Tin whistle: Ireland musical instrument

The tin whistle is also called the penny whistle. The tin whistle is a simple, 6-holed woodwind musical instrument. The musical instrument is a fipple flute, categorizing the instrument in the class as the recorder, Native American flute and some other woodwind musical instrument that has the same qualities. The player of the musical instrument is called a tin whistler. The tin whistle is linked closely with the Celtic music.

source of picture: musiciansfriend.com

The musical instrument in its modern form is from a family of fipple flutes that have been seen in several forms and cultures in the whole world. In Europe, a musical instrument like that has a long and differentiated history and takes different forms.

Almost all primitive cultures had a type of the fipple flute and are most like the first pitched flute-kind musical instrument in existence. A possible Neanderthal fipple flute indigenous to Slovenia has been traced back to 81,000 to 53,000 B.C. a German flute that has been traced back to about 35,000 years ago, and flute produced from the bone of sheep in the West Yorkshire traced back to the Iron Age. In the early middle Ages, northern Europe people were playing the musical instrument as it was seen in the 3^rd century British bone flutes and the Irish Brehon Law described an instrument that is like the flute. By the 12^th century, the Italian flutes came in different sizes, and fragments of the 12^th century Norman bone whistle have been found in Ireland and an intact 14 cm Tusculum clay whistle traced back to the 14^th century in Scotland. In the 17^th century, the musical instruments were known as ‘flageolets’.

The modern version of the musical instrument is indigenous to the British Isles especially England, when factory-manufactured version of the tin whistle were manufactured by Robert Clarke from 1840 to 1882 in Manchester and later New Moston in England. Down the 1900, the musical instrument was marketed as ‘Clarke London Flageolets’ or ‘Clarke Flageolets’. The fingering system of the musical instrument is analogous to that of the 6-holed simple system English flute. The 6-holed diatonic system is also used on the baroque flutes and was popular before Clarke started manufacturing his tin whistle. The first musical instrument from Clarke was pitched in high A and later was made in other keys that are appropriate for Victorian parlor music. In 1851, the company showed the musical instruments in the Great Exhibition. The musical instrument is voice slightly on an organ-pipe, having a flattened tube forming the lip of the instrument’s mouthpiece, and is often produced from rolled tin sheet or brass. The musical instruments that were manufactured became available from the 1840s and were manufactured in a larger quantity and the instrument spread faster because of the affordability feature of the musical instrument.

As the penny whistle was commonly seen as a toy, it has been suggested that children or street players were paid a penny by those who heard them performing with the musical instrument. Meanwhile in reality, the musical instrument was so-called because the musical instrument was costing a penny. The name tin whistle was also forged as early as the year 1825. But neither of the two name seems to be common until the 20^th century. The musical instrument became prominent in many musical traditions like Irish, American, English and Scottish traditional music. Because of the affordability of the musical instrument, the tin whistle was a prominent household musical instrument, as universal as the harmonica. In the second part of the 19^th century, some producers of the musical instruments like Barnett Samuel and Joseph Wallis also marketed the musical instruments.

The generation version of the instrument was introduced in the first part of the 20^th century, and also featured a brass tube with a lead fipple plug. The design of the musical instrument was improved slightly over the years, especially the replacement of the plastic fipple for a lead plug design.

Today most versions of the musical instrument are produced of brass tubing or nickel plated brass tubing, with a plastic mouthpiece. The next common version of the instrument is the conical sheet metal whistle with a wooden stop in the wide extreme to form the mouthpiece, the Clarke’s version of the instrument being the most prevalent. Other less common versions of the musical instrument are the all-metal whistle, the PVC whistle, the Flanna square holed whistle and the wooden version of the musical instrument.

Gaining popularity as a folk musical instrument in the early part of the 19^th century in the Celtic music revitalizations, penny whistle now perform in integral part of many folk traditions.  The musical instrument is a common starting musical instrument in Scottish traditional music, English traditional music and Irish traditional music, since they are normally cheap and the fingering systems are closely related to those on the 6-holed traditional flute. The musical instrument is a good starting musical instrument to learn the Uilleann pipe that has an analogous finger pattern, range of notes and repertoire. The musical instrument is the most prominent instrument in the Irish traditional music.

In the recent years, a good number of producers have begun the lines of high-end, hand-made whistles that can cost hundreds of dollars for a single one.

The musical instrument is tuned diatonically, which permits the instrument to be used easily in the playing of music in two major keys and their corresponding minor keys and modes. The musical instrument can be identified by the lowest note that it possess, which is the tonic of the lowest major key. Whistles are available in many various keys.

The most common version of the musical instrument can play notes in the keys of D and G major. Since the D major key is lower, the musical instrument is then called D whistle. The next common whistle tuning is a C whistle that can play notes in keys of C and F major easily. The D whistle is the most common choice of instrument for the people of Ireland and Scotland.

Though the musical instrument is essentially a diatonic musical instrument, it is still possible to get notes outside the principal major key of the musical instrument, either by half-holing or by cross-holing. Meanwhile, it is slightly difficult to correctly do the half-holing and the whistles are available in several keys, so for other keys, a player of the instrument will rather use a different whistle, keeping half-holing for accidentals.

The notes of the instrument are selected by closing and opening the holes on the body of the whistle with the fingers of the hand. The musical instrument can generate its lowest note, the tonic of a major scale, when all the holes on the instrument are closed. Successively opening the holes on the instrument from the bottom to the top manufactures the rest of the notes of the scale in sequence.

As with several woodwind musical instrument, the penny whistle’s second and higher register are gained by increasing the air velocity into tiny flue wind way. On a transverse version of the flute, this can be commonly done by narrowing the lip. Since the size and direction of the musical instrument’s wind way is stable, like that of the recorder, it is important to increase the velocity of the air stream on the instrument.

Fingering in the second register is commonly the same as in the fundamental, but alternative fingering can be employed sometimes in the higher extreme of the register to correct a flattening effect that could have been caused by higher air column velocity. Also the tonic note of the 2^nd register is often performed with the top hole of the instrument partially uncovered rather than covering all the holes as with the note of the 1^st register.

The normal range of the musical instrument is two octaves. For a D tin whistle, this includes note from the second D above the middle C to the 4^th D above middle C. it is still very possible to manufacture sound above this range, by blowing the instrument with much force.

Traditional Irish version of the tin whistle playing makes use of decorations to embellish the music, including the cuts, the strikes and the rolls, also cranns, slides, tonguing, vibrato. Some tricks can be applied to the musical instrument to perfect the sound that is being produced from the whistle. Some of the tricks are; leading tone, tone and scales.

 The traditional music from the Ireland and Scotland is by far the most common music to perform on the musical instrument, and made up of the vast majority of published scores that are good for the players of the musical instruments. While the tin whistle is very corporate in the Irish music to the point that the instrument could be called characteristic of the genre and justly common in the music of Scotland.