In my ever growing whistle collection I have a Dixon Trad D. It’s quite a nice little whistle, but the C# is flat. Too flat to blow it into tune. As a reasonably seasoned player and amateur whistle builder, I know I can fix it by opening up the top hole a little, but before I try that I’d just like to know if anyone else has done it and what the consequences were for the tuning of the C nat which should be the only other note affected by this tweak.
C nat can now be played either 0XX000 or 0XXX00 pushing up or down as necessary with breath control, but is closer to 0XX000. My hunch is that by opening up the top hole, the C nat should land nicely on 0XXX00 which is the fingering I prefer. That’s how my home-made whistles are tuned except for the shower curtain rod Alto A, which turned out a bit weird.
This point was raised some months ago; it’s a known problem, but I’d say a minor one. My Dixon Trad has a flattish C natural but it can be blown to pitch.
In my experience - and in my playing style, possibly - a slightly flat C nat might even be preferable. Some fast tunes (Bay of Fundy is my preferred example) sound better, I guess it’s a subtle matter of temperament.
I WANT the C# on my whistles to be flat.
Well I don’t really, but to me it’s far more important to have the cross-fingered C natural in tune using the normal fingering
oxx ooo
or
oxx oox
which pretty much always means that the C# will be a bit flat.
In Irish music as a body you’re playing C natural much more often than C sharp, at least as a note that’s dwelled upon. C sharps are less common and are often passing notes.
So when I pick up a whistle that has an in-tune C# but a sharp cross-fingered C natural, it says to me that the maker isn’t that knowledgable about Irish music.
If that top tone-hole is in the correct position and is the correct diameter you’ll get an in-tune cross-fingered C natural and a C# which is only a tad flat and can be easily blown into tune.
Hi Owen, I find the 12-TET intonation on my brass Dixon Trad D to be a bit erratic overall anyway with regard to breath pressure, with swings of 30 cents or more easily possible, and the “sweet spot” varying even from adjacent note to note. Which makes controlling intonation difficult.
Against an electronic tuner, I get roughly the following in the 1st octave with “normal” pressure with respect to 12-TET:
D: reference pitch
E: +10
F#: -15
G: 0 In tune
A: 0 In tune
B: 0 In tune
c: +20 with oxxooo; +10 with oxxxoo.
c#: -20
The off notes can be under/overblown into tune, but only with guesswork that doesn’t feel very natural to me. If the B were as flat as the F#, I might think it 's supposed to be just intonation, but that’s apparently not the case.
Bringing the c# up to pitch on mine would make the cross-fingered c even sharper than it already is, either +30 or +40 cents. So I guess I’d live with the flat c# and try to blow it sharp, though I’ll admit that particular note doesn’t want to move very easily without really pushing it. The alternative would be to fix it and stick with half-holing the c, I suppose.
