Hello everybody. What a nice place!
I´m from Norway, and bought my first whistle some months ago, an high D Alba. I have just spent the last two nights bending my fingers round a new low D Overton. Tough! :roll:
Being a beginner does not prevent me from wanting more whistles, and I´m thinking of getting a C, and a Bb, at least, so I can easier play whith others in different keys. I will also in time like a (low) G and A.
I like my Alba, but have nothing to compare with and no whistles to try ,so any advice would be great!
After searching the web it seems to me that a set of David O´Briens whistles would be interesting and affordable to try out.
But which material should i go for, fipplewise? Listening to his soundclips, i like copper the best, with delrin in second place. But I have the impression that the recording conditions vary a bit, and that the quality of the whistles also maybe vary a bit to. What do you think? Are the different materials very different to play?
Any thoughts on this and on these whistles in general would be very apreciated. (I have read the rewiew)
Any tips on G and A whistles would be great to. Copeland seems obvious, but not cheap…any good wooden alternatives?
My favorites all have plastic (Delrin or CPVC) plugs. Some have metal for the tubular part of the mouthpiece.
Unfortunately, I don’t have an Alba (yet), so I can’t tell you how other whistles might compare or contrast with it. However, I bet a Busman would be pretty different (though not particualry inexpensive).
I bought one of David O’Brien’s whistles back in October and got the copper fipple with the nickel plating (also got the entire whistle nickel plated). I love it! I thought it had the best sound out of all the plugs he had on his site. It was, indeed, a very good investment, and I’m soon planning on buying a C body from him.
I haven’t tried out all the other fipple plugs, but I definitely am very happy with the copper.
OK, I am probably going to be a bit contraversial here. I am a small-time whistlesmith working in both metal and wood. I have used both for fipples as well as other man-made materials. It is my opinion that it is not really the material of the fipple that alters the tone, but the material of the body.
In essence, it is the fipple that forms the windway, that creates the airflow, that hits the fipple blade, that sets up the vibration that creates the note. It matters not what material forms that windway, it is what happens to the airflow AFTER it leaves the fipple (windway) that affects the final tone of the instrument.
I can take a fipple off one of my copper whistles and put it onto a stainless steel body and the character of the note changes tangibly. Indeed it will change slightly between raw copper and chrome plated copper. The resonance of the body is different because of the change in material.
Variances in the configuration of the windway and blade will affect the way that the note is created and and differences in the shape and surface integrity of the windway will also affect the purity of the airflow, again affecting the purity of the vibration/note but this is dependant on detail and accuracy rather than the actual material.
I would welcome an informed debate on this topic.
PS I would support your interest in O’Brien instruments. I’ve got one and it is a beauty. Mine are pretty good to by the way!
From my standpoint, as a whistle-making high school physics teacher, the fipple material does have an effect on the sound. When vibrations cross a boundary between two materials, as they do between the copper body and the delrin, oak or lucite fipple of one of my whistles, some of them are damped. Most vibrations transmit across the boundary and others reflect. As the graphs on my website show, the spikes for the overtones vary, depending on the fipple material. A copper fipple gives the brightest sound because none of the vibrations are damped since there is no two-material boundary.
And even from a total layman’s point of view (laymen = someone who knows NOTHING about making whistles or physics or anything of that sort), I could definitely hear a difference in sound on the clips provided.
I belive you are right, but I also would think that mr O´Brien has a point regarding the interaction of different materials.
Actually I find it a bit peculiar that so far I have not found any descriptions on the differences in sound between the various materials used in whistles. There ought to be some differences when it comes to playing them aswell. For instance copper heats up more easily than alu, and wood will probably keep the temperature longer than any metal…right?
O´Brien: I take it you think that the differenses I hear on your clips will be the differenses i get?
Nice to be able to communicate this easy with you, by the way!
…and that goes for the rest of you to! Thanks for sharing your experience with me!
I was convinced that there were differences by the graphs that I included on my site. A whistle with a copper fipple had the highest overtone spikes and others had lower, but different patterns of overtones.
conventional scientific wisdom says that it’s not so much the material but the construction. I believe I’ve seen references here to a Scientific American article where someone made a concrete flute to prove the theory.Ah, here’s an article about the article: http://www.makersgallery.com/concrete/other.html
The article makes the point that while physicists have “dozens” of studies proving that material doesn’t make any difference in flute construction, but that musicians often don’t believe them.
I believe whistles are different than flutes…we have the whole fipple block and windway thing that they don’t have. I don’t know if that makes any difference to the physics, but Mr. O’Brien makes what appears to be a sound argument that it does.
I am of two minds on the subject. I’ve heard nickel and brass copleands played side by side, and was unable to tell the difference. I’ve also heard “plasticy” sounding susatos, and wooden sounding sweethearts. So, it don’t know if it’s a subjective phenomenon or a real one.
