Hi everyone
How many whistleplayers also play the Irish flute?
Is the flute somewhat easy to handle, when you can play the whistle?
Best regards.
I’d say most if not all Irish flute players play or have played whistle at some point. However, the flute is a very different beast despite sharing the same fingerings. If you already play whistle, it’ll probably be easier to learn flute than, say, concertina or banjo. But there’s still a steep learning curve for your embouchure and grip, as well as the overall feel of how your fingers move in those same fingerings because of the large scale. I play both, and I play tunes very differently on whistle and flute. If I try to play my flute like a whistle or my whistle like a flute they sound terrible. You have to adapt your playing style to each individual instrument.
However, I will say that after playing whistle for a while, flute felt like a natural thing to pick up and try. I suspect most whistle players end up trying out either flute or pipes at some point, at the very least out of sheer curiosity. If you buy used you can sell it on again if you don’t like it and not lose very much money, if any!
I play both. I expect most Irish flute players were whistlers first, with perhaps a minority coming directly to it from Böhm flute.
Playing whistle will help immensely with knowing where the notes are and how to play tunes, as the fingering is the same.
However, whistle will not help at all with getting used to how to blow a flute or form one’s embouchure. Learning to hold it will also require some adjustment from how one holds a whistles.
The flute will not be easy to handle when you first start, because there are still going to be challenges that are not present on whistle. That being said, you’ll at least already have some tunes under your fingers, so it will simplify that aspect a bit.
The flute is IMHO a much more difficult instrument. Learning to manage your breath, and when to breath effectively, and developing a good embouchure are all very challenging. The barriers to entry are much lower with a whistle. Of course it’s hard to be a good musician on any instrument
I think that the flute is harder to play (embouchure, amount of air…), but I think that the whistle is much more difficult to make sound good! I gave up the whistle to save my marriage 
Thank for the replies. I see the point with the same fingering as the one big advantage.
Currently I play the low whistle, an have only done so for 1,5 years. So at some point in the future, the flute could be a good addition.
Compared to the whistle, does the flute has wider range of scale? More like 2 - 2.5 octaves?
Intetesting point about the sound.
Well, happy wife, happy life 
People have been emphasizing the difficulties of developing the embouchure, which is true. Contrary to José, I would say that air requirements are easy if you do it correctly. But I agree with him that the whistle is hard to play well.
A good flute will easily play 2 1/2 octaves from low C/C# to high G, although for ITM you will normally need only D through B.
However, the fingering and the articulations you already know on whistle go a long way to playing the flute with good rhythm & dynamics, and I dare say, authenticity.
Not to be discouraging:
- First month: Barely successful.
- Second month: Able to play D through B - almost two octaves.
- Fourth month: Able to knock out any tune you can play on the whistle, but inconsistent embouchure
- Eighth month: Less sore fingers in various places, less hyper-ventilation, still inconsistent embouchure
…
- Fifth year… Ah, finally the embouchure becomes consistent and controllable.
To speed the embouchure training up, get a good teacher at the beginning, and spend an exceedingly large amount of time daily training your lips: long-tones, harmonics, playing as softly as possible in the third register
I have played whistle for several years, and decided to try the flute about 8 months ago, so perhaps my story will help.
- Embouchure is the real education, not the fingerings.
- Knowing the fingerings is one less thing to learn, and will help you get some tunes (such as they are) out of the flute quickly, and keep you encouraged as you develop your embouchure.
- Buy a decent flute. I bought a couple cheap flutes (a PVC and a Dixon student flute) because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to play the flute and I didn’t want to end up with a expensive unused flute if I quit. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they were very difficult to play and I stopped. I lost several months on those instruments.
- I bought a better (but not terribly expensive) flute, received it a couple weeks ago, and noticed immediate improvement. Playing daily for short periods and getting decent tone.
- I am not bothering with ornaments… I am working solely on embouchure while playing tunes I learned on the whistle
Anyway, it’s a great instrument and if you buy a decent flute you will be able to get immediate results and have a lot of fun. Did I mention embouchure?
AW
I came at flute backwards; the sequence was
Highland bagpipes > Uilleann pipes > flute.
So in learning flute I brought no preconceptions from the whistle, Boehm flute, Recorder, Clarinet, Sax, Native American flute, or any other such thing.
For me the flute requires very little air; the hardest-blowing flute being on a 1-10 scale (one being breathing normally, 10 being blowing a strong Highland pipe) around 2 or 3.
Beginners always overblow flutes anyway.
It’s all about countless hours of practice, for myself in the mirror. Because any time my tone was, even for a moment, more focused I would memorise exactly how I had done it, and strive to play that way from now on. Thus step by step I developed a good tone.
I also took a few lessons from a professional flute teacher. Yes she played Boehm! But flutes are flutes, and focus is focus, and believe me a good flute teacher knows far more about tone production than you do. If you do what the teacher says you’ll soon have a more focused embouchure, which all good things flow from: volume, clarity, flexibility, efficiency.
I really enjoy all of those replies. It gives me a better understanding of the flute, conpared to the whistle.
My background is somewhat like Pancelticpiper.
