Whistles: Larry's Low Whistle

I mentioned earlier that Bardic Circle is a beginner-friendly session. Here's a shining example: Larry Shicks, one of the guys from that session, showed up one day and told me he'd made me a whistle. So I bought him a pint, which seemed like a good way to say thank you. That's it on the right, and there's a close-up of the fipple at the end of this post. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

The whistle is a low D made of PVC, with a wooden fipple. Note the offset finger holes and decorative paint. It's pretty quiet, requires a good bit of air, and has very little back pressure. The sound is reminiscent of a pipe organ or pan pipe.

I'm having a somewhat tough time getting a great tone out of it consistently. This is my first low whistle, so it could be just my own inexperience. The air requirements and back pressure are very different from my soprano whistles. Reaching the holes is no problem; standard grip works better for me than piper's grip, though. The only thing I have a hard time doing is keeping my bottom hand pinkie on the whistle.

Seisiún: Slow Session

I went to a new (for me) session yesterday. It's a slow session, and very different from Bardic Circle, the other session I attend.

Bardic Circle started life as a beginner's session and is still very beginner-friendly, but many if not most of the regulars have now been playing together for several years, have a pretty wide repertoire, and the tunes are not generally played slowly. I spend most of my time at Bardic Circle sessions listening instead of playing, which doesn't bother me at all.

At this session, however, everyone is studying the same 20 or so tunes, and I happened to know six or seven of them. The group played, in general, much slower than Bardic Circle. We also did some ear learning exercises, so I ended up playing more than I listened. I'm going to work on learning some of the other tunes that group plays.

Overall it was a nice experience.

Seisiún: Sessions at the 2005 Dublin Irish Festival

The photo above is my daughter dancing in the session tent. She loves Celtic music. She walked into the middle of the session and was leaning in close to the musicians to get a good look. Stuart, the fiddler with the green shirt, said to her, "You know, this is dance music. You could dance..." She did, and for the rest of the festival she was asking me, "Let's find more dance music!"

For the most part my whistling skills were too weak to keep up with the session. But I made a point of sitting down and playing when the session tent was empty or when there were only one or two people there, to keep things going.

Bardic Circle session playing at the Emerald Isle stage. I sat in for one tune, but I had my daughter with me on Sunday and it was kind of difficult to play with her crawling all over me!

The session tent again.

Seisiún: Bardic Circle at Amore Pizza

Bardic Circle session will be playing at Amore Pizza in Westerville, OH, on Thursday 26 May from around 7:00 p.m. through 11:00 or so. Amore is on County Line Road at the intersection of Sunbury road. The full address is:

Amore Restaurant
1186 County Line Rd
Westerville, Ohio
43081
[Click here for a map.]

If you don't care to play, come enjoy the food and music!