Technorati Tags: Feadog, Irish Tin Whistle, Penny Whistle

To Learn to play the Irish Tin Whistle Click Here

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Well, according to Ezine Articles, I’m now an expert author! My first article over there has been accepted and posted, and you can find it here. 

… If you hate clicking links, you can scroll down and just read it here, though.

The Irish Tin Whistle is a deceptively simple instrument. The basics are very easy to pick up, thanks to the very straightforward fingering system and limited number of tone holes, and yet there are a number of more advanced techniques that really define the sound of the whistle in Celtic music. This article presents a brief overview of some of those techniques, then introduces a variation of one of them which produces its own unique sound for a whistler to add to his or her repertoire.

Basic Irish Tin Whistle Ornamentation 
Two of the most basic ornaments — or “accents” added to notes that are not meant to be notes themselves — that Irish tin whistle players learn are cuts and taps. Both are generally used to emphasize transitions between notes, and occasionally to break up a longer, held note, and are essentially variants of the same technique. To “cut” a note, you simply lift the finger above the lowest one on the instrument while still playing that note, then quickly put it back down, and to “tap” a note, as the name implies, you tap the tone hole below your lowest finger. If that sounds confusing, a visual example might simplify things. Imagine the X’s and O’s below as the tone holes of a whistle going from top to bottom, where X is a covered hole and O is an open hole:

X - Cut here

X

O - Tap here

O

O

O

If this imaginary whistle was a tin whistle in the key of D, you would be putting your left index and middle fingers over the top two holes and playing an A note. To cut that note, you would lift your left index finger, and to tap it, you would tap your left ring finger.

The “Flat Tap” Technique 
With taps explained, you can go on to learn the “flat tap” variation of it. This ornament is also a tap, but instead of tapping the tone hole directly below the note you are currently playing, you skip down over two or more tone holes and tap that one. The flat part of the tap comes from the way the tin whistle works. Simply covering a lower tone hole like this can alter the pitch of the note, and allow you to play a flat version of the note. Usually, three holes down is the right amount to get a noticeably lower pitch. In the A note example above, this would mean to do a “flat tap” on the A note, you would tap with your right middle finger, as shown here:

X

X

O

O

O – Tap here

O

Most traditional music does not require the use of flats (or sharps) from the tin whistle, so instead this technique can be used as a form of ornamentation. The flat tap can use to accent a note transition more subtly than a basic cut or tap, but a more common use is to rapidly tap the same note, producing a vibrating or trilling effect, especially on long held notes. An excellent example of this latter technique can be found in the resources section, wherein John Sheahan, fiddler and occasional whistler for the Dubliners, puts the vibrating variant of the technique to great use in a musical rendition of the poem Raglan Road.

The “flat tap” is a technique that is rarely used in traditional Irish music, but when used sparingly on the right songs, it can be an excellent, subtle enhancement to the sound, and a worthwhile skill for whistlers to add to their repertoire.

 Raglan Road by the Dubliners – A YouTube video of this technique being used in a wonderful song.

Technorati Tags: Feadog, Irish Tin Whistle, Penny Whistle, Tin Whistle in D

This post here is probably going to share one of the biggest tips I’ve discovered when it comes to practicing and playing the Irish tin whistle. For myself, this simple solution has greatly enhanced my enjoyment when it comes to practicing the instrument, and it isn’t something I’ve been able to find mentioned elsewhere on the internet – at least not this specific solution. So, what is this tip going to adress? Like the title says, this little how-to guide is going to share the simplest and most effective method I’ve found to play the tin whistle quietly.

I don’t know about anyone else reading this, but for myself, I like to keep my whistle with me and simply pick up and play it on and off all the time. Whether I’m waiting for a file to download, feel like taking a break, or (heaven forbid) procrastinating, I’m quite happy to pick up my nearest whistle and play through a few tunes from memory, or load up a song I know on my computer to play along with. Of course, the Irish tin whistle being what it is, if any of these songs went into the higher register, the sound coming out of it could be quite shrill and loud. 

