Care and Feeding of the Copper Pennywhistle

• If you have a lacquered pennywhistle, it should stay shiny without much help, unless the lacquer is chipped or worn through. You can remove fingerprints (or other evidence) by wiping the whistle with a soft cloth.

• Uncoated copper will naturally darken with exposure to air and finger oils. Personally, I like the way this looks. However, if you want to keep your uncoated whistle shiny, you can use a silver polishing cloth or very fine steel wool. To make the shine last more than a day or so, you can apply furniture wax, car wax or spray lacquer (which is what I do for the whistles I sell). Be sure to keep these nasty compounds away from the mouthpiece.

• Copper pennywhistles are quite a bit more durable than thin steel or brass whistles. If you accidently sit on one you are likely to do more damage to yourself than to the whistle. However, you can scratch or dent the whistle if you bang it repeatedly on something hard like a rock or metal railing (yes, in a fit of rhythmic frenzy, I have done this).

Tuning and Tone

• You can tune the whistle by sliding the mouthpiece (fipple) in or out. Sliding it out makes the whistle flatter. Pushing it in makes the whistle sharper.

• When the whistle is cold, it will tend to play flat. However, if you rub it with your hands or blow through it for a few seconds, it will warm up quickly, and reach normal tuning.

• When you play a whistle on a cold or humid day, condensation sometimes forms inside the fipple. This can make the whistle play very softly or stop playing altogether. The same thing can happen if too much saliva collects in the fipple. If this happens, just blow hard into the fipple hole or mouthpiece while covering the fipple hole with your hand.

• You may get a sweeter, less "breathy" tone out of the whistle if you dip the fipple in water or other liquid before playing it. However, if you soak the fipple too long or too often, the wood in the fipple might crack. Caveat emptor.

• Your basic whistle is tuned to a single key (D is most commoon in traditional Celtic music). This means it can easily play seven notes in each octave. However, most "orchestral" instruments can play twelve notes in each octave. By selecting among these notes, a classically trained musician can play in any key of the western musical scale.

  If you want to play other keys on a whistle, you have two choices:

  • Buy another pennywhistle tuned to a different key. This is relatively painless since pennywhistles are so cheap compared to other instruments.

  • Use more complicated fingerings.
    For example, the figure at left shows several possible fingerings for C natural. Using one of these fingerings, you can play a D whistle in the key of G (another common key for Celtic music).