[quote=“Ostrich Caller”]Someone opened the door with composites. So let’s open this thread up a little. Has anyone ever seen, played or made a whistle from glass tubing?[/quote no, but that would be very interesting.
I don’t know about a glass whistle. But I have a clear plastic one, and there is a glass flute made.
Good question! - I do hope someone has an answer - I’ve seen glass didgeridoos and clear perspex whistles, but not a glass whistle. I imagine it would be a cow to make and you would not want to keep one in your pocket 
On the difference between a Sweetheart blackwood and laminate whistles - yes there’s a difference - in my experience, the blackwood is better. This may have as much to do with how these materials respond to cutting and tooling etc. The difference in price probably reflects the cost of materials and the preparation time they demand - African Blackwood is not the cheapest wood - specially bits that have been properly seasoned for the time it takes to ensure stability, plus the extra seasoning and prep the maker puts-in. Terry McGee’s website has a very good article on this subject ( http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/ ).
DO materials make a difference in their own right? Damn straight they do (sorry Mr Concrete - I’m not buying). Just pick up a Gen red-top and compare it with a blue-top (be scientific and try 50 of each) - don’t need rocket science for that. Similarly, I always find the blackwood or delrin versions of various whistles to be superior (I’m particularly fond of Paul Busman’s delrin D) - I’m sure there’s other nice materials. Some whistles I’ve seen seem to sacrifice the sound for the look, then again, one can find a super nice whistle in just about any material that just “clicks” on a sweet-spot.
The oscillations of sound in a whistle are a function of turbulence - turbulence is a chaos phenomenon, replete with all the butterfly-effects and fractal attributes - the teeniest thing from the proportion of the sound window, angle of the blade, windway shape, surface reflectivity and grain - right down to the molecular profile of the tube surface and labium edge all make themselves known to a greater or lesser degree. We can reduce these differences but never eliminate them - every whistle will always be an individual.
When I visited Paul (Busman)'s house, I got to try out his whistles in several different woods. The blackwood and delrin were nice, but I really liked the olivewood - something about the “warmness” of the tone, for lack of a better term.
When I visited Paul (Busman)'s house, I got to try out his whistles in several different woods. The blackwood and delrin were nice, but I really liked the olivewood - something about the “warmness” of the tone, for lack of a better term.
Hmmm? This Busman seems to resemble that remark!
One thing that still occurs to me is that whistles can retain a signature sound that is readily recognizable regardless of the material. Thin Weasels sound like Thin Weasels, Copelands sound like… You get the idea. From this I suggest that the tonal differences in material, wood especially, are most heard (or felt) by the player and that the signature sound is part of the whistle design and its execution. It might hard to test objectively. What if a single player recorded the same tune on multiple whistles made by a single maker in several woods, or several samples in different materials from several makers. Would we be able to tell the differences in the material? Would we be able to pick out the makers?
Feadoggie
Hi Tommy, nice collection. Who are the makers (from top to bottom)?
Thank you Brewster. I made them, and they each have a different tone. But it is more from the fipple than the wood. Some woods are less dense than others and will not play until the bore is treated. Curly maple is a nice looking wood with what guitar players call flame in the grain. When it is shined the grain seems to move in the light. It makes a good whistle but the bore must be maintained with a players favorite bore oil.
I have read that some owners of African black wood whistles never put oil in the bore, and their whistles play fine. African black wood is a very dense wood. I also have some tunable wood whistles, and tried one fipple on all of them, and could not tell a difference. They all played the same with that fipple. I would agree with those that say most of the tone comes from the fipple and perhaps some from the material the tube is made from.
From top to bottom
Purpleheart
Curly Maple
Cocobolo with cpvc fipple
Canarywood or yellow heart
Bubinga
Bocote
Welll… I’d agree one made from contest grade balsa would probably be really dull. Some of the stuff that a modeler would call “rock hard”…maybe not. 
The body of the instrument definitely vibrates; you can feel it in your fingers. It stands to reason that if different materials vibrate differently, they will sound differently. With respect to my flutes, I find bamboo, as light as it is, vibrates wildly whereas hardwood is much more tame.
HOWEVER, the matter is clouded as to what the player and the audience actually experience. The vibrations of the instrument’s body are directly transmitted through the mouth/teeth, through the skull, and eventually to the ear or via the oral cavity and eustachian tubes. However, their amplitudes are small and do not transmit well to the audience, especially if the performer and audience are at a distance. Furthermore, it’s likely that their amplitude is a function of the mass of the instrument and the frequency of the note being played. So at some frequencies (far from the resonant frequency), it won’t matter what the instrument’s material is.
