First, I agree it’s always a mistake for beginners to saddle themselves with both the task learning a new instrument and the task of trying to overcome the flaws of a poor instrument.
True that good players get the most out of any instrument, the poor and the good, and are capable of masking at least some of the flaws in a poor one. But they want their effort to bear maximum fruit and they themselves play good instruments.
Mr Gumby brings up two topics that fully agree with my experiences
the best-playing whistles tend to be among the least expensive. That’s with high whistles. With Low Whistles my experience has been that to get a great-playing one you’ll have to pay the price, unless you happen across a used one being sold below value.
some great fluteplayers play flutes that require a great embouchure. I experienced this when a fluteplayer with a very powerful tone let me borrow both his #1 and his #2 flutes for a couple days. (Both were mid-19th century Prattens.)
For me, lacking his embouchure, the #2 flute was a better player, really the best flute I’ve ever played. A huge fluid tone came out with little effort.
His #1 flute was much stiffer and required a very strong blow to “fill” it.
Matt Molloy, when he tried an Olwell flute (which deliver big tone and are easy to “fill”) said something along the lines that the Olwell will be a great flute for him when he’s no longer able to “fill” his vintage Pratten.
Third recommendation Conal O Grada’s tutor. Challenging to find at the moment - out of print.
You’re right to remove tonguing and look to replace with glottal or finger articulations. But for now don’t overly worry about this. The basic principles of the key ornaments remains similar from whistle to flute (cuts, taps, long/short rolls and crans) and you’ll do them in the same places and for the same reasons.
Get a good teacher. With a little direction you’ll make excellent progress given your background.
I have a copy of the O’Grada tutor and have coincidentally just started working through it (at chapter 2 now – and boy do cuts suddenly become hard when you put them where it makes musical sense and not where they are finger-easy haha). It’s been great so far. That first chapter on breathing coupled with the harmonics exercises someone posted on this site have improved my tone and how long a breath lasts considerably (though I’m still a beginner).
What I’ll do as I re-learn and try to cross learn (learn the same tunes on both flute and whistle) is take my time and do some listening so I’m sure my method of replacing the tonging with the right breath accents / glottal stops is half-decent sounding and then try not to worry to much / get it fixed in in-person lessons. I was hoping to quickly add a bunch of whistle tunes I know to flute and vice versa but I think I have too many half-learned tunes at this point and maybe should slow down and just work on technique and only the tunes O’Grada provides as examples and maybe have one tune I’m cross-learning on the back burner at a time. It’s hard not to get excited when you hear a fun new tune and want to try and learn it. So much beautiful music out there.
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.
Most everything you know from the whistle also works well on flute. Mary Bergin is a great model. I would say that she uses more tongue articulations than most whistle players, and that most flute players use less tonguing. Adding judicious tongue articulations is better than over-doing it. The flute benefits from much greater dynamic range, which you can only get on the whistle by using articulations.
I really love the phrasing of Catherine McEvoy. Her breath articulations are really wonderful and gives a lyrical relaxed feel to the tunes.
Very nice to know.
I will take up the flute sometime in the future. I am relativly “young” on my whistle journey.
I think quite many players at some point can play both instruments?
I would seem quite logical since the fingering is much the same.
I went directly to learning flute without being a whistle player first, but along the way I picked up a couple of whistles, a D and a C just for fun.
Yes the fingering is the same as flute so I can play the whistle, but I’m not a good whistle player. There are differences in technique between the two instruments like the degree of tonguing, use of glottal stops, etc. There is also a wider range of dynamic potential with flute, so the approach to breathing is a bit different. I haven’t tried to improve my whistle technique to make it sound more “whistle authentic” because it would take practice time away from my flute, which is a harsh mistress and doesn’t like me to be away from her for too long.
So I rarely play my whistles. Mostly just in the car while waiting in line for the ferry, and usually the C whistle because it has a mellower tone. As an aside, I also sometimes play a WARBL Midi instrument which can be fingered like a whistle. It’s my “pretend I’m a piper” instrument for fun at home.
Very nice in-put. Thank you.
That seems logical to me.
Even though fingering is the same, the playing style and instruments are actually quite far apart.
Now I see that I can actually relate this to a part of my own music…
I play the Highland Pipes and has also along the way, taken up medieval bagpipes.
Those instruments are somewhat similar (fingering is different), but the style of the music is much, much different. A whole other genre.
From what I read is, that the whistle/ flute thing is about the same, yet reversed from what I wrote about the “bagpipe-thing”
Here the fingering and tunes are the same. But the playing style (instrument is handled different) and technique is much different…
(I have taken up the whistle, almost 2 years ago and really enjoy the process of that instrument)
There is one advantage to the flute over the whistle. On the whistle, pitch varies with volume. The harder you blow, the sharper the pitch. So one of the skills of a whistle player is pitch control. The recorder is similar. That rather limits the dynamics of the instrument, but I wouldn’t say it’s a limitation, it’s just a characteristic of the instrument. Listen to a really good recorder ensemble, and it sounds much like an organ.
On the flute, pitch and volume can be controlled independently of each other. The pessimist might say, that’s two things you have to learn instead of one. But it opens up a wider range of expressive possibilities.
On the topic of whistles, I have a couple of “high end” whistles, which is what I usually choose when I’m playing whistle. But I still like the old Generation that was the first whistle I ever bought.
