A second try
October 8th, 2007 by Michael
Several years passed, during which my whistles sat untouched in a drawer, and then in late 2005 I decided that I wanted to give playing the whistle another try. In an effort to give myself some extra motivation, I let it be known that there was a particular whistle that I’d like to get as a Christmas gift (one of Jerry Freeman’s tweaked Sweetone Ds), figuring that having someone else invested in my progress might keep me focused longer.
That Christmas a friend of mine did indeed get me the very whistle I’d wanted, so I picked up a copy of The Clarke Tin Whistle Book by Bill Ochs and launched back into playing. Things went better this time around, probably in part because I had already learned the basics once before. I was able to keep at it, with the occasional lapse here and there, and I got far enough into things to want to purchase a couple more inexpensive whistles (a tweaked Generation Bb and a tweaked Waltons Mellow D) and even attend the 2006 Chiff & Fipple Northeast Whistle Gathering at Ralph Sweet‘s place. I was hardly a master of the tin whistle, but I was having a good time with it, which was sort of the whole point.
And then I decided that, since I’d managed to stick with learning the whistle long enough to get somewhere, I wanted to learn to play the flute too….
