r/tinwhistle

I often hear beautiful whistle accompaniment that is not the actual melody. How do you know what notes to play? How can I learn to do this technique?

The caveat is I'm new but I've played ocarina and recorder and I grabbed a shush pro because it seemed like a good learning platform for tin whistle but the the lowest D and E require SUCH a small amount of breath that its really throwing me. Are all whistles like this or is this a quirk of the model? My lungs are pretty good I'd trade less efficiency for more stability. I originally ordered a lir pro high D and then was concerned it would be too loud for the phase where everything sounds bad as I learn. (its still on the way) will more "standard" whistles be more flexible? Apologies if this is a silly question

For the longest time I could play a tune cleanly but it sounded flat, like I was just hitting the right notes in the right order and nothing else. Every recording I listened to had all this extra stuff happening between the notes and I had no idea how people were doing it, or when to even try.

What actually helped was slowing way down and picking apart one tune, "Kesh Jig," note by note instead of trying to layer ornaments onto everything I played. I found where the long notes sat and just practiced cranning on the low D until it stopped sounding like a stutter. Took maybe two weeks of five minute sessions before it started feeling like part of the note instead of an interruption tacked onto it.

The other thing was realizing I'd been trying to learn cuts and taps from written notation and it just wasn't clicking. Once I started watching hand position in slow motion videos and copying the finger movement without worrying about the theory, it made way more sense. My fingers needed to see it, not read about it.

Still can't do a proper roll without thinking hard about it but the crans are getting automatic now, which feels like a real milestone after months of them sounding forced. Curious if others found a similar tune worked well as a practice ground, or if it was more about just picking whatever you were already working on and slowing it down.

Hi there, anyone knows any news about Sindt Whistle? I emailed Sindt on March twice (one is follow up) to order his amazing whistle. After that I have not received any reply yet. I’m aware it might be weeks/months waiting for reply. But as it’s almost half year, I’d like to ask here by any chance if anyone ordered whistles from him this year too. Wondering how long it takes. Thanks

Picked up a D whistle back in the spring mostly on a whim after hearing a session recording that had that one bright melody cutting through everything else. Learned the basic scale pretty quickly, got through a handful of slow airs, and thought I was making decent progress. Then I started trying to actually play trad properly and the roll stopped me cold.

I understand the mechanics on paper: cut, blow, cut again, land back on the note. My fingers know what they're supposed to do in isolation. But when I try to slot a roll into an actual tune at anything above a crawl, it either sounds like a little hiccup with no shape, or I overcompensate and the whole phrase lurches. I've been doing slow practice, isolating just the measure that has the roll, playing it maybe fifty times in a row before moving on. Some days it clicks for a few minutes and then falls apart again.

What I've noticed is that my upper cut tends to be weaker than my lower one. The note above comes out kind of smeared rather than crisp, which probably explains why the ornament sounds mushy. A few people in a local session told me this just takes time and to stop thinking about it so hard, which is probably true but not especially actionable advice.

Curious whether others went through a long plateau with rolls specifically. Did something suddenly make it click for you, or was it genuinely just accumulated hours until your fingers sorted it out on their own? Also wondering if practicing ornaments on a slower whistle in a lower key would help build the muscle memory differently, or if that just introduces new habits that don't transfer.

I'm guessing it's to let moisture drip out instead of clogging, but it seems too small for that to work very well. I'm sure he's putting it there on purpose, tho, so what's it for?

I just picked up learning the whistle and I don't know if it's a Low D Whistle thing, but when I don't blow hard enough with the first hole (left index finger) open, I get a lower note that isn't a D. It sounds like a Bb but when I look for answers I find nothing, except stuff about half holing which I don't think I am doing. Am I missing something ?

I've been largely using learntinwhistle.com largely because thesession.org is slightly more cluttered and confusing, but it seems like the 'top of the list' version of songs between those two sites is basically never the same. I get that there's no official version of most of these tunes, so how do you decide which version to learn? I'm a long way from joining any sort of session, but I don't want to get there a few years from now and everyone looks at me and goes "bro wtf are you doing"

Hi!

So, I got myself a Killarney, it's absolutely amazing, but I apparently have some kind of allergy to it and I can't use it T_T

Is there another whistle I could get that won't have metals in the mouthpiece and will be around the same price range and quality?

What do the dots mean? This is from the Dunmore Lasses on The Session (setting #1)

https://preview.redd.it/wyx6mln9qwhh1.png?width=259&format=png&auto=webp&s=65641b7fc4c3eb3e9def36732b67257a1a8208bd

Normally I'd assume a dot means you add 50% to the length of the note but that doesn't seem right to me as it's a 4/4 time signature so 4 beats per measure with each beat equating to a quarter note, which means (I think) that the triplet without the dots amounts to a quarter note (1 beat) doesn't it?
(Apologies if I've got any of this wrong, I've not had any formal musical training, just trying to understand this)

Thanks