Pennywhistle

Let's pretend it was a serious thread and start again from here.

So is it still the one instrument everybody learns in high school ?

It WAS meant as a serious thread! whether it was hijacked and turned into a silly thread is another matter

It's a good instrument to play in front of a pc as it doesn't take up room like my guitar and i like to use it to arrange melodies for my music. and you never have to tune it

we don't learn it in high school here, or we didn't when i was at school...we had to learn the descant recorder

Originally posted by raggety and you never have to tune it

"Never having to" and "not being able to" are two different things.

Never played one myself, but I was told this by an English traditional folk musician:

The penny whistle is one of only two instruments ever invented in England. At the time (late 18th C, IIRC) wooden whistles were common, and there was a particular farmer who played the whistle and kept it in his back pocket. Unforunately he kept sitting on it and breaking it, so one day he had the bright idea to go to his local smithy and have one cast out of tin. After a bit of hard work by the smithy, the whistle worked properly and didn't break. A few years later, the farmer in question was made homeless (I'm not entirely sure why). Anyway, he wen't to the smithy, had himself cast as many tin whistles as he could fit in his cart/wheelbarrow/whatever, and went travelling the countries and selling them for a penny each. Mostly, he sold them to workers from Ireland helping build roads (and later railroads+canals) across the UK. They were then taken back by the Irish to Ireland, where they gradually grew more popular.

The only other intrument invented in England is the english concertina.

Pretty depressing, really!

Yeh that was the guy Robert Clarke of Clarke tinwhistles.

http://www.clarke-tin-whistle.com/history.html

i think we English have always been a more literary than a musical race of people. so perhaps that explains why we have made so few instruments