Pipe (instrument) Pipe (instrument) A pipe is a tubular wind instrument in general, or various specific wind instruments. The word is an onomatopoeia, and comes from the tone which can resemble that of a bird chirping. Fipple flutes are found in many cultures around the world. Often with six holes, the shepherd's pipe is a common pastoral image. Shepherds often piped both to soothe the sheep and to amuse themselves. Modern manufactured six-hole folk pipes are referred to as pennywhistle or tin whistle. The recorder is a form of pipe, often used as a rudimentary instructional musical instrument at schools, but so
Tin whistle that the accompanying audio CD is played on a C whistle. Reading directly onto the C whistle is popular for the obvious reason that its "home key" or "name key" is the "all-natural" major key (C major). Some musicians are encouraged to learn to read directly onto one whistle, while others are taught to read directly onto another. The whistle player who wants music to read on to all whistles will need to learn the mechanics of written transposition, taking music with one key signature and rewriting it with another. Tablature notation for the tin whistle is a graphical representation