When I compare different whistles I think there is a difference in the rate at which notes ‘stabilize’. Some whistles seem to leap into the correct note very quickly, giving a ‘hard’, ‘crisp’, or ‘solid’ feel to their sound. Others seem to make the change more slowly giving a ‘softer’ or ‘smoother’ sound.
Is this something that is recognized by players here, or is it my imagination (maybe incompetence)?
If it is recognized here, then is there a term that folk use, and which type of sound do you prefer?
Rightly or wrongly, I find a relatively narrow-bore instrument to be more “responsive”, to borrow a term from another poster, than a wide-bore instrument of the same pitch. I find it easier to be “more expressive” (or get it wrong) on a wider-bore instrument … horses for courses
Thanks DrPhill for bringing such a timely topic to light. I don’t have the depth of experience as do many on this board and I certainly defer to their judgment but I had recently noticed that whistles made from thicker material seem to stabilize more quickly than those from thin. After reading the post from Kypfer, I tried my Jerry Gen, Burke DBN, Harper D and Sindt D (all thinner material) against a Tilbury, an Impempe (newer than the one on the recent tour) and a Copeland. For me at least, this confirmed what I thought was true with one exception, the Copeland (thicker) and Sindt (surprisingly) were clearly the most “responsive”. I have to then wonder about other factors at work, me for one, since timing and breath control would seem to be part of the equation. Then I thought about wood whistles and discovered that all of the one’s I own are more or less the same thickness but they stabilized at different rates too. Hmmmm.
No expert here, but responsiveness or crispness are often used. I find recorders (which are mostly conical bored) on the whole to be more responsive than whistles - playing cuts on a recorder is an eye opener compared to some whistles which are positively sluggish in comparison - and the most responsive whistles I have are conical-bored wooden ones.
Since this is a matter of how quickly the waveform stabilises inside the bore to a new frequency, it presumably has nothing to do with chiff/chirp, which is another transitional phenomenon but more likely (?) a matter of voicing.
Speculation: conical bore whistles have a more complex waveform than cylindrical ones, I think - is it possible that this complexity facilitates the transition between notes, since each note is already energetic in a variety of frequencies and one merely needs to be selected, rather than transitioning between one pure sine wave (in the limit case) to another? A bit like collapsing the wave function in QM. Just a thought. So I suspect it’s a matter of bore design primarily, off the back of this completely unqualified speculation.
I’d vote for calling this something like “note attack time” or something equally confusing. I’ve noticed differences amongst various whistles, also, but just thought a lot of it was due to being a relatively inexperienced player. That being said, I’ve not seen any clear evidence that thicker-walled whistles make for slower response, although I’ve heard that claimed, before. My guess is that it has more to do with mouthpiece internal geometry than anything else. Have any of you tried using an oscilloscope (or soundcard/software equivalent) to look at note amplitude vs time? Might be interesting..
These might be different, though perhaps interrelated, issues we’re talking about. (All this stuff is hard to put into words.)
Two issues are gracenote clarity and gracenote speed. The first has much to do with the clarity of the note produced when just the gracenote finger is raised. The second probably has to do with response time.
Then there’s something that might be called note stability, or how wide the window of pitch that potentially exists for each note. I noticed when going back and forth between two Low Eb whistles, a Burke and an Overton, that the Burke had a rather narrow window of pitch in the second octave. When I blew a second-octave note on the Burke the note would come out, or not come out, sort of a “go no-go” thing. But on the Overton I could blow very softly or very strongly and get a huge range of pitch on the same second-octave note. I think this is part of what makes Burkes so attractive to non-trad “legit” wind players: the notes are “right there” as they say. But someone wanting a wide range of pitch and volume would find the Overton more to their liking.
Thanks for all those comments, lots of interesting thoughts there. It seems that there are several interrelated facets that need careful untangling. Or I could just go and practice some more.
The subjects you’re trying to pin down are Acoustic Impedance and Frequency Response Time.
Acoustic Impedance in Layman’s terms is the Energy needed to begin oscillation of the volume of air. If there is less air (or mass)near the voicing to move, the flute/whistle will respond faster. What is called “backpressure” here at C&F is “Acoustic Impedance”. A more narrow inside diameter at the voicing or a narrow “throat” that restricts airflow between the voicing and the toneholes will increase Backpressure and Response Time. Example: Large bore whistles, like the Generation Bb, have poor acoustic impedance and therefore poor backpressure/response time.
(Nerd stuff: Kinetic Energy formula E = 0.5mv squared. if the m or mass value at the voicing decreases in this formula, the amount of E energy needed to move the air [response time] decreases. Better tone and quicker note changes.)
Is this what you were looking for? or did I make a fool of myself (Again!)
A more narrow inside diameter at the voicing or a narrow “throat” that restricts airflow between the voicing and the toneholes will increase Backpressure and Response Time.
… should I read this as “improve Backpressure and Response Time” ? If so it explains a “feature” of my home-made low-volume (quiet) “practice” whistle. By accident rather than design, I included a slightly reduced “choke” below the whistle-head, the only coupling tube I had was slightly narrower bore than the main body of the whistle … no wonder I can do “stuff” on this instrument that doesn’t translate well to my commercial whistles
That sounds good to me at first read - a nice way of thinking about it. I will need to ponder it for a while though, before I can make best use of it mentally, since it is not quite the way I was thinking of the problem.
You are saying that ‘higher back-pressure = faster response’?
Yes, higher backpressure = faster response time and improved resonance (tone). In the example of the throated bore, the reduction is minimal. Between 1mm - 3mm is all you need. The Recorder creates better backpressure and response time by using a tapered conical bore. This improves backpressure but also restricts the shift in scale (flat pitch) of the second register. Cylindrical bores will shift flatter with each successive register and the player must compensate by blowing harder (increased windway velocity) to compensate/correct for this “flattening effect”. This leads to shrill tone in the higher notes. Tinwhistles, on the other hand, have greater scale range and pitch bending qualities than a Recorder.
Technobabble: The airstream leaves the windway and crosses the open voicing “window”, striking just above the leading edge of the labium ramp. this creates a siphon effect (Bernoulli’s priciple) or “vacume” just below the voicing window. When this vacume reaches a critical stage, it “sucks” the airstream below the labium ramp and the vacume quickly reverses to a “pressure area”. These are the 2 parts of a single frequency wave. If there is “backpressure”, the siphon effect happens quicker because there is less airmass near the window to move. In a large cylindrical bore (without restriction), more air can travel up to the window and slow down the vacume part of the cycle (response time).
The acoustics are more complicated than I stated, but this is the “basic” idea. By changing the geometry of the voicing/bore setup, a designer can focus on any quality a player may prefer. The choices are legion!
… no wonder I can do “stuff” on this instrument that doesn’t translate well to my commercial whistles 