Tin whistle Tin whistle The tin whistle, also called the penny whistle, English flageolet, Scottish penny whistle, tin flageolet, Irish whistle, Belfast Hornpipe, (or simply ) and Clarke London Flageolet is a simple, six-holed woodwind instrument. It is a type of fipple flute, putting it in the same class as the recorder, Native American flute, and other woodwind instruments that meet such criteria. A tin whistle player is called a tin whistler or simply a whistler. The tin whistle is closely associated with Celtic music. The tin whistle in its modern form is from a wider family of fipple flutes which have
Tin whistle tonic note of the first register; this makes it harder to accidentally drop into the first register and helps to correct pitch. Recorders perform this by "pinching" open the dorsal thumb hole. Various other notes (relatively flat or sharp with respect to those of the major scale) can be accessed by "cross fingering" techniques, and all the notes (except the lowest of each octave/register) can be flattened by "half holing". Perhaps the most effective and most used cross fingering is that which produces a flattened form of the seventh note (B instead of B on a C whistle, for example,