Hi all, I just bought my first whistle a few days ago and am working on making better sounding noise.
I have a newbie question though… I bought the Mel Bay Whistler’s Pocket Companion and I notice that although a lot of the tunes are in the key of D (F# and C#), but it appears that a significant number are in the key of G (just F#). Whats with this? Looking around on the web it seems that D whistles are the preferred commodity, but I don’t see a lot of people reccomending a G whistle as a good beginners choice.
Am I missing something? Have I messed up reading the keys?
Hi gkf and welcome to the board, and to the whistling world!
On each whistle, you can play comfortably in at least two major keys. On a D whistle you can, of course, play in the key of D. All the notes you need are easily fingered, with no half holing required. On that same whistle, though, you can also play in the key of G (as Cranberry noted while I was writing this!), a fourth higher than the bell note, or bottom note. In the key of G the only note that will require either cross-fingering or half-holing is the C natural, and that’s not a very hard note to get comfortable with. So the tunes you see in the key of G are all easily playable on your D whistle. It’s by far the most popular whistle key, and you made the right choice.
The same relationship holds true for a whistle in any other key: you can play comfortably in both the key the whistle is in and the key a fourth higher than that. There are also minor-ish keys you can play in on each whistle as well: one that starts on the second tone of the original key (E on a D whistle), and one that starts on the fifth tone (A on a D whistle).
Here are some other C-natural fingerings for you to try if your whistle doesn’t do ( o x x | o o o ) well in tune–most whistles do, but many, including some of the finest, don’t.
Try:
( o x x | x o x )
or
( o x o | x x x )
Note: this fingering also works for the C-natural one octave up.
I just tried all of those fingerings. To my novice ear they all sound the same, and all work equally well on my whistle. (A Walton Mellow D) I’m a little dismayed by the number of alternatives - one of the reasons that I initially liked the instrument was the simplicity and relatively small number of fingerings. I am finding all of the different fingerings that you have suggested a lot easier than half uncovering holes however.
Now if I can just get a reasonable sounding upper octave. The D and E are simple enough. The F# keeps wanting to squeak. And I have to blow so hard to get a G or A in the upper octave that I think I’m going to rupture a blood vessel.