We’re all acutely aware that our own voices sound different to us when they’re recorded and played back. Same thing. Consequently, it won’t matter what the material is if one is solely concerned with the audience’s experience. However, the musician may be “inspired” by the sonorous qualities of concrete or uninspired by blackwood, and this may very well impact her performance.
[quote="Guinness
The body of the instrument definitely vibrates; you can feel it in your fingers. .[/quote]
Sure you’re not feeling the air column vibrating on your fingertips through the holes? I’ve gotta get my wife to play a whistle for me while I feel the tube.
Sure you’re not feeling the air column vibrating on your fingertips through the holes? I’ve gotta get my wife to play a whistle for me while I feel the tube.[/quote]
Could be both?
I really try to stay out of these discussions but I just couldn’t resist replying to Guinness post.
First, the flute or whistle is not a cavity resonator and I have a hard time to believe that the vibrations you experience is anywhere near the hundreds of Hertz that makes out the fundamental frequencies of your instrument. We do have sophisticated nerve cells in our fingertips but I doubt that frequencies in this range will be interpreted as a “vibration”. Try to pinch some low voltage cables and see if you can sense the vibrations at 50-60 Hz. I can feel a sting but not the vibrations.
Second, if there was a acoustical vibration of the wall material it would be damped out by your hands holding the flute or whistle before it would stand a chance to be transmitted anywhere. There is a unit of measure called acoustic impedance that you bypassed in order for your transmission model from air, wood/metal, lips, teeth, air bone … to work.
Any vibration of the body of a flute or whistle would also be very easy to measure, if it existed.
Third, in contrast to speech, everything you hear from a flute whistle is generated outside your body. If you believe that your oral cavity, teeth or skull has anything to do with the sound of your whistle, try this. Play a note on your whistle, fill your mouth with cotton, paper or marshmallows just enough to get an air stream out, play the same note again. Does it sound any different? I bet not.
/MarcusR
You’re right, it’s mostly the air column. I put masking tape on all the tone holes and played the low and middle Ds of one of my whistles and one of my flutes. I think I still perceive a very weak vibration. Still, if I feel the air column in my finger tips, then it’s vibrating the body of the whistle/flute as well…look at the membrane of dizi flute. It seems to suggest that the effect of the instrument’s material is even less than I originally had thought.
Don’t have to. I can change the way my whistle sounds simply by changing the shape of my mouth cavity.
Could have something to do with the way the sound waves are reflected or absorbed by the sides of the whistle tube, not with the vibrations of the whistle itself . . .
Sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re saying. You mean the vibrations created by the instrument will not be transmitted inside your head? They do somewhat. Look at GaryKelly’s post (scroll halfway down):
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=44995&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
I would think most physicists would agree that the cyclical/wave nature of sound and voltage are different phenomenon despite the theoretical analogy. The differential equation that describes a simple electric circuit also describes a dashpot and spring system… BTW, that “sting” will occur at 50-60 Hz, even if it doesn’t quite feel that way.
Well I never said any vibration received by your hands/fingertips would make it to the timpanic membrane.
I just tried playing my whistle with tight ear plugs. Notes were louder when I bit down on the whistle. For certain tongue and throat positions, volume seem to get louder. Not scientifically rigorous but it does suggest that sound does travel inside my head (I’ve been called an echo chamber once or twice 
).
That isn’t what I said but nevertheless, there is some influence, albeit small, on the tone, intonation and stability of the note due to the oral cavity and its configuration:
http://www.gjk2.com/stuff/mouth.pdf
What I did say is:
I have a replica of a whistle made by a highly regarded maker. The original was wood, the copy is solid brass (weighs a ton) and CNC machined based on careful measurements. Both sound and play identically to me. Does that not directly address the original issue at hand?
Oh, I’ll have to curse myself for not staying out of this discussion.
I believe you can, but I doubt that it has anything to do with the size of your oral cavity. By changing the shape of your mouth you will most likely change the air stream and pressure. There is no magic, everything that comes out from the whistle has to be created by the interaction between the air stream and the wind way. We have all learned how to compensate a note that is slightly flat or sharp by altering the way we blow. It has nothing to do with the size of the mouth cavity. Still in doubt, try this:
Take a plastic coke bottle and make a small hole half way up where you can stick the fipple of your whistle. Blow into the bottle with a steady pressure and try to memorize the note (or make a recording and a FFT to get the frequency spectrum) Fill up the bottle with water to change the size of the cavity, and see if it changes pitch or tonality?
