Tone
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In tin whistle playing, your tone is influenced greatly by what type of whistle you are playing. Try several and compare them. Certain whistles, such as Generations, can have a nice, delicate, plaintive tone; other types, such as the Clarke whistles, are much more mellow and flute-like. Susato whistles are very loud and strong. Use this to your advantage when deciding what tunes to play - some whistles are better suited to certain types of tunes.

You can control the tone a whistle produces to a certain degree, though less so than on other instruments such as flute, fiddle, or pipes. When ending a slow tune, for example, you can let your breath trail off instead of abruptly ending. Using your breath pressure, you can make the volume somewhat louder or softer; any note will come through within a range of breath pressure, which rises with each higher note. One friend of mine, Michael Horowitz, gets a very soft, flutey tone out of a normally edgy Generation whistle by blowing into the mouthpiece at a sharp sideways angle instead of straight in.

You can control the pitch of a note by using your fingers to ever-so-slightly cover the holes below a note you are playing. Use your "dynamics" (which generally means the changes in volume and tone of your playing) to accentuate the tune. The best way to learn how this can be incorporated is to experiment, since no two whistles are alike and the techniques required differ as well.

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