in the little folk group at the Newman Center near college. As a junior at NMSU I met the girl who would become my wife and found she had a musical background in her family, and taught her C recorder as well and we both played at the Newman Center a bit.
I came to the recorder because I liked the sound, not because I was a Baroque music fanatic. I stayed on soprano for a very long time, though my wife gave me a Hohner pearwood alto for a wedding gift. (Oh no, not another set of fingerings to learn!)
Another different sound I also liked was that of the whistle and somewhere in early marriage I picked up a Perri C (yes, one of those aluminum whistles painted what Dale calls “nuclear warning orange” in his discussion of inexpensive whistles on the C&F site). I selected C because I figured it would be easier to learn since I already played C recorder. ITM wasn’t the driver - it was just the sound.
The Perri languished in a drawer for years and sometime (I don’t remember when) was joined by a nickel Generation C. In the meantime, we had a brief stint with the folk group in our current parish, where they worked only from words and chords, so we had to pick out the songs by ear on our recorders - and when the guitarists decided to slap a capo on we had to start all over again. But that and small children took us out of that.
A number of years later I was drawn back to music in the parish with my flute and my recorder on a very occasional basis and at some point not long after that the recorder variant of WhOA, whatever it is, kicked in. I tried that wedding-gift alto and found it was not all that great (and consistently flat - so not all that usable with other recorders or the flute or piano at church). A period of relatively rapid progress in recorder playing ensued, during which we were playing more and more often. Now it’s nearly every week - and I’ve gone from some inexpensive but decent plastic recorders to Swiss-made rosewoods (in C and F) and others as well as a complete set of Dolmetsch Novas from sopranino to bass. My wife likes to play the low recorders more. By this time my 6th grade flute was put away and I haven’t played it in years though I still have it.
During all this time, every now and again I’d think about the whistles and even took to keeping the Perri in my instrument case and once in awhile trying to pick out a tune in C on it. I didn’t know I could also play in F on it at the time (that was one of the many revelations that came to me when I found C&F). I’d also picked up a Susato D of the non-tunable variety at some point.
About three years ago now my wife and I took a 10 day trip to Ireland as a belated 25th wedding anniversary gift to ourselves, spending most of the time in Kerry and Cork (her ancestors - O’Sullivans - were from there). One of the things we came back with was a Kerry Low D from the music shop in the little town we were staying in (Kenmare). By that time I had found C&F and knew some of the possibilities and somehow getting this Low D launched both my more systematic learning of whistles in general and a really bad case of WhOA. In short order I ordered one-head three-body sets of Bb/C/D high and A/G/F “middle” Susato whistles, got one of David O’Brien’s early copper whistles, and then a 6-body set of Syns from Erle Bartlett (and then a C/D set as a “backup”). But even with all of that I’m probably into all the whistles together (cost wise) about as much as I am for my best alto recorder.
It was also about in this time frame that my wife finally allowed herself to sit down at the Magical Strings booth at a fair and hold a Celtic lap harp - and that has led to her studying with Phillip Boulding first at their summer camp - from which she came home with her first harp. This, too, was a drive to work on whistles because they are a natural pairing, much of Magical Strings’ music is Irish in origin (along with their original stuff), and we just like the sound.
Now that six-body Syn set lives in my instrument case and they get used at church as often as I can work them in (compatible keys, range and ability on my part). The C and D tubes show the evidence of much playing and all of the others have been used at least occasionally. Sometimes one of the mezzo Susatos participates as well (though it will be easier after I get keys on the lowest hole on at least the G and F).
Whether I’ll ever be headed to ITM sessions or not I’m not sure - it’s pretty much a fantasy at this point for both ability and logistics reasons. I have an affinity for the music and am beginning to feel as if some of it is within my grasp, though. I took a workshop just yesterday at Dusty Strings in Seattle on this (and came home with another tune book, a Generation high F and a Dixon aluminum/ABS D!).
I do know that I want to get to where I can do more with my wife and her harps outside of just the weekly liturgies and “the music” as it is called here pulls on me. We shall see where it goes. This site and community is certainly a treasure trove of information to help along the way.
(I just turned on KBCS FM’s “Sunday’s Hornpipe” - which always opens with an amazing rendition of Si Beag Si Mor by Cormac Breatnach on what I gather to be a G whistle from the range and what happens when I stumble along trying to play along on a D.)