My “timeline” is:
Highland bagpipes - Smallpipes - Medieval bagpipes - Whistle
I really enjoy playing whistle and is only about 1,5 years into that. So I still have a lot of work there 
I think I wille take up the flute at some point, later on.
This is a helpful discussion. I went from classical Boehm flute to whistle, and now I’m in the market for an Irish flute. It’s been so long since I played my Boehm flute seriously that I suspect I’ll need to rebuild my embouchure from square one.
I appreciate the bit about bit about the struggles of starting on a lower end instrument. Confirms a decision I’ve already made to start with a decent one. I did the low-end start with a whistle “to see if I was going to stick with it before investing,” and I was shocked at how much easier a good whistle is to play when I got one. I don’t need my instrument working against me so am trying not to make the same mistake with the flute!
I appreciate the bit about bit about the struggles of starting on a lower end instrument. Confirms a decision I’ve already made to start with a decent one. I did the low-end start with a whistle “to see if I was going to stick with it before investing,” and I was shocked at how much easier a good whistle is to play when I got one.
You have to be careful there with the assumptions. I think you will find a lot of experienced whistlers who will tell you the easiest, and often their preferred choice of instrument, will be the cheap whistle beginners feel that ‘works against them’.
On the other hand a good few top range flutes require a very focused, strong embouchure, that is well beyond the reach of relative beginners, to play to their full potential.
Good point.
From what I hear, it is very much a “feeling thing”
Too feel the "in-put " vs "out-put " regarding the blowing the whistle.
And ofcause the embouchure of the flute. Which is a chapter in itself.
More like a library, I’d say.
A majority of flute players came onboard via learning the whistle. Note fingerings, ornaments and the general phrasing/ breathing is similar.
However most of the sound/tone is “made for you” on the whistle in the fipple - it’s a fixed embouchure and blade to generate the standing wave.
On the wooden flute the focusing of the airflow is done by the player. And it takes time to master. Getting good at it is 3-5 years.
Being able to play the whistle is significantly advantageous to learning flute. But it’s no simple hop from one to the other.
I’m another that came to the flute through the whistle. I’m really glad I started on the whistle. Having a bunch of tunes under my belt and knowing how ornamentation worked was a huge help. I still like to learn tunes on the whistle a lot of times since it’s easier to get the fingerings and melodies down without worry about embouchure…especially as my whistle is very easy blowing and requires hardly any air. This allows me to start piecing together the tune and how I want to attack breathing and articulation on flute.
As others have said embouchure is the real trick. It took me about a month or two to be able to consistently make a sound on the flute. Some days I would pick it up and I could barely get a note out. It took another couple of months to get to where I could consistently sound ALL of the notes. In there it was several months before I figured out how to focus embouchure enough that I wasn’t having to breathe every 2 or 3 notes. Now that I’ve been playing 3 years or so I’m getting to where I can more reliably get a good tone, but it still slips now and then and I think the tone could be a bit better. But I’m really starting to be able to feel when it “locks in”. All of the sudden it gets much easier to play and the sound darkens and fattens and I get excited. I may only be able to maintain it for a short while but it’s so encouraging and makes all the practice worth it. I definitely have noticed I am MUCH better when I practice consistently. I’ve had things come up where I didn’t play much flute for several months and it always is a battle to get the embouchure back to where it was so I can start progressing again.
Hi all,
I hope it’s OK to ask this question here as I think it relates to the content of the post and it is the closest thing I found in my search.
I am a new flute player (since September) who is also a ‘beginner’ (say two years regular playing) whistle player. I’m more experienced on other instruments and was a professional musician in my 20s so my ear isn’t completely tin (though I’m quite pitch-y but that might be besides the point).
I’m loving flute, but have started going back to re-learn or clean up some old whistle repertoire and I was wondering if I could get some rules of thumb or general advice on articulation for playing my old whistle tunes on flute. Some things are obviously different and challenging (the breathing is different for me as my embouchure is still weak, for example, and obviously there is more to do on the flute with pulses and accents), but I’m wondering how to transfer the articulation. I’m looking for general rules so it won’t get to confusing while I review and learn and relearn across instruments. I realize that as certain tunes become more special on either instrument I might need to deviate between versions a ton more. I’m not to the point yet where articulation and breathing are natural so I need to practice them and memorize for now.
What I have been doing is to replace places where I tongue (my main tutor books are Mary Bergin’s so I have been following her tonguing advice) with a throat articulation or stop. Where she legatos, I legato. This seems to sound OK (sometimes I naturally will emphasize certain notes with airflow or modify here and there naturally). Is this an idiotic approach? Should I just leave the whistle alone for a year or two and then learn the tunes separately so they don’t create a mush in my head? Should I stop worrying about it? You folks have disaster stories or advice?
Cheers,
Tommy
Something I found quite helpful is Conal O’Grada’s book “Irish Traditional Flute Technique” . He spends a lot of time on various articulation techniques and how they fit together in working out a tune. He discusses “critical listening” to the styles of various players to how how they apply these techniques so you’re not just getting Conal’s use of articulations. And there’s an accompanying CD to audibly illustrate what he’s writing about. [And no, I don’t get a percentage of the sales ]
Best wishes
Steve
Second the O Grada book!