r/tinwhistle

Context: I'm 39 y/o, playing since February 2025. Learning by myself

My first whistle was a Walton Mellow D. As expected, like the Feadogs and Generations, it's a perfectly fine whistle for beginners: easy blowing, pretty forgiving, not really in tune and is not tuneable.

After about a year I bough a second hand MK Midgie, which is fantastic and became my main whistle. It is much harder blowing and requires more focus and accuracy of breath control, but it just gives you so much more. The Walton was relegated to be my travel whistle.

A few days ago I got my hands on a Phil Hardy's Busker. It's really really good, with great craftsmanship, good intonation, and powerful sound. However it is prohibitively loud. Absolutely non-starter for indoors playing, and even outdoors I can't practice w/o drawing way too much attention than I'd like.

After two days of trying to tame that Busker, I find myself drawn back to playing my Walton, of all things. Suddenly I'm re-discovering the joy of effortless playing, not needing any tonguing to start even the highest notes, the classic chiffy sound, the forgiving nature, and being able to not think about sound production much at all thus having more brainspace for phrasing and ornaments. Honestly don't feel like picking up my beloved Midgie. I just want a chill whistle.

Here are my questions:

1. Have you ppl experienced this before? Do you ever find yourselves attracted to your simpler whistles over the fancier ones?

2. Eventually I'll start playing with other ppl. When that happnes, what commonly available whistles can give the same qualities of a classic pennywhistle (especially being an easy blower) but with good tuning and a tuning slide?

TNX in advance

I’ve been playing for a little while but have never seen it before.

Im looking to get a whistle that is a bit less sketchy to play than a 10 dollar clarke tapered, as after a month or so of playing it is quickly getting inadequate, and in my price range of 50ish dollars, I could get a freeman mellow dog or one of the lower end dixons. thoughts on the differences between them? after hearing some recordings i do quite like the mellow dog's sound (D tuned is what im going for)

Silly me—I found a list of over 900 songs for tin whistles and then lost the source when trying to purchase. Can anyone help me locate this again? Here is a description: “a main PDF Ebook of Irish and folk songs, which also includes a separate ebook of Christmas songs and carols, a Free Ebook of Folk and Oldies, a Pop Songs Ebook, and a collection of Traditional tunes.” The list has no reference for the source. This looks really nice and I’d like to buy a few of these ebooks. Thanks!