Since these whistle breaks can come to me at any time in the day or night (and similarly, trying to practice when I first started out often meant playing at night, since I was busy during the day), there was really no good way to play higher songs. I’d found suggestions for different things, using tape or rubber bands to cover parts of the sound hole, but none of them ever seemed to work consistently. I learned to simply play the higher parts of the song in the lower register, which was fine for getting used to the fingering, but it made my practice hitting the high notes clearly suffer. Still, it was the best solution I had found.

One day, however, I stumbled onto a solution as simple as two words: Fun tack. 

This just-sticky-enough, moldable substance was perfect to use on the fipple of my whistles, and did wonders to the sound once I had experimented with how to use it. Essentially, all you need is a small amount of the stuff, which you make into a wedge shape and place onto the little ramp that goes down to the voice hole, so that you make a kind of little wall at the end of the voicing where your breath would usually hit the plastic. 

Depending on how high you make the wall, you can slightly lower the volume, or reduce so much that even your high A and B notes can be as quiet as a low D, perfect for late night sessions that won’t wake up your room-mates, friends, and family members. It does require significantly less air for every note, so depending on how much you reduce the volume, you might end up having issues hitting the lowest notes, but you can always adjust. In addition, varying the air requirements can be a handy lesson in breath control, which is a large factor in how reliably you can hit notes in a song. With this method, it’s easy to play whatever notes you like on your Irish tin whistle at almost any time and any place, and you can easily remove the fun tack when you want to play at full volume and reuse it as much as you need to.

Technorati Tags: Feadog, Irish Tin Whistle, learn to play the irish tin whistle, penny whistle lessons, the penny whistle, tin whistle lesson

Well, time for the first actual post. The appetizer’s finished, so let’s move on to the meat.  And today, that meat will take the form of a bit of history. Everyone likes history, right? Right…? If not, there’s still bound to be some general whistle information in there, and hopefully a few amusing digressions, so don’t let the “h” word scare you away.

The Irish tin whistle is essentially a simple system woodwind instrument that uses a fipple to produce sound. Without the jargon, that means you blow into it like a recorder and not like a flute to make sound, and there are only open holes along the body, instead of the fancy system of buttons and levers you find on more classical instruments. This has the practical effect of being very straightforward to play; the fewer fingers you have covering holes, the higher the note, you always lift your fingers off from the bottom to the top, and you blow harder to play higher. That’s about it. (Thankfully. I tried picking up my old concert flute a few months ago, and felt like my grandparents must feel in front of a computer. “What does this button do?” “It’s making a bad noise, what’s wrong with it?”)

These types of instruments have been in use longer than recorded history. Just about every civilization made some version of them. They’ve found versions made by Neanderthals. Really, if the Irish cultural aspect of the tin whistle doesn’t appeal to you, but some other culture does, you can probably still start playing a whistle for that reason anyway. Odds are they have an equivalent, and the Irish tin whistle will be cheaper than that equivalent if anyone’s selling one.

At any rate, the modern form of whistle we have today emerged from those roots in Manchester, England, when a man named Robert Clarke began mass-producing his version of the whistle in the 1840s. This was essentially the model that the other modern styles of the whistle descended from, and where the whistle picked up two of its main names: the tin whistle, because they were usually made out of brass or tin, and the penny whistle, because they were so cheap to make that during the 19^th century, you could buy one for the price of a British penny.

In the 1900s, plastics were developed and largely replaced the metal fipples that had been used in the past (though of course you can still find plenty of whistles with metal fipples these days). In the intervening period, the whistle became widespread in use and welcomed into folk music, especially European and specifically Celtic folk music, where it found a place about as common as the harmonica in American music. Today, many musical groups still feature the Irish tin whistle, from traditional bands, to ballad groups like the Dubliners, and even bands that play more modern types of music with a Celtic twist, like Flogging Molly or the Dropkick Murphys.

Technorati Tags: history, Irish Tin Whistle