Play One on TV

I suffer from a terrible disease known as WhOA. Now, before you go searching for a telethon or scrambling for WebMD, know that this stands for Whistle Obsessive Acquisition Disorder. This disease was first identified by Dale Wisely, proprietor of the definitive site for Internet tinwhistle journalism at Chiff and Fipple.

In other words, I play the Irish tinwhistle. In order to play a tinwhistle, one must actually own one, or at least have a friend who doesn’t mind you slathering over his instruments. I own several. As in lots and lots. At last count, I own twenty-four tinwhistles in various shapes, sizes, keys, and colors.

Why this obsession with the Irish tinwhistle? Blame it on Riverdance.

For those of you who had their artistic heads stuck in the sand for most of the last decade, Riverdance is a dancing, singing, and musical stage phenomenon that has its humble beginnings in a seven-minute intermission piece performed at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. It has since grown into an extravaganza that mixes Irish, Spanish, Russian, and American forms of folk music into an incredible force of art and motion. I was first introduced to the show in 1997 via my good friend, David. David is a collector of the off-beat, with the strangest and most eclectic mix of artsy-type videos ever to grace the Miscellaneous section of the video store. He loaned the video to me, thinking I might get a kick or two out of it.

He had no idea.

Up until that moment, everything I knew about Irish music could have been summed up in three minutes of Danny Kaye singing “Oh Danny Boy.” That all changed by the conclusion of the first number (Reel Around the Sun) I was enthralled. I was enraptured. I had honestly never seen or heard anything like this before. Like most of the world, I instantly fell in love with Riverdance.

However, while ladies across the continent were swooning to the boyish charms and non-boyish tight pants of lead dancer Michael Flately, I was intently focused on one of the supporting cast members. It was not a dancer, singer, or musician. I was zeroed in on one of the instruments. It had a haunting, mournful sound, and its notes figuratively carried themselves like audible smoke across the opening prologue.

It was a low whistle. I had to have one.

A little background on the instrument itself: The low whistle is a low-register variant of an ancient instrument known as the Irish tinwhistle. The tinwhistle is a simple flute with six holes and a bladed sounding device on the end known as the fipple (which isn’t nearly as naughty as it sounds). This instrument became more recognizable to the average person when it was featured in the soundtrack of the movie Titanic, launching it to the top of the list of “most abused instruments in New Age music”, right behind the sitar and wind chime.

In my earlier years, I had toyed briefly with playing the recorder, darling of the medieval faire crowd. I quickly learned that ten repetitions of Scaraborough Fair does not a repertoire make, so I shelved my plastic Yamaha alto and got on with my life.

And then came the Riverdance, and the obsession began anew.

My bubble was briefly burst when I learned that the entry-level price of the typical low whistle was in the hundreds of dollars. While this didn’t seem at all excessive for a musical instrument, it did seem excessive for a personal whim. However, in my research, I learned that the low whistle was simply a inexpensive tinwhistle taken to its logical Freudian conclusion. Searching for this root instrument, I ended up purchasing a Clarke tinwhistle at the local music shop for around ten bucks.

You know the phrase, “it isn’t as easy as it looks?” After about a month of practice, I had managed to acquire a sound that would wait ten, maybe fifteen, minutes before peeling the paint off the walls. Another appropriate phrase would have been, “Kids, don’t try this at home.”

However, issues over propriety, good taste, and personal embarrassment have never been of a major concern to me (this coming from a man who dressed his entire family in Star Trek uniforms for Halloween). I persevered in my study of the art of the tinwhistle, which I learned was also called the “Irish flageolet” (another not-really-naughty term that I use when I want to shock my mother). Soon, my vocabulary was enhanced by additional terms like reel, air, hammer-on, slide, and jig. Note: a jig is a form of dance, not to be confused with jigger, a liquid measuring device that can meter out the amount of alcohol necessary to drown out the noise I make.

Whistles play on a diatonic instead of a chromatic scale (i.e., they can play natural notes just fine but cannot manage sharps or flats, making them useless for playing the collected works of Bjork). It is therefore a requirement of the serious whistler to own more than one whistle, each keyed to a different scale. Naturally, I had to have them all. It was in this manner that I came down with the aforementioned case of WhOA.

True students of any instrument like to collect them. Jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson is said to have several trumpet and cornet variants in his house. Being a serious student of the Irish whistle (serious as in “you can’t be serious!”), I could hardly settle for a mere collection of keys, and at five to ten dollars a pop, I don’t have to. Thanks to the Internet and credit card companies with poor lending judgement, I can have them all.

There’s Generations. Shaws. Waltons. Clares. Clarkes, in two versions - original and Sweetone. Oaks. Acorns. Chieftans. Dixons. Grab a random word from the dictionary, and chances are good there’s a whistle attached to it. I mentioned earlier that I own twenty-four, and all of these suckers are within easy reach. I am the Irish musician’s equivalent of an NRA gun enthusiast. I have even managed to acquire the granddaddy that started this sick obsession - a real, honest-to-gosh low whistle. For those that care about these things, it’s a Tony Dixon Low-D Tuneable PVC.

This journey has not been without its costs. My wife and child no longer bring up the whistle in ordinary conversation for fear of launching me on a “tirade”. Friends have similarly learned not to mention “Riverdance”, “Celtic Music”, or “Michael Flately is an insufferably pretentious prat” in my hearing. I constantly evaluate the hum from television sets and computer monitors, mentally computing whether or not it would mesh better with my D-key Walton Mellow or my E-flat Generation Nickel. I own the only dog on the planet who will run away when whistled at.

I even found a website that proffered lessons on the art of, among other things, the construction of low whistles out of copper plumbing pipe. Heedless of the fact that my last shop project was a bookshelf that would stand only when propped in the corner, I went to the local Home Depot and began blowing in the ends of various grades and types of copper pipe.

After being banned from said Home Depot, I went to the local Lowes, purchased pipe, pipe cutters, metal-cutting drill bits, and a metalworking vise. Sixteen blood-soaked hours later, I held in my slippery hands a low whistle that could, in an emergency, be used to murder Colonel Mustard. Thanks to all the copper shavings in the garage, my property should be safe from bare-foot thieves for the next twenty years.

Now, don’t get the idea that I think I’m any good. My cat is, after all, nervous for good reason. However, something deep inside drives me onward toward whistle greatness. My CD rack and bookshelf is peppered with whistle tutorials from gentlemen with first names like Paddy, Kelly, and Seamus. I play the silly things at least a few minutes every day. I keep one in the car so I can twiddle out a tune at stoplights. During this time of the year, I don’t sing Christmas carols - I play them.

The obsession has begun to bleed into other areas not directly related to blowing into the end of a tube. My musical tastes have branched into all aspects of Celtic influence, including session music, Celtic-jazz fusion, Enya, and the Uilleann Pipes (the only variant of the bagpipes guaranteed not to forcibly remove your ears from your head). I have mentally shifted my dream-vacation destination from Australia to Ireland. At my office, I volunteer to take the Irish tech support calls just because I can’t get enough of that accent (just imagine Andrea Corr saying “the bloody server just went down” and you’ll get the idea).

In short, I’m a lost cause, and it’s all the fault of a bunch of clog-stepping Irish dancers in black leggings and frizzy hairdos. The only benefit is that I am the only office worker alive who can say “I’m going to blow my brains out at lunch” and not have his coworkers diving for the floor.

However, do me a favor. If you ever feel inclined to show me a video of the latest musical fad featuring wailing sherpas from India, just burn the tape instead. My wife will thank you.