Hi!
I was wondering which is the preferred method of acheiving a vibrato? I have been a singer all my life, and when I started playing the whistle, I naturally did a vibrato with my breathing. I have seen many whistle players use their fingers. Is either way better or is it just a matter of personal preference?
Thanks for your comments and GOD bless you!
Skywatcher
Seems like it’s a matter of personal preference. I understand the “oldest” way is to play without vibrato. To modern ears, it sounds nice. I use mostly breath. Finger vibrato sounds really nice when done well. 
Finger vibrato is the traditional way to do it; most traditional players dislike breath vibrato.
It’s going to depend on what you are playing.
If you are playing Irish dance music, you’ll rarely have a situation to use any vibrato at all. If you do use it on a longer note, it should be fingered vibrato.
If you are playing traditional songs or playing with singers singing them, you might use vibrato sparingly as an effect. Most often this would be fingered vibrato; there may be the rare time that breath vibrato would be work.
If you are playing other kinds of music, let your ear be your guide.
A few further thoughts: nothing sounds quite as bad as an uncontrolled vibrato; vibrato should never be used when playing rapid passages; and, last but not least, it is never wrong to abstain from vibrato.
Just my $.02.
–James
I second James “peeplj”. Best vibrato = none - in singing too! - save as a chosen ornament/special effect! When wanted/appropriate, use finger vibrato where available - but experiment with which finger to use - sometimes using the next-but-one finger makes too broad a pitch change and waving a still lower finger or fingers/leaving more holes open before the one tapped upon produces a more subtle effect - you can even expand or contract a vibrato by changing fingers. The results of waving different fingers may be different on different instruments, too. However, obviously on low D especially, but also on middle D you have no lower holes to wave at or tap or shade, so breath vibrato is the only option, and low and middle E are awkward too - you have to shade or tap the edge of the only open hole, so breath vibrato can be easier/more controlled.
A few further thoughts of my own - I think a broad, constant vibrato is one of the things that puts many people off the mainstream operatic singing style - that effect (especially when voices are reaching for their upper or lower limits but in some extreme cases throughout the range) where, instead of (ever!) singing the written note, singers wobble excessively around it, thus just sounding at best messy if not simply out of tune. Yuck. Similar effect puts me off much gospel type singing too. Hit the actual note intended first, pure and clean, then maybe, just maybe do something to it…
Indeed! Opera singing like that drives me nuts.
What peeplj and jemtheflute said. I hardly ever find vibrato to be necessary on a whistle. On the rare occasions I do use vibrato, it will be on a lo-o-o-o-ng held note.
That having been said, finger vibrato sounds better to me on high whistles, breath vibrato on low whistles.
That also having been said, you can get vibrato on a D note by quivering one wrist (or even one foot). 
I always use finger vibrato except with the low D note, where I use ‘breath’ vibrato for obvious reasons.
I use vibrato in songs and airs.
A couple questions about this:
Is that because of the piping tradition? i.e. it’s impossible to use breath vibrato on the pipes, and whistling technique largely grows out of piping technique, or vice versa. Is this why finger vibrato, or none at all, is generally considered more traditional?
It’s all breath vibrato on the flute, correct? (I’m not a flute player, so I’m asking)
T
Go far enough back in art music, and you find that they used fingered vibrato more often than breath vibrato then as well, although they called it flattement.
When they did use breath vibrato, it seems to have been more as a special effect than a consistently-used technique.
Agricola in 1528 listed “trembling breath” as a “special grace.” Praetorius in 1619 described vibrato produced by the diaphragm, and Mersenne in 1636 wrote of “certain tremolos which intoxicate the soul” and suggested four vibrations per second as the model for wind players to follow. Delusse suggested its use in 1761 as a measured expression of “solemnity and terror.”
–James
This is true only on the Boehm-system flute.
Fingered vibrato is one of two techniques which were commonly employed on the simple-system flute and which are impractical or impossible on the Boehm-system flute.
The other is the use of “sensitive tones;” tones which are deliberately played sharp (usually) or flat (very rarely), and which followed a set of rules as to when to use them.
Here are some examples of where sensitive tones would have been utilized:
–as leading tones in scales;
–between two notes a half step higher
–in grace notes from below
–as the lower auxiliary in turns, trill terminations, and other ornamentation
Sensitive tones may in one instance involve a deliberate flattening of the pitch; when a note occurs between two notes a half step below it, it may be deliberately slightly flattened.
