Recorder vs Tin Whistle in Irish Traditional Music

I know on paper the fingerings for Kesh on recorder probably look a bit bizarre to a tin whistler, but I think Kesh is actually better on recorder.

Here's the A part of Kesh with standard Baroque fingerings on a C Soprano recorder:

o|ooo|xxx|x
o|ooo|xxx|x
o|ooo|oxx|x
o|ooo|oox|x
o|ooo|oxx|x
o|ooo|oxx|x
o|ooo|oox|x
o|ooo|oxo|o
o|oxx|xxx|ø
o|ooo|oxo|o
o|ooo|oxo|o
o|ooo|xxx|ø
o|ooo|oxo|o
o|ooo|oxo|o
o|oxx|xxx|ø
o|ooo|oxo|o
o|ooo|oox|x
o|ooo|oxo|o
o|ooo|oox|x
o|ooo|oxx|x
o|ooo|xxx|x

Here is the same A part again, this time with D tin whistle fingerings:

|ooo|xxx|
|ooo|xxx|
|ooo|oxx|
|ooo|oox|
|ooo|oxx|
|ooo|oxx|
|ooo|oox|
|xxx|xxx|!
|oxx|xxx|!
|xxx|xxx|!
|xxx|xxx|!
|ooo|xxx|!
|xxx|xxx|!
|xxx|xxx|!
|oxx|xxx|!
|xxx|xxx|!
|ooo|oox|
|xxx|xxx|!
|ooo|oox|
|ooo|oxx|
|ooo|xxx|

The recorder only goes into the second octave for the three jumps; but the tin whistle changes octaves arbitrarily right as you're supposed to be going faster and more-fluidly than the jumps; worse, half of the A part on whistle is in the upper octave, while on the recorder only three notes are. Some context around that: on all wind instruments, first-octave notes sound clearer, are stabler, and require less air than second-octave notes. The recorder player accordingly may be able to play the Kesh Jig for longer without taking a breath, and Kesh should should also sound better overall on recorder (ceteris paribus, anyway — imagine a tin recorder).

Unrelated to Kesh, it's also worth noting that the extra top-hole on the recorder makes it impossible for it to ornament high-D in its first octave in the same ways that the tin whistle can ornament its high-D; however, the flip-side of this is that the recorder can do ornaments on high-C that the tin whistle cannot do. So there are some interesting possibilities for recorder-specific ornamentation, but at the cost of losing whistle-valid ornamentations that you are expected to have in this genre.

And that leads into this next bit: the recorder is of course not going to be better for all Irish tunes; not every tune is the Kesh Jig. One particular weak point of the recorder is in with tunes relying heavily on low F#, which is this whistle fingering: |oox|xxx|. This is the bane of a recorder-player's existance in this genre, because the timbre does not sound right with the equivalent recorder fingering (o|xxo|xxx|x) and transitions to/from it are too weak-sounding to fit in to Irish jigs. Theoretically you can just cheat and do the tin whistle fingering on recorder by blowing harder than the surrounding notes (thus sharpening a flat hole), and in some tunes the F# is slow-enough and sufficiently-aligned with the song's rhythm to where this strategy is actually viable (example: The Butterfly); in some other tunes, this note is played fast-enough that you can blow it weak like the surrounding notes without anyone noticing that it's flat (example: Swallowtail Jig); but other times, you're kinda fucked (example: Kid on the Mountain).

Kid on the Mountain is actually a bane of recordering for another reason too: the C part is harder on recorder for the same exact reason that the A part of Kesh is easier on recorder: on tin whistle, the C part of Kid on the Mountain is entirely in the second octave (easy), but on recorder you have to frequently switch back-and-forth between the top of the first octave and the bottom of the second octave at speed (harder and doesn't sound as good), with your rapid half-holing on the thumb-hole having to be good-enough each time for you to hit high-A, which is considered to be the least stable (most-squeaky) note on a recorder.

I can play Kid on the Mountain on recorder in spite of all this, but there's no way around the fact that it's always going to sound better on a whistle, which is disappointing because I've always really liked this tune. Maybe I'll eventually suck it up and get a nice-sounding whistle just for tunes like this, but recorder is still bae.

It would be neat to see what the chromatic fingerings would be for a recorder with its third hole tuned to F#, because this tuning would solve the awkward o|xxo|xxx|x fingering that the recorder suffers from. In a way, this would be the recorder equivalent of "Paddy Richter" on harmonica: making other aspects of the instrument worse in order to make one note better for Irish music. Speaking of Paddy Richter: I think a better solution is to just add a chromatic slider that bumps everything up a semitone, so that you don't have to ruin any chords to play ITM. But this is a different topic for another time!