@irishdaily Absolutely love this! 🙌😍 These two talented Irish girls are rocking the tin whistle! 🎶 Can you play it too? 😊 Tag a friend who could nail this tune! ☘️🎵 #trad #tinwhistle #irish . 📸👉 @Ciara McCrystal & @niamh mccrystal 🙌💚😍 #irishdaily #tiktokoftheday #irelandgottalent #tyrone #northernireland ♬ original sound - Irish Daily

Chloë finds a hobby: I swagger into class expecting to become the Miles Davis of the tin whistle.

Often pushed on primary school children as an ‘easy’ option, the instrument is anything but, Chloë McPolin discovers as she begins her search for a new hobby on the wrong note

The screeching sound of the tin whistle, badly played, is a hallmark of the Irish primary school experience. Children without a musical bone in their body are coerced into learing what is seen as an ‘easy’ instrument. To kick off my first week in my quest to find a hobby, I saw no more fitting opportunity than to pick it up this humble instru­ment. Although – spoiler alert – there was absolutely nothing humble about it, other than its humbling of me.

I don’t have the greatest musical track record. When I was six, I got kicked out of my cello lessons for being too disruptive and distracting everyone from their four and twenty blackbirds.

I used to scoff at the tin whistle, thinking it was a stopgap between nothing and an ‘actual instrument’. But with the rise in Irish young people wanting to tap into their patriotic side, wearing Pellador jumpers and listening to Kneecap, I thought that the tin whistle might make me cool and amp up my ‘Irishness’ when I go abroad. I also saw that dur­ing the 2024 Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, 2,516 people broke the record for the largest crowd to play the tin whistle for five continuous minutes. Surely that’s reason enough to pick it up.

The lovely staff at Waltons New School of Music on South Great George’s Street in Dublin were very helpful. The beginners’ tin whistle classes are €220 for 10 weeks, which in my book is good value. Private lessons are also available, but I prefer to hide behind my peers.

The man on the desk armed me with my weapon of mass destruction (the tin whistle) and I was ready to go. I had a strange cockiness about me, a swagger. I really believed I would be the exception to the rule and become the Miles Davis of the tin whistle. Which is ironic because I somehow came away from primary school unscathed by the instrument (no doubt to my neigh­bours’ relief ).

ACCOMPLISHED PLAYER

I walked into the classroom and was greeted by my teacher, the lovely Katie, an accomplished flute and tin whistle player from Co Laois. She began learning music from the age of seven with her local Comhaltas branch and has quite the resumé. I didn’t detect an ounce of judgment from her, maybe because she didn’t know how badly I would make her ears bleed later.

I was provided with all the notes on a printout, and at first it looked like child’s play. Katie explained how the notes are variations of five, holding different figers over the holes. I thought I had it in the bag straight off. But I didn’t realise I could make what looks like an easy instrument sound like an ancient torture method.

Katie prompted the group to go through a piece they had been assigned from last week and I felt a pang of panic, similar to how you felt when you hadn’t done did your French homework and the teacher would ask you to read out your answer. It felt, I imagine, vaguely like an AA meeting, with each person consciously prefacing their performance by saying that they weren’t any good With gentle encouragement, they blurted out the tune. Not one of them made a mistake. When it came to me, the realisation dawned that I was exempt because I was the new girl. I let out a sigh of relief.

Katie wrote the next piece that we would be learning on the whiteboard, a polka. One of my classmates exclaimed “Polka means fast! Uh oh!” ‘Uh oh’ is right. I tried my hand at it, but the polka wasn’t having me. The tin whistle slid from my grasp every time I tried a new note.

The class itself was demonstration-orientated: Katie the pied piper would play a song and we would follow suit. I shyly blew into the tin whistle and the noise that it came out sounded like a kazoo.

The class itself was demonstration-orientated: Katie the pied piper would play a song and we would follow suit. I shyly blew into the tin whistle and the noise that it came out sounded like a kazoo.

I played alongside my classmates, derailing the entire class as I continuously got the notes wrong. I don’t know how the guy beside me didn’t ask for me to be thrown out. I anxiously giggled the entire way through, cracking jokes to distract from my terrible playing. I stared into the middle distance, I twiddled my thumbs and it took me right back to my primary school cello lessons.

At this moment it came to me: the reason I have no hobbies is because I am not prepared to make a total eejit of myself. I have always tried to cushion myself from the embarrassment of it all by not fully immersing myself in the experience.

About halfway through the lesson, decided I would give it socks. Poor Katie didn’t know what she was in for. My high D note nearly knocked everyone off their chairs. Despite this, everyone was extremely kind and we shared many laughs at how poor my playing was, so I had no reason to feel the way I felt.

Even so, I don’t think the tin whistle is the hobby for me. As soon as I picked up the instrument, I wanted to be as skilled as Katie. But I soon realised that would require years of hard graft that I’m not willing to put in. I want to be an immensely talented fairweather tin whistle player. Is that too much to ask?

Everyone in the class had huge aspirations for their tin whistle career, one wanting to take up the uileann pipes and another wanting to play in a fleadh.

It all seems like too much of an uphill battle, especially when I was lukewarm about the instrument to start with. I think for my next hobby I am going to try something that requires a little less commitment, something that doesn’t require incessant practice but is still within the musical vein. Something that I can pick up and put down once a week without my progress deteriorating...

Enjoy Spotify's Tin whistle favourites Playlist

A playlist for players and lovers of the tin whistle

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