Hi,
I know this is a more or less silly question, I plead in extenuation the fact I’m a flute player mostly and find anything below middle C mysterious. What do you do when a song goes lower than the lowest note on your whistle? I keep coming across excellent tunes with low Bs in them, like Christmas Eve, and put them aside because I have no idea how to deal with these low notes. I’m only newly back to whistles and am playing a D mostly. What do you experts do, please?
Thank you,
Beati3
Hi Beati, welcome.
It’s a common question, and there are several common solutions.
Play the note(s) 1 octave higher. This is called octave folding. Sometimes you may want to raise the entire phrase containing the notes, if that sounds best. But sometimes the sudden jump sounds good, too.
Alter the melody to avoid the low note(s). There’s nothing sacred about the low notes. When you see a tune that goes below D, you’re looking at a fiddle-friendly setting, and wind instruments (whistle, flute, pipes) will play a different setting.
For example, in Christmas Eve, several possibilities (using ABC notation):
Solution #1 (leap): |D3E G3A|B2dB ABGA|BAGE DBDE|G2BG ABGE|
Solution #1a (phrase): |D3E G3A|B2dB ABGA|BAGe dBde|G2BG ABGE|
Solution #2 (cran): |D3E G3A|B2dB ABGA|BAGE ~D3E|G2BG ABGE|
Learning how to fold or alter melodies is part of the creativity of playing whistle. Listen to other wind players (or recordings), and note what they do. And try searching the whistle forum here for “folding”. Enjoy. 
If the tune in question doesn’t fold nicely…
Try it in a different key (typically G instead of D etc.) if you’re not bothered about the ‘standard’ key.
Try it in the same key on a different whistle (eg A whistle instead of D whistle) if you are.
Just leave it if it really doesn’t ‘fit’ (and some tunes just don’t).
PS (edited) 3 and 4 above usually amount to the same thing fingering-wise.
Cough at strategic places in the music.
Welcome!
Thank you all very much, both for the Yoda-ly-wise advice and the warm welcome.
The music’s lower than the whistle?
I lOve when that happens. Time for a new whistle!
Hi, Beati3
In fact, taking this one step further … Gather together a group of whistling friends, and have each one specialize in just 2 or 3 notes. Then you can play any tune in handbell fashion. This greatly simplifies becoming an excellent player, as you can concentrate on playing your 2 or 3 notes very, very well.
Of course, managing a fast jig or reel might require several decades of rehearsal. But it’s well worth it. And if you learn to play “Carol of the Bells” as “Carol of the Whistles”, you’ll be in great demand for Christmas concerts.
Think you’d get some interesting rolls and crans divvied up hocket-style! 
Yes, but … I’ve come across very few tunes that can’t be folded effectively, or that wind players avoid just because a fiddly setting drops below range. More likely reasons for avoidance are key (e.g. A Major, G minor), or fussy fiddly tunes like Devil’s Dream or Tam Lin that sound just silly on whistle.
Sure, there are some pathological tunes that are downright odd when folded, especially for solo playing. A favorite example is Maudabawn Chapel:
EG|~G3F E2DB|GABD E2DB|GABD GABd|gabg eaaf| etc.
But these sound fine in a session setting, where the goal is to blend, and octaves are fungible anyway. So it’s still worth learning how to fold them, IMO.
Oh, for that you need to hire ornament specialists. But that can get quite expensive. A-roll and D-cran specialists are in high demand and they charge accordingly, with different rates for vented or non-vented Ds.
Gather together a group of whistling friends, and have each one specialize in just 2 or 3 notes.
There are some musical idioms from the western Pacific that go further - the melody is played on a band of bass swannee whistles made out of bamboo. Each player tunes up before the performance and then plays only one note. (I’ve got examples on LP; it doesn’t seem to have made it to YouTube yet).
Think Finbar might vent his Furey on a cran or just bill you for overblown grace? 
Thanks, Lancelot. ABC notation, folding and unraveling the mysteries of whistle-speak are my next adventures … nods wisely and pretends to know what a “cran” is.
Enjoying the note specialisation conversation.
P.S. Looked up “cran”. The Session says:
On bottom D there is a special ornament called a “cran”. Traditionall whistle players did not play crans but played a cran equivalent that goes D F# E D.
Got it!
http://www.sizes.com/units/cran.htm
(I love the nominative determinism of the name “Cornelius Smelt”).
A suggested alteration would be to play another note in the underlying chord. This would often be a third (2 notes) up from the troublesome note, or possibly a fifth (4 notes up). For example, if the troublesome note is the leading tone (C# just below the range of your D whistle), go up a third and play the E; if the troublesome note is the dominant (low A, well below your bottom D), you could go up a fifth and (again) play the E. It helps if you know the guitar chords for your tune.
If you’re playing with others, just take the opportunity to breathe while they play the low note.
Many times you can either repeat the note before or go up a step instead of down.
I had to learn to adapt to the whistles limitations. One example… I like to play a song called Captain O Kane. On a… D… whistle the lowest note is a… B… To play as written it puts the song mostly in the second octave and partly in the third. The third ain’t happening with me…
I had to sub the… B… for a… D… then try not to notice it. That way I can play the song in a quieter more relaxed way as I would play it on the dulcimer… Bob.
I play bottom B on the whistle by end stopping it.
I can do it seamlessly on a D or C whistle.
Its an old flageolet technique.
Example here to show how un noticeable it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZxgyf6yUgc