A Tin Whistle Interest

[OC Richard]

With your tuba experience, you should have little trouble getting good on the whistle fairly quickly.

The inexpensive whistles often have horrible quality control, and you might have to play through 10 or 20 Generation whistles to find one that plays well.

There are a couple options: one is to buy a Jerry Freeman's "tweaked" whistle. He buys whistles off the shelf and modifies them so that they play well, which takes the guesswork out of it. A Freeman tweaked Generation or Feadog is a good cheap way to get a great-playing whistle.

Or you can shell out the money for a high-end whistle like a Burke. Michael Burke makes wonderful whistles but they cost over ten times what a cheapo whistle will.

[CMcG]

I've done a bit of cheap whistle tweaking and it simply involves loosening the plastic mouthpiece from the metal tube. Adjust how deeply the metal goes into the plastic to get the right resonance... kind of like a tuning slide on your tuba.

As far as learning goes, you can buy a book to help you with the basics and it will have sheet music for a few tunes. You can even find a whistle with book in combination for a better deal!

Two other pieces of advice: listen to lots of Celtic music to get the feel and buy a "D" whistle incase you want to play with other people because it is by far the most common key.

[Ozark Ridge Rider]

I've done a bit of cheap whistle tweaking and it simply involves loosening the plastic mouthpiece from the metal tube. Adjust how deeply the metal goes into the plastic to get the right resonance... kind of like a tuning slide on your tuba.

As far as learning goes, you can buy a book to help you with the basics and it will have sheet music for a few tunes. You can even find a whistle with book in combination for a better deal!

Two other pieces of advice: listen to lots of Celtic music to get the feel and buy a "D" whistle incase you want to play with other people because it is by far the most common key.

Also get a "C". You can play each of them in at least one other key very easily, as well as the associated modal (?) minors

Enjoy,
Dan

[OC Richard]

I've done a bit of cheap whistle tweaking and it simply involves loosening the plastic mouthpiece from the metal tube.

What you're describing is simply tuning the whistle: sliding the head out to flatten, pushing it in to sharpen.

"Tweaking" involves much more: filling the cavity to raise the pitch of the 2nd octave (cheapos often have a very flat 2nd octave), altering the "blade", and altering the "windway".

Jerry Freeman does all of these things. On some whistles, where the blade is placed too high in relation to the windway, he glues an extra bit of plastic or metal on the underside of the blade and re-cuts the blade, in effect making the blade lower.

All of these problems with the voicing of cheap whistles comes from the fact that the head is created with a three-part mould, and if the three parts don't align precisely the voicing of the whistle will suffer.

Many Generations and other cheap whistles are made using old moulds which are worn out so misalignment and "flash" results in a poor-sounding whistle. Freeman corrects all of those things.

[Bing]

Or you can shell out the money for a high-end whistle like a Burke. Michael Burke makes wonderful whistles but they cost over ten times what a cheapo whistle will.

I have a Burke D brass session whistle and it is unbelievable. I have a friend who makes wooden flutes and when he shows up he takes my Burke for a tune or 2.