Sensitive tones are never used when the note is part of the underlying harmony.
I know this stuff isn’t much use in whistle-playing; this is just because-you-asked, FYI-type stuff.
–James
No, not in ITM - finger vibrato is the norm, just like on whistle. Plus what James wrote about the Boehm flute and historic performance practice and aesthetics.
Incidentally, and just to clarify, I love opera and other classical singing - when sung “properly” to my taste! Nor do I expect a total absence of vibrato, just a very circumspect use of it! Give me e.g. Emma Kirkby or James Bowman or Janet Baker or Joan Sutherland or Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, all of whom sing/sang the notes first and foremost, and when they used vibrato, did/do so narrowly and swiftly fluctuating around an identifiably in tune main note, not just a constant broad, slow, wobble somewhere in the supposed region of the intended pitch!
I think finger vibrato can add a lot when used judiciously in slow tunes. Well worth mastering IMHO.
Coming from an oboe background to the whistle, i always use controlled diaphram vibrato (never throut cause it tends to strangle the tone and the breath) and cant really hear too much difference. Though I did just watch Tony Hinnigan do a beautiful version of “Oh Shenendoah” using finger vibrato to great effect so I guess thats what really good players do.
I use three types of vibrato, depending on context.
- finger vibrato. This is usually my “default” or preferred way.
- throat vibrato. This is for notes I can’t do finger vibrato on. I use this only on notes in the 2nd register. Sometimes I use this on notes I can do finger vibrato on, like high A etc. This throat vibrato is fairly rapid and shallow.
- so-called diaphragm vibrato. I use a slower, broad diaphragm vibrato on low E and bottom D.
I really don’t think about this stuff, I just play.
You’ll like this quote:
“For three hundred years flutists tried to play in tune. Then they gave up and invented vibrato.”
(attributed to Bernard Goldberg, Pittsburgh Symphony)
–James
“Mastering” makes it sound difficult! Actually doing it is of course incredibly easy - no problem at all - if you can move your fingers to play the notes, you can finger-vib. It is certainly a great deal easier than a proper, controlled breath vibrato, whether diaphragm or throat engendered. The harder part is knowing when (or when NOT) to do it to good effect!
Donald, do you mean you use a constant diaphragm vibrato on oboe, a bit like modern classical string players use their finger vibrato, as (supposedly - it is debatable) a tone “improver”, or just that, when you use vibrato, that is the technique you apply?
Nice one, James, I do indeed like it. However, one could actually say pretty much the same for the entire orchestra - the constant use of vibrato in tone production as opposed to as an effect or ornament only really developed in the late C19th and didn’t become an accepted norm until between the two World Wars. Listen to early gramophone recordings of orchestral music and there is little vibrato (but lots of string portamento - which has gone right out of fashion [thankfully]). The period instrument movement had a huge battle during the 1960s-80s (in just about all they were doing/advocating) to get playing with little vibrato accepted once more by mainstream classical taste - a battle they have largely won by becoming accepted back within a broader “new mainstream” range of interpretative styles. They succeeded chiefly because it became apparent to listeners that Bach and Mozart etc. sounded so much better played cleanly and with rhythm rather than slushily and flat-smooth.
I think the Baroque approach - that tools/techniques like vibrato and portamento do indeed offer ways of bringing emotion into interpretation and should be used as such, but sparingly to preserve contrast and to observe the Golden Rule in matters of taste, is a good one. The late Romantic approach of maximum emotion at all times at all costs is just hyperbolic and eventually becomes risible.
A good player of any instrument (including voice) should be able to produce a full, rich, sonorous, strongly projecting tone without vibrato. Using vibrato as part of basic tone production gives an illusion of greater richness and projection, which can cover up for relatively poor basic technique or for a poor instrument, but ultimately just muddies the sound. (IMO!!! 
)
I haven’t learned how to do finger vibrato yet. I think it’s good practice to learn to play without vibrato. Sometimes I think there’s a tendency to hide behind it, like you’re afraid to just play the note full and complete. When you hear a really good whistle player just belt out the note pure and plain it’s an amazing demonstration of musicality and confidence.
Yep. Absolutely.
When you get the ability to control the note without vibrato, when you have the ability to play and hold just a single note and make it musical but keep dead on pitch with no waver…
That is the mark of someone who’s gone further than just learning how to finger and blow, and it’s harder than it sounds.
–James