Please forgive if this has been covered. I searched it and couldnt find what I was looking for.
Parks Every Whistle
question, when the mute is closed to make it quiet, can you still play the octaves the same as w/o mute? My fav. whistle is my Mellow, but at times I believe my wife has had enough of it sometimes, when Im still enthused LOL, But as a newb, I hate to practice on a whistle in a way that wouldnt let me practice in the 2nd. in a normal pressure or whatever fashion, which is where I think I need the most work, after F in 2nd, it gets unpredictable, and I want to play it over & over etc. w/ o causing others distress .
Something I did last week was went into a big , big open space where Nobody could hear me, and mess up to my hearts delight. I do believe it helped me though
I have a Parks Every whistle that I use for practice. Yes you can have the mute on and still play the full range of the whistle…it is very nice. I do notice it does take more breath on the Every whistle compared to a metal tube whistle. But that is ok…it just makes me strengthen my lungs more so that when I go to my Blackbird, I can play longer between breaths.
It takes a slight playing adjustment, and it doesn’t work exactly the same, but closing the tone ring does make quite a bit of difference in volume, and it still plays into the second register.
You can only lower the volume so much before you end up with mostly a breathy sound, but you can make it quite a bit quieter than the Mellow Dog.
I’m at work right now, so I can’t check it right this second (however I do have it here). If I’m alone later I may give it a try and let you know. If I’m able this evening I’ll try to remember to give you a call and play it over the phone.
I have the Everywhistle Walkabout… You can close the muffler down almost to no opening and still be able to play (relatively) normally. Once you get past about 1/2 to 2/3 closed, though, the pitch changes (can’t remember if it goes sharp or flat) but stays in tune with itself. This shouldn’t be a problem if you’re just using it to practice, though. If you shut it all the way, you can practice fingering but the sound is really only slightly modulated air.
Closing the hole is the equivalent of a longer tube so I would expect the whistle to be flatter and I would also expect this to make the higher notes (in the first octave) to be changed more than the low notes so the tuning will be changed - as to whether this is bad enough to be objectionable I don’t know and while I have played an Every Whistle I did not play it long enough or in a place I could really hear to make any judgements.
As a device to enable quiet practice I’m sure it has merit.
Closing down the tone ring progressively lowers the overall pitch, down to around 1/4 tone flat. The change seems pretty uniform across the range, though, so the whistle stays in tune with itself. Of course, you can then adjust the tuning slide to compensate. The difference in the slide position is only ~3 mm, so the effect on overall intonation is pretty small.
At the 3/4 closed position, the volume difference is roughly -6 dB in the lower register and -10 dB in the upper register. And almost fully closed (around 1.5 mm gap), the difference is roughly -10 db in the lower register and -20 dB in the upper. Significant in either case, and both octaves play normally.
Wow, holy numbers Batman! That’s a great quote. Mind if I add it to my web site? I get the “how quiet” question frequently and tune samples don’t really capture the difference. Even if one doesn’t speak dB you get the idea that it’s a lot. And the upper octave is more of a problem on any whistle so more effect there is a good thing.
I just tell people that one customer told me he can play in bed while his wife is asleep. Really, he did.
And there is enough range in the tuning slide to mute with the tone ring AND play in pretty chilly weather and still tune it up. I like the breathy sound for airs.
My quiet practice whistle is the ‘Shush’ from Big Whistle. It is basically a tweaked Generation, wonderfully quiet, and can be played to a point where it is barely audible. Recommended not to annoy the wife or neighbours !
Sure, Carey, go ahead. Just keep in mind that the readings weren’t done under what you would call strict lab conditions.
I just plopped my Radio Shack digital sound meter (C weighting) about a foot away on the desk. I played D-G-B-d-g-b with the ring in the three positions (open, 1/2, and almost closed) using average breath pressure for each note. Then averaged the differences for each octave. And repeated the procedure to make sure I could reproduce the results.
In theory, -6 dB is about 2/3 volume, -10 dB is half volume, and -20 dB is one-quarter volume.