I have read Gary’s post and I think he got it quite right, I have also read the cited articles even though it was some time ago. First we need to agree what we are discussing here. The topic started of with the question “if different woods have different tones?”. So it is all about sound generation, not sound perception. I agree with you that most of the things inside our head will affect the way we perceive the sound.
It is also clear from the cited articles that the effect of the mouth cavity resonances only affects the frequency of the air column, not the sound characteristics, or tonality. French and Benade’s suggestion is also stated for a flute, where the lips can be regarded as the reed which significantly affects the sound output. I have a hard time to see that the same argument can be applied to a whistle or a recorder without making too many general and unclear assumptions.
So, NO! I don’t believe that your playing will induce any vibrations of the wall material or the fipple. If so, it would be very easy to measure these vibrations with a laser.
True, Voltage and vibrations are different phenomenon, but my point was that I doubt that you will interpret any form of input in the frequency range of 100Hz - kHz as a vibration. I believe that the vibrations you experience playing your flute are vibrations of the air column, not at the fundamental frequencies, but at significantly much lower resonance frequency generated by super positioning of the fundamental and the non linear frequencies present. Some pipers can also feel these vibrations in the air filled bag when they play.
I’m sure you are right, but this has nothing to do with how the whistle sounds. The sound or tonality of the whistle is the same, it is just the way you hear it that has changed. Kind of an obvious conclusion if you stick something like ear plugs in your ear, isn’t it
I might have got you all wrong the first time, and from your last quote we seem to agree
My knowledge in hearing physiology and psychophysics of the hearing process is very limited so I will not go into that. I agree that direct communication through the bones of the head to the cochlea is possible, but only under the following assumptions:
- The vibrating object is in direct contact with the bones of the head.
- The vibrations are intense.
- And the frequencies are low enough to be sensed by the nerve receptors in the body.
But I think most of us will agree that this type of acoustical transmission is NOT part of our primary sense of hearing.
The fact that the player himself will hear the flute different compared to an audience can more easily be explained by sound radiation effects from the bottom end and the tone holes.
But I’ll leave that for now.
Last:
Both are made out of brass, one is just nickel plated. Same material but different sound, I don’t follow your conclusions?
Cheers!
/MarcusR
I don’t even play a physicist on TV…but this discussion is causing vibrations inside my cranial cavity…which are issuing forth out of my earholes…and, gee willikers…my room is melting away into a cosmic dream.
Where’s my Overton?! QUICK!!!
To take away the variables of minute differences in the windway/fipple area, take two bagpipes made exactly the same, except from two different timbers. Now play one with a set of reeds, then play the other with the same set of reeds, transferred to the second one from the first. If the woods are really different (say maple/blackwood) most players will feel the difference very clearly, while blindfolded. Most listeners will not hear any difference.
My point is, there is a very big difference, but only from a player’s perspective. Not from a listener’s. That’s why blind tests with concrete flutes are quite meaningless, as they test the listeners, not the players. It’s the players that use the instruments, not the listeners.
Interesting point of view Yuri, on a subject that I find very fascinating.
Even though I do believe that most of the reasoning behind the acoustical effects of the wall material of a flute also will apply for a chanter, there are a few more parameters that has to be considered in order for the analogy to hold.
One thing that I don’t get from your post is;
If the acoustical effect of the wall material is something that only can be perceived by the player and not be detected by an audience, a listener or picked up on a recording with a microphone.
How can we separate the acoustical and physical effects from something that is solely a psychological phenomenon?
/MarcusR
If you can tell a difference, then it can’t be purely a physiological effect.
Take a professional kitchen. Give the chef a brand new super-duper-hyper gizmo, say a new mincer or whatever. Ask him to make a meal using it. Now ask him, AND ask the customers whether they noticed any difference. The chef will say he had noticed an enormous difference (whichever way), the customers will say (if they are lucky) it’s a good meal. That’s my point. The person using the tool (piper) is very much aware of the difference, but at the same time he is doing his best to do a good job, no matter what are the circumstances. The listener is only aware of the end result. A good chef/piper/whistler/whatever craftsman will try to deliver quality by whatever means are available, and make the end result as much conforming to his/her idea of what it should be like as they can. Hence the listener/diner’s ignorance of the differences.