This site is here as a forum for tinwhistle players to post and share tunes. (Tinwhistle includes instruments made of a variety of materials from plastic to metal and wood and are defined as "end-blown fipple flutes." They can cost from $4 to over $300. They are more commonly played in traditional Irish music, but are not limited to it. In case the current illustration does not contain the instrument, it is simply a 6-holed tube with a mouth piece on the end similar to a coach's whistle.) Most of the music posted on the site is traditional Irish, but there is a variety that goes far beyond that tradition. Click on the tune categories at upper left (Jigs, Reels, etc) or jump to the Newspage for the most recent additions.

Who we are

Special thanks to all those that support the site by sending in their tunes to share with the community. Contributions have come in from many countries around the world. I recall that people from Australia, Philippines, Singapore, England, Ireland, Spain, Argentina, Canada, and the US have submitted music. (Sorry if I've overlooked your country. Let me know.) Most contributors are members of the Chiff & Fipple message board, which is a subsidiary of the multinational megalithic tinwhistle consortium, Chiff and Fipple, managed and manipulated by the undisputed king of poststructural internet tinwhistle journalists, Dale Wisely. Dale, in turn, looks for guidance from, and is intermediary for the human race, to an alien race he calls The Crystal People. (Don't disbelieve everything you read on the web.)

How to participate

You need to get a recording of yourself however you like: tape recorder, minidisc player, mp3 player, or least favorite: plug mic into mic jack in computer sound card. (Going directly to the computer seems to add the most extraneous noise.) You need a connection from your recording device, usually 1/8" plug such as you'd need for small headphones going from the line out of your device to the line in of your computer sound card. You'll have software that will record at least 1 minute of recording. You can download various shareware programs, such as goldwave, which will allow you to record more and edit besides. Goldwave will let you save your sound as an mp3 or about 15 other formats. At this point you have a saved file you can play on your computer. You can burn that to a cd or email it as an attachment to be uploaded to my site or upload it to your own.

If you would like to post a tune to the site, create an mp3 file of a recording of yourself playing a tune on the whistle. (We've also posted tunes played on other instruments. If it's on whistle, it doesn't need to be exclusively celtic-style.) The audience is basically whistle and/or celtic oriented. Email a file attachment to me at:
whistletunes@hotmail.com (Tony Higgins)
Label the file with the tune name and your name.
Include in the email note: your name (or fake name), the name of the tune or tune set, what make/brand/key of instrument, any brief comments you would like included on the news page. If you don't want your email address linked to your name, tell me. We claim no rights to your submissions except to post them on the site and remove them if we run low on space. I'll remove any mp3 of yours at your request at any time.

Rules

Our loosly enforced rules: Anything on the whistle, celtic tunes on any instrument, any folk/traditional tune on a suitable folk instrument. Copyrighted music that you don't have permission to use is disallowed. Remember who the audience is; don't expect to see your electric punk garage band file make it onto the site.

Any playing style, musical taste, whistle preference, skill level, etc. is fine. There is no judging of talent or skill. Ideally, we would like beginners to feel comfortable sharing and not worry about matching up to more experienced players.

How to get your music online

All clips will be in mp3 format to conserve space. I check the compression rate and resave to Layer 3 16000Hz mono 48bps. This preserves decent sound quality and keeps file size reasonable. Length of file in time will create a larger file. That is fine and no problem. Submissions usually run under 3minutes, but exceeding that is okay. We are trying to keep file sizes under 800kb. I have occasionally run files through a filter to increase sound volume, and rarely, to filter out excessive static or trim off excess silence at the end or beginning. Feel free to express your concerns when you send a file. If you need help with how to make an mp3 file, or how to attatch one to an email, feel free to email me questions, and I will happily give you information on audio recording software/freeware, mp3 authoring freeware and walk you through attatching a file. These questions are glady answered on the Chiff&Fipple message board, as well. An option is to put your file on your own website and send me the url. Realize that larger format files give some people trouble when they try to listen to them.

Troubleshooting sound

If you have trouble listening to a tune (it skips/repeats a 1/2 second interval), you can right click on a link, choose "save target as," wait a moment for it to do its thing, then download the tune to your harddrive before you listen. You can listen to a tune you downloaded while you are downloading another to save time. If the link seems to be fouled up, post a message on the board or email me.

Other contributions

If you would like to submit a suitable jpg graphic to grace the top of the page, email it to me. A whistle or celtic theme would work, but I don't want to limit your imagination or creativity. We can keep the image up (with credit to the artist and link, if you like) for at least a month. If there are many submissions, maybe we'll start a gallery. Keep it to about 30kb and about the size of the current image.

Original artwork by: Tony Higgins

This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit here.

Raft trip

Paintings

House photos