Hi all,
The dog asked to go out so I was passing thru the living room where my wife had Dncing With the Stars on. Lucky timing, Celine Dion sung her famous song and there were several close-ups of the whistle player. Nice well-used patina on his brass whistle. Anyone we know?
Maybe if you live on the west coast you can catch the show still. About 10 minutes in I think.
Cheers,
Carey
To me it looked like a Copeland brass Bb, playing in the key of Eb. I didn’t recognize the whistler as one of our Los Angeles buddies.
Definately a Copeland and it sounded fantastic.
It did sound amazing. Again, how an inexpensive instrument mixed in with all of the “real” instruments and the sound was super. Good job!
I saw it, too. It was definitely a Copeland and the performance was superb.
Copeland…inexpensive…ummm…
Compared to the price of other high-end instruments, even a copeland is super cheap.
Hmmmm… Much less than a grand piano.
Anyone remember what Celine sang? Nice whistle though 
This is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7QDC46TvjA
You don’t want to go there, fel. 
Is it wrong of me to wish the Dion would shut her trap so I could hear the whistler play?
After a closer look at Keith’s video link, I’m sure there’s something fishy going on.
The whistle you hear is definitely a Bb whistle playing in Eb (fingered G), which matches perfectly the range of the melody line - down to Bb (fingered D), and up to a high G (fingered B) at the key modulation.
However, it’s obvious to see that the whistler is playing with key of D fingering. Which would mean he’s playing an Eb whistle. But that’s impossible. It would have to be a low Eb whistle to produce the range you hear, and clearly it’s not (too small). And then that high note would be a 3rd octave F#, and the run up to it would sound very strained.
So the sorry conclusion is that the whistle performance was a fake, and the whistler was finger-syncing to a pre-recorded backup track on what really looks like a regular old Copeland brass D whistle. The recorded Bb whistle that you actually hear is anyone’s guess.
This is not another case like the Andrea Corr YouTube vid that got argued here a while back. Audio-video sync is not the issue. Just an impossible match between the fingering and the whistle you see, and what you hear. Oh well.
Whistle synching!! What will it be next?
take me back to the place where I first saw the light ,to that sweet sunny south take me home…
So then, to think a little farther…
It would be hard for the band to play to a whistle track and not risk exposing it, so the whole band was likely faking it. Which leaves the door open to think maybe the vocals were recorded too. Or not.
Could it be that Helio was really a muppett? Do you think man really walked on the moon? Oh technology, the bane of civilization.
(OK, maybe that’s a little over the top. Send me to the post-structural pub.)
So who do you think shot J.F.K. You guys are great, I’ve got to tell you. I’m definitely in the right place to learn the art of the whistle.
My first thoughts when watching the show was the whistle was in the key of D or smaller. I know from seeing some musical scores that the whistle part is for a Bb whistle. It sounded like a Bb whistle, but looked smaller. sheesshhh. 
Background:
I read a book about producing records in Nashville. One thing they talked about was how studio electronics can be used to correct flawed intonation by a singer.
Question:
Is there an electronic gizmo than could take a mic-signal from a whistle played in D and use it as source to generate sound an octave lower? Maybe some other interval (like an ocatave plus a fifth)?
If there were such a real-time gizmo, that could allow a live “group” to still play organically (e.g. keep time with each other).
Sure, real-time pitch-shifting is easy. Even my little Korg Pandora effects box can do that, up to +/- one octave. The problem is that you then have to suppress the acoustic sound of the instrument. In a studio, you just isolate the whistle. But playing live, even in a large-ish group, I imagine the acoustic bleed would be pretty distracting.
Yeah, it’s a little dark on my screen, but where’s his mic?