Oh - and while minding the Magical Strings booth at a festival a little over a year ago my wife got me a Stellar native American flute in G from an adjoining exhibitor. Yet another, again different, but lovely sound to learn what to do with!
added in response to jmiller’s post just above: Learning “Captain Picard’s Air” has been a driver for me as well. When we were in college in the mid 1970’s my wife used to be able to name Star Trek episodes just by hearing some dialog over the phone - of course back then there were only 69 to choose from 
- so ST has always been part of our life. Too bad Christopher Franke never used whistles in scoring Babylon 5…
(edits to fix spelling)
A Joannie Madden tape I bought at an “earth store” at the mall over 20 years ago, titled “Song of the Irish Whistle 2.”
I didn’t even know what one looked like, until last year. My daughter called from a music store in South Bend asking if I wanted her to buy me a Walton’s starter kit.
I said, “No…” and five minutes later called back and said “Yes!”
Even the sound of the flute, though beautiful, never really captivated me. The whistle grabs my heart!
Now I have a Burke D, a Syn C, a Burke Bb and a practice room set up in the basement! Who could ask for more!!
I know that the desire to do more than listen to this music had been in me for a very long time. I just never acted on it until I came to understand that if I did not at least attempt to play it, I would probably be, in some vague and undefineable way, miserable when I next heard it. There is no doubt that this music was a part of my family’s past, but any connectedness to it had been lost, at least two generations before I got here. The longing never went away, it just lay dormant until about 8 years ago. For me, the “Convincer”–that point in time when I more or less understood that I would have to try my hand at this music or feel a painful absence whenever I heard it–was, of all things, the sound track from the movie, Waking Ned Devine. I remember being deeply moved by the eulogy that Jackie O’Shea (played by Ian Bannen, who himself died in an automobile accident within a year of the movie’s release) gave for (his still living) lifelong friend Michael O’Sullivan (played by David Kelly). How wonderful, for a man to be able to say to a friend in this life the kinds of things we generally only get to say when that friend is no longer with us. Corny or sentimental, perhaps, but that’s what did it for me. Within 48 hours of walking out of the threater I had found a teacher and have been at it ever since. I located that teacher–and much, much more, through this website. These past 8 years or so have been among the richest in my adult life, and I owe a lot of that to C & F and the fine folks I have met through it.
I loved the sound of the whistle on Pogues and Dubliners records, so I bought one.
Then I bought another one…
Then I bought another one…
Then I bought another one…
Then I bought another one…
Then I bought another one…
I just found this page, and the WhOA stuff cracks me up, because I had been having trouble explaining to my husband why after buying a sweettone I needed a Clarke wood-stop whistle, and why after that I needed a low D. I solved the problem by getting him a book for Christmas on how to make simple flutes. Now he understands. We have bamboo flutes in many keys, shakuhachis, quenas with six-hole fingering, low and high (but they fall on the floor when you play a C#, which disrupts the rhythm), a pentatonic flute, a couple of failed low whistles from plumbing pipes and old doorbell chimes, PVC flutes with wooden heads (we were thrilled to see a photo of the water weasel, with plumbing code proudly displayed!)
All in all, finding Chiff and Fipple is a revelation: we’re not the only nuts in the world?!? I feel so, like, affirmed, or something.
Here’s to true folk music.
Four years ago I went to a concert of a local celtic group. Prior to that I had a passing interest in Irish traditional music. I enjoyed the group a great deal, particularly the whistle. I decided that I would try learning to play the whistle. I have a background in music on the amateur level. I had no idea where to find a whistle but went to a music store where I found a Clarke original which I bought. Then I found Chiff & Fipple. From there it’s been a great four years and getting more fun all the time. That one Clarke has grown to twelve whistles and I have given some away. (Can you say “WHOA!”) You won’t regret getting to know the whistle!
Bill T.
No, I like “The Inner Light” so much that I spent a C-note on Season 5 of TNG. But I was already playing whistle when that episode came out.
Mark
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Bought recorder on a whim at age 17; learned to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “On Top of Old Smokey.”
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Put recorder in closet until age 50.
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Pulled recorder out and said “I WILL learn to play this.”
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Learned recorder but couldn’t get into Baroque music.
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Searched Internet for other music to play.
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In rapid succession:
a. Discovered Irish music; fell in love.
b. Discovered C&F; laughed my ass off.
c. Discovered “Song of the Irish Whistle”; almost passed out from the beauty. -
Bought whistle, then another, then another…