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Water can condense inside the windway in the head of a tin whistle and start to block the correct flow of air.

Well, I’ve started (and then stopped) to put short videos on Tiktok. I’ve had to use my old phone so far, but at least it’s a simple process. However, I’m looking at other cameras so that I can make the sound and video a bit better. Why do this? Partly it’s a self-serving thing, a showcase for getting some more bookings, especially for dances. It’s also, of course, a way to show off a bit of (mostly) English folk/traditional music.

TLDR:

• Buy a Generation D whistle.
• Stop worrying and start to learn to play it.
• Buy a Generation C and B flat whistle for even more fun.
• Now you can play and have formed an opinion.

A tin whistle is a simple instrument, they can be made pretty cheaply and work well.

The tin whistle is a simple instrument and you’d think that how to place it in the mouth and blow it would be simple and obvious. That’s until I read some rather strange advice from anonymous people on the web.

In my view, videos made of people playing whistles are basically worthless for judging the qualities of a tin whistle. What do they signify? They are more an indication of the microphone being used, the acoustics of the place where the recording was made, the skill of the player and the loudness and treatment of the recording. Not treating the recording (eg. compression, equalisation) is a treatment in itself. You are only hearing what a microphone recorded through whatever loudspeakers/headphones/earphones you are using.

People often assume that I chose to play the melodeon because there is something specifically special about the instrument that attracted me. That is, something about its sound or aesthetics. The answer is, no. I started playing the melodeon through a set of chance happenings. I decided to join a morris side (a Border Morris team that was just starting up), and that included some melodeon players. I already played the tin whistle, but for a while had wanted to learn to play another instrument.

I play dance music that has developed over the last 400 hundred years or so in England. It is closely related to the traditional dance music in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Sometimes indistinguishable, sometimes in the more “English” versions of this shared tradition. The core of the music I play is “Country Dance” music; a dance music that has it’s origins somewhere in and before the 15th century. It has gone through its ups and downs over the centuries, from working class and peasant communities, to the royal court and a dance craze across Europe.

This can be a touchy subject, and I certainly do not intend to offend anyone. In the ceilidhs and band events I play for we offer a professional service with expensive musical instruments and equipment. To be able to play events we have had many years of experience in performing and many thousands of hours of practice. In my view, booking an experienced dance musician is akin to engaging a plumber or electrician to work in your home.

English social dance has something of a nomenclature problem, which comes from its long history and modern misconceptions or assumptions when using historical terms. Country dance The longest lived term is Country Dance. It is the term used in the earliest dance manuals or descriptions (16th/17th century), in the diaries of contemporaries like Pepys who described Country Dance at the royal court. It is the term used in dance books and music books throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and by authors such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

See also my comments on “Bad Generation whistles?." It’s simply to help counteract some of the more hysterical comments you get about Generation whistles and demonstrate their worth as instruments and give anyone starting on the tin whistle confidence in buying a cheap whistle such as Generation. So, to showcase the Generation whistle here are some videos. I am, of course, not saying that Generations are the only tin whistle worth having, or that all these players only play Generation whistles.