Thoughts on WHOAD

[ytliek]

serious lack of imagination on the board today

am I stepping in it?

[Denny]

I was teasing the two prior posters.

[Peter Duggan]

Jeez, why me?

[Denny]

different thread/forum

[Peter Duggan]

Dumbo or 'magic' flutes?

[Denny]

magic

[Katharine]

Y'all. Enable me. Or something.

Any practical reasons why a person would need more than one whistle in a particular key? (I mean practical, not just "it's cool and I want it." Keeping in mind that I don't gig or do sessions so I don't need various loudnesses or anything for that sort of thing, and everything I'm wanting is pretty inexpensive and durable [Parks Ghost {and I won't even lie: I just think it looks cool! I never got over the 80s so I love all things clear. If it had glitter, it'd be even better}, Dixon tunable polymer {I've heard good things}, Freeman Mellow Dog {the Walton I love, only better? YES!}] so it's not like I need one nice one for performances and one cheapie I don't mind tossing in a bag for general practice. I pretty much just play/practice for me, with the occasional quick thing at church or whatever, and that's it.)

I generally prefer to pick one of (whatever practical thing I have, whether it's musical instruments or pens) and get a good relationship with that one thing. It's likely that if I had several whistles, I would either pick the one I liked best and the rest would be largely ignored, or I'd be practicing the same thing over again on each one so I'd feel like they were all getting used!

I mean, I suppose I could get one of each and eventually re-sell any I didn't like so much, but what if I liked them all?

[Denny]

the individual nuances of them lend some to be more adaptable to certain tunes than others

[maki]

Why be practical?
I grew up in the '70 were long haired freaks danced in the moonlight.

[Katharine]

Why be practical?
I grew up in the '70 were long haired freaks danced in the moonlight.

Oh. Was that supposed to end with the 70s? Oops. Do I get a pass since I wasn't around yet?

(I just don't see a point in great whistles sitting around rarely being played!)

[Denny]

of course ya get a pass!

If we hadn't had children ya wouldn't be here at all!


I remember dancing in the 70s...

I'm reasonably sure that I was dancing in the 60s

[Dreamer]

I think that most musicians suffer from some version of WHOAD. I started learning guitar before I started learning whistle and when I read about WHOAD I laughed and said that it sounded like just another version of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). I'm not making this up, take a look. http://www.gearacquisitionsyndrome.com/
I also find that WHOAD/GAS is cured once you run out of money.

[Hotblack]

I also find that WHOAD/GAS is cured once you run out of money.

I don't I just find it even more frustrating that I can't acquire what I want

[Tor]

Visiting a slightly old thread again..
I'm very new at whistle (and I only have 8 whistles, and only 2 more on order). But I've been playing guitar since I was a boy, and I've had a lot of opportunity to study GAS and its causes. For me GAS has gone through different phases, and I think I see a pattern. (For the first 25 years or so I actually only had one guitar at the time.. because I somehow believed you could only have one at the time. And so did my guitar-playing friends - they wouldn't buy a new guitar without at the same time contemplating on how to sell the old one. This was before the Internet, which I think changed everything (forums, discussion groups, etc.etc)).

Then suddenly (after being exposed to guitar discussion groups on the good old Usenet) I realized that yes, you can have more than one guitar.. it's not illegal or anything. And I started acquiring them, until I was well covered. During this phase I figured out why I needed all these guitars. It's simply because I'm not a particularly good guitarist, and my repertoire, as it were, is, or has been fairly limited. So I would get fed up at my own playing. The way to make it interesting again and keep playing was to play another guitar, so I would from time to time switch from 6-string acoustic to 12-string acoustic, and then to nylon string classical guitar, then to a small-body guitar with its Robert Johnson sound, or a little bit of electric guitar, and so on. So I would play a guitar for some time, maybe a few days max, and then switch to another type of guitar, with the occasional dip into another guitar during the same evening if I started to bore myself with my playing. Which I did often. So, sound change, and size change, and all that. Some guitars preferred to be played in a different style, which also helped.

