How to pucker up to play lip service
During Lauren Bacall’s 1944 movie debut in “To Have and Have Not,” her character famously wisecracked to Humphrey Bogart’s: “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”
Well, serious whistling is a little more complicated than that. Professional whistler Linda Parker Hamilton, owner/moderator of the online whistling forum Orawhistle, offers some basic tips on how to make sweet music from your mouth:
For vibrato
1) Whistle out or in.
2) As you gently blow, quickly move the front part of your tongue up and down, as if it’s shivering.
For staccato
1) Whistle out.
2) As you blow out on a high note, let the tip of your tongue touch the back of your top front teeth and then pull it away, as if saying, “tuh, tuh, tuh.”
3) As you move down the scale, touch the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, each time starting it farther and farther away from your teeth. 