Our Story

The Beginning

I was born in 1960 and I grew up in Blackrock, Co. Dublin. The teacher I had in fourth class put a lot of effort into teaching songs and music. He would play the melodies on an unusual little instrument. It was like a miniature piano accordion that you blew by mouth. He sent us all off to the local record shop to buy tin whistles. They were cylindrical whistles in the key of C that came in a variety of colours. I am pretty sure they were aluminium with plastic fipples because the tube was a fairly heavy gauge but they weren't heavy. He taught us all to play "Fáinne Geal an Lae"on these whistles. One day a boy in my class, who was a bit more musical than most of us, arrived to school with a Generation D tin whistle. The teacher asked him to stand in front of the class and play it for us. I was enthralled. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. Compared to the woolly old C whistles we had, it sparkled. I still wonder if I heard that whistle today, would I be as wonder struck?

The Ó Briain Improved Tin Whistle:

The ‘Improved’ whistle came about in the early 1980s. Myself and three others had formed a traditional Irish music group, “Devenish”. We decided to record a demo tape and one of the tracks was a song. Before the last verse there was an instrumental verse which used three tin whistles, one playing the melody and the other two playing harmonies. It sounded fine when we were rehearsing, but recording studios have a way of magnifying defects in instruments. Long story short, we abandoned the recording of that track.

At this time, I was also working for a man who built pipe organs, so I had some experience of adjusting flue pipes and of getting things in tune. With some filing and sticky tape and a few other tricks I came up with three ‘Improved’ whistles. We went back into the studio a couple of months later and recorded the song.

Other whistle players I knew asked me to improve their whistles which I did. A few years later I moved from Dublin to Kerry and I had a music shop selling C.Ds and music books. I kept a dozen or so of my Improved whistles in stock and some customers would try one and buy it.

Over time word spread, and they gained popularity and a strong reputation.

Flash forward to 2020, and being in lock-down seems to have created a world wide group of tin whistlers, some of whom have a preference for these whistles. I have been quite busy making whistles for the last few years.