It then turned out that I was incredibly lucky with one of the guitars I acquired during this phase, it's an extremely good guitar with fantastic sound that is at the same time very easy to play. This great guitar helped me to improve as a guitarist, so that my own playing didn't bore me as quickly. I'm slow at this, when I had played for 30 years I started to approach what some other people I know learned after a couple of years.. but so be it! And in fact the different styles needed for some of the guitars (some could only be played fingerstyle) also improved my playing, after a while.

And here's the thing: Now that I've got about 40 years of guitar playing behind me I have slowly gotten to the point where I don't bore myself so easily with my limited playing, which means that I can now play the same guitar for long periods without getting bored. So now I'm down to playing only two guitars almost exclusively. Which fits well with the theory I developed much earlier: That good musicians can do fine with just a few instruments[*], the rest of us may need many, simply to use the different instruments (sound, style) as basis for the necessary variety we need to make it interesting to continue playing. The good musicians can manage that variation by their own musical competance.

Now, whistles are a bit different mainly due to the existence of cheap instruments (particularly compared to guitars, not to mention e.g. double basses and their poor owners): With whistles you can literally grab a handful of them[**] when you pass the counter, just as when they put bars of chocolate near the supermarket check-outs so that you're getting tempted as you wait in line. Well, there's all those keys we need too.. (obviously I have several sets of diatonic harmonicas in all the keys as well. And ukuleles. Did I mention UAS? They come in different sizes, you know).

The expensive whistles are expensive, of course, that is, until you start looking at what GAS costs.. suddenly it's hard to resist not to add yourself to the waiting list for e.g. an Oz, simply because even that price would only get you a no-good POS acoustic beach guitar, or possibly a just barely useful Ibanez semi-acoustic on a Saturday special deal. So, better not compare with GAS and what it costs.. GAS is mainly over for me anyway, due to the theory of mine as to why it was needed at some point in time.

-Tor
[*] There are exceptions to the 'good musicians don't need as many instruments' rule, and that is some of those musicians with lots of money and/or endorsing deals: Joe Bonamassa is rumoured to own 285 guitars, and I read an interview with the guitarist of Manic Street Preachers where he confessed to owning about 100 guitars. He was renting a storehouse just to have a place to keep them all.
[**] There's an additional reason for just grabbing whistles when passing the counter in the music shop.. can't keep trying them in the shop first, that's unhygienic you know. so better buy a handful still with their shrink-wrap-covered whistle heads and test them at home instead! Then grab a few more the next time..

Happy whistling! And it _is_ nice to switch to the mellow Clarke after playing some other whistle until that one started to tire on you.. let's see now, has that Bluebird arrived yet?

[ghicken]

You and I are very similar Tor, in that I am 53 years old and have played guitar since I was 10, and I have gone through various levels of GAS. I haven't owned one electric for more than 15 years and I've owned an acoustic longer than that because I've forgotten about it. Right now I own 9 guitars. The reason I believe is that I am not satisfied with a guitar I've bought. Maybe the right one is out there - I can't afford the GAS.

I've been playing the tin whistle for almost a month. I have 9 whistles (only 4 are D whistles.) I am so satisfied with my set of Freeman Tweaked Brass Generations that I only have a desire to get good at playing (or maybe I'm happy with 9 of anything.) Maybe I'll get to a point where I'll want more. I'm amazed at the level of player who chooses the inexpensive whistle. I know that if I get a chance to buy a Sindt or a similar whistle I may get blown away to the point where I won't look back. But I still can't believe how I can afford to feed a WhOA disorder when I know that I'd have to spend a lot more to buy a good guitar (or flute, which I'm also studying.) I plan to buy more whistles in the future but my WhOAD has settled down for the moment. But my LOTCAFD (Lurking on the Chiff and Fipple Forum Disorder) hasn't yet.

Gary