Noonan (left): “We all have the same notes.” Also pictured (from top) are Adam Ahern ’09, Cathy Rodriguez ’12, Cristobal Montt (a Chilean exchange student), and Brian Wohlberg ’09

It’s an unassuming instrument, the tin whistle. Models vary slightly, but the basic components remain the same: a thin tube of brass or nickel-plated brass with a plastic or metal mouthpiece, known as a fipple, and six holes. The sound is high-pitched, almost reedy. Yet as Jimmy Noonan emphasizes in nearly every meeting of his “Beginner Tin Whistle” class, when it comes to traditional Irish music, the whistle, small and light enough to fit in your pocket, is a heavyweight, with a history going back at least a thousand years. By comparison, the recorder is an upstart and imposter, he says.

For a beginning whistler, as players are called, simplicity is a big part of the instrument’s charm. As Noonan told a prospective student, “You’ll walk out of your first class and you’ll know a tune.” The initial gathering of MU 087, which met weekly in a small, spartan classroom on the third floor of Lyons Hall, was case in point. After giving the four students enrolled in the fall semester course a quick tutorial on the basics of fingering (completely cover each hole with the meaty part of the fingertip) and blowing (lightly breathe into the whistle for the low octave, blow as hard as you can for the high), Noonan introduced the class to “Skibbereen,” a slow tune about Ireland’s Great Famine. An ability to read music isn’t required for the beginner class. Indeed, although Noonan himself is an accomplished flute and tin whistle musician and teacher—two-time U.S. Western champion in both the tin whistle and the flute and a performer at the National Folk Festival—he encourages learning Irish folk music as it has traditionally been learned: by ear. “The beauty of playing by ear,” says Noonan, “is if you practice a tune every once in a while, you’ll have it forever.

The class’s first attempts at “Skibbereen” were slow and tentative (although freshman Cathy Rodriguez, a veteran flute player, had a somewhat easier time), but each rendition was clearly recognizable. “Skibbereen” is an easy stroll up and down the scale, with ample time between notes for novice fingers to find their destination. Within two weeks, Noonan’s students had it mastered.

The one-credit, pass/fail class had no exams or assignments other than to practice. “I won’t have seen you in a week,” Noonan told his students. “All I’m looking for is, who got better.” Participation was hard to avoid in the small class, and Noonan, a sprightly fast-talker with a light Irish accent, would routinely hop up from his seat at the front of the room, lean in close to whoever was playing, and inspect the crispness of the whistler’s fingering or the clarity of tone. That attention became more valuable as the semester progressed and Noonan introduced more demanding techniques, such as the use of ornaments.

Ornaments are the subtle fingering tricks that add complexity and character to a tune, and their execution separates merely proficient players from great ones. Ornaments can be relatively straightforward. A slide, for instance, is performed by gradually slipping a finger off one hole in order to shift to the next higher note, creating an audible transition. A cut involves quickly twitching the finger off and on the note being played, creating three notes in the space of one. The most complicated ornament Noonan introduced to the class is the roll. A note is rolled by first performing a cut, then quickly striking the note below it, making five notes in the space of one. “You’ll feel it when you do it right,” Noonan said, flicking Rodriguez’s striking finger for her to demonstrate the precise timing necessary for a perfect G-roll.

Noonan compares ornamenting a tune to dressing a Christmas tree. Too many ornaments on either can be tacky, but the right amount turns something familiar into something distinctive. “We all have the same notes,” Noonan says, referring to practitioners of Irish music. “Ornamentation allows a musician to put a unique stamp on a standard tune, and anyone can do it. I’ll be teaching a six-year-old, and he’ll throw something into a tune that’s really good,” Noonan says. “And then I’ll borrow it.”

In the third class, Noonan moved on to the jaunty “Leitrim Jig.” The livelier Irish dance tunes—jigs, polkas, and reels—are more challenging than airs such as “Skibbereen” in terms of both notes and pace. “Leitrim,” for instance, is played in 6/8 time, compared to the 2/4 of “Skib-bereen,” and features more complex groupings of notes and quicker transitions between low and high octaves.

“Leitrim” is the sort of song you might hear at a session, an informal coming together of musicians to play traditional Irish tunes, usually in a pub or some similarly festive setting. Noonan believes sessions are vital for a serious whistler. “You need to go to sessions to find new ideas and stay fresh,” he says, and after playing and teaching for 30 years he still regularly attends sessions and leads his own on Monday nights at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square. “If you don’t hear it and play it, you’re going to lose it,” he says.

While there is no prescription for a proper session, the good ones usually include some combination of traditional Irish instruments, such as the fiddle, the concertina, the accordion, the pipes, and, of course, the tin whistle.

The underlying purpose of MU 087 is to prepare whistlers to work with other musicians, whether in a session or a concert. For the past eight years, Noonan’s beginner whistlers and other students in the Irish studies music program, including the fiddlers (who meet around the corner in Lyons), have kicked off the annual Arts Festival with a performance. The spring semester continuation of the class features frequent collaboration with the fiddlers, as preparation. Noonan will also introduce the reel, a more complicated dance tune than the jig, and more ornaments for the songs his students already know.

Rodriguez, with two close friends who play the flute and the fiddle, has a head start when it comes to sessions. “We play together all the time,” she says. “It usually ends up with them trying to teach me tunes.” Being freshmen, playing in a dusky Irish pub isn’t an option for the trio, but they’ve settled for the next best thing: a fire exit room in the basement of Medeiros Hall. “It actually has good acoustics.”

Read more by Tim Czerwienski