Put your mouth on the head and blow. Now put your hands on the shaft and move your fingers up and down.
That can’t be right.
Can someone please help me correctly label these parts of a tin whistle? I drew a diagram but can’t figure out how to get the image on here.
Head (the plastic part)
Mouthpiece (the part your mouth goes on)
Blowhole (the hole the air goes in)
Sound hole (if you cover it, it goes quite)
Blade (pretty sure about this one)
Shaft.
Finger hole (there are six: top, second from the top, third down, fourth down, second up from the bottom, and bottom)
Botom hole (sometimes you can fit your little finger in there)
Please forgive my stupidity. I don’t know any other whistlers personally to ask (I live on a small island), and I can’t find anywhere online that lays it out clearly.
off topic a bit. But, Feadoggie do you undercut the blade. I made some high D’s from cpvc according to plans. I am amazed at the one that gets into 2nd octave easily and with the nicest tone. All made the same, the ramp angle of the best made the difference. I am going back and adjusting the others to see if they do the same thing.
edit - beat to punch by Jerry, but I’ll post it anyway @steve often referred to as the ‘window’ which has a height, width and depth (I’ve witnessed confusing conversations height v depth) - I believe organ builders sometimes refer to the height as the ‘cut-up’ and I’m not sure (can’t remember) what terms are used in the recorder camp.
Head (the plastic part) - Not always the plastic part because whistles may be made from a variety of materials. It is generally the upper joint or half of a 2 piece whislte. But there are three and four part whistles so it’s the piece at the top. It also refers to the upper part of the whistle where all the noise making occurs. This is as opposed to the body of the whislte, which is where the tone holes are stored.
Mouthpiece (the part your mouth goes on) - Yep, that’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?
Blowhole (the hole the air goes in) - Nope, that would be where the whale breathes. But OK, we’ll go with that. It sounds more snooty to call it the embouchure. Or it could be called the opening of the windway.
Sound hole (if you cover it, it goes quite) - the window, as has been stated by Jerry and agreed to by others heretofore. Guitars have sound holes, whistles and other fipple flutes have voicing windows.
Blade (pretty sure about this one) - Wesley Snipes to most people.
Shaft. - Richard Roundtree to those of us old enough to remember.
Hush your mouth, I’m talkin’ 'bout …
Finger hole (there are six: top, second from the top, third down, fourth down, second up from the bottom, and bottom) - Sometimes called tone holes. There can be three (as on a tabor pipe), five (as on a penta-whistle), six (as on most common diatonic whistles), seven (as on a D+ whistle or one with a C nat hole) or more until you have a chromatic whistle.
Botom hole (sometimes you can fit your little finger in there) - The distal end of the whistle called the foot, as opposed to the head and at the lower end of the body. The opening is called the bore, not to be confused with what you call folks who talk about the parts of a whistle.
And there is more …
Feadog - Irish for whistle. IE - abbreviation for Ireland. Put it all together and it spells… Feadoggie - Irish Whistle (and not a canine acknowledged by the Westminster Kennel Club).
Oh and I would like to thank Daniel Bingamon for once again providing one of the best whistle diagrams on the Internet. I was too pressed for time to move one of my diagrams to the Internet.
The open bottom end of a whistle or other woodwind is sometimes called the bell end. Makes sense on a flared instrument like a clarinet or oboe, but not really on a whistle.
Short answer is yes. It’s a dance really. I undercut the blade when I am voicing the whistle. There are a number of geometries at play so I only do as much as is necessary to get the whistle to play and sound as I’d like it too. That’s not a formulaic answer I know, but it’s what I do. While I can repeat my results well at this point in time, I still find that the smallest things can change everything.
Depth is just that, the lateral depth of the window opening. The term “height” could be substituted with “length”, so basically it means the same thing as in organ building.
I did not write my post very clearly - I went back and added to the window descriptors.
The discussions that I alluded to used ‘height’ but for two different measurements - once the word depth is added then it seems what is being talked about is clearer. For example it would be entirely natural to talk about the height of a Copeland’s ears (not a person’s ears but the ears that surround the window on a Copeland whistle) but this would be comparable to the depth of other whistle’s windows.
In a similar vein I always thought of the embouchure as the person’s mouth and what is going on with the muscles etc. but looking it up online (I don’t have access to a good physical dictionary at the moment) I see that it can be the instrument mouthpiece, oh and it can also be the mouth of a river.
At time things would be much more straight forward if we could just know what we talking about!
I personally make them where the blade edge aligns with the floor. There’s thousands of ways to make whistles. A Tin Whistle is truly an example of “Infinite diversity through infinite combinations”.
I like the comment on “ceiling” instead of roof - that’s worth changing the drawing over.
A sticky on whistle anatomy at the top of the forum might be very helpful, Daniel. What do you think? What do the moderators think?
If you are revisiting the diagram, then ‘windway entrance’ and ‘windway exit’ (or their equivalent terms) might be useful labels. As would an indication of the location of infamous ‘cavity that could be filled’.
If there is a sticky for ‘Whistle Anatomy’ it might be nice to have a diagram of the whistle hole nomenclature (T1,T2,T3,L1,L2,L3). [I am not suggesting you should do all this, Daniel, I am widening the discussion.]
