My Freeman Blackbird arrived today !

[ggiles]

It was a pleasant surprise to see my new blackbird in the mailbox when I arrived home from work. I was hoping I would see it before the Easter long weekend!
So I mentioned in my introduction post that I would let people know my thoughts on this whistle as a beginner....

The whistle was well packaged in a roll of bubble wrap within a strong cardboard tube and fit perfectly in my mailbox.
It is quite different from my Walton in a number of ways. First off you notice that the Blackbird has back pressure where as the Walton has little to none. I like the back pressure ... for me it provides more feed back and control. The lower octave is easy to overblow but if you start to think about your embrosure it is easy to overcome and gives you more control in both octaves.
This also, for me, results in longer goes between breaths which is great.
The sound is quite sweet with the higher octave much easier for me to hit and less airy more pure. I still have lots of work to do to maintain the high notes for any length of time. I can hit them all for a quick chirp but I find that I fall between octaves if I try and hold a note but that is why I'm a beginner.
I am very pleased with this whistle and it will really help me maintain my interest with learning to play tin whistle and help me progress from a rank beginner to who knows where.
Great whistle Jerry!!

[ecohawk]

ggiles,

You've got a nice instrument there as you know. One of the exercises I did when I was starting out was to play scales and intervals but I would hold each note for 5-10 seconds while playing softly then gradually increase my breath pressure until the note changed to the second octave. Then I would occasionally reverse the order and hold the note from the octave break while gradually decreasing pressure until the note disappeared. This quickly teaches you the "breakpoint" for each note. Some notes will vary from others in the amount of pressure they will take but this exercise will be a great help in learning the characteristics of your whistle. The final test is to play a tune the same way. Try something like Foggy Dew or An Roisin Dubh but use an extra slow tempo and practice varying your breath pressure on each note. You will experience some interesting ornamentation possibilities like fading notes in and out and certain overtones will develop which are really nice additions to many tunes.

good luck,
ecohawk

[ggiles]

Thanks ecohawk for the advise ... I'll give that a try.