Many of the people reading this were taught to sit straight at the table. That was just etiquette. Yet, as they say, things come back around. In the case of posture and wind instruments, it comes back with a vengeance. Posture affects the quality of your tones(or notes) on your Irish Whistle. This is extremely important to understand, the difference of even half the size of your smallest finger in posture will change how your notes sound. You might need to re-learn how to sit at the dinner table, and then apply that to a chair while holding your trusty Irish Whistle, but the effort is worth it if you want the notes from your Irish Whistle to sound the best that they can.

Audio example of bad posture

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Audio example of good posture

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These two samples were played in the same room, within minutes of each other. There was no sound modification or adjusting of any type. The quality of tone is that different.

The 5 Applications of a Musical Instrument
An Instrument can be played with five different goals in mind:
1. Playing by the music – This is by far the most common type of playing, most accepted, and most respected. You’d be surprised at how many people cheer up when they recognize a song you play because you played it as it was written in sheet music or as it sounded on the radio.
2. Improvising – this is adding to an existing piece of music, it’s where more than two or three ornaments or embellishments are common in the music
3. In substitution of singing with our voice – this is the proper way to solo (least often heard – most musicians have not practiced this skill up)
4. To direct – some musicians have the skill to guide the rhythm and or pitch of the piece. Sometimes drummers aren’t drummers, they get required to guide the rhythm. Often in small groups with only one instrument which is a piano, the piano player will guide pitch, intensity, and rhythm.
5. Creating music – This is where you simply make up everything you are playing without having ever heard it in that arrangement. This is songwriting even if you never record it. If you practice enough by yourself, it will probably be somewhat unavoidable. Boredom causes you to look for something different. Since no one has ever heard these songs, don’t expect your others to always show appreciation.

Exercises for playing the Irish Whistle while in Good Posture
When applying to good posture to playing the Irish Whistle, we first aim for breath control while in good posture.

Without good breath control, we cannot sing well, therefore we must practice breath control. We must even strive for better breath control.

Our most basic control with our breathing is in our yawns when we get tired. Breath control is air moving at the best possible speed per note and maintaining that speed throughout the note. When we yawn naturally, we have an incredibly even air flow. We practice applying our yawn as naturally as possible to our playing a note on the Irish Whistle. As we do this each day, and get better at finding the best possible speed per note, we gain an even air flow that we did not possess before. It is with this exercise that we can gain enough breath control to play a silver instrument properly. It is with exercising natural breath control in our instrument that we can sing our music.

Our alternative to breath control is fighting with our instrument. Our instrument is our tool. Every good tool can be useful when we use it the best we can within it’s capabilities.

Another method of breath control is playing a note, then weakening that note with less air and then strengthening that note back to how it originally sounded. In this way, you can make sure you play notes more consistently.

Consistent notes sound better together than inconsistent notes. Consistent notes make a melody or tune or song more recognizable and easier to enjoy by others who are listening.