I finally faced the music and bought the ultimate low D for small hands.
It arrived today and I instantly lost all motivation to learn the high D whistle.
The whistle is a rich brown, much less orange or red than the website picture. But I believe rosewood can vary quite a bit. It’s not a problem, but I do like orangey woods the best.
The beak is short and quite thick, to the point of being slightly uncomfortable. This also means you only have a small range of ways you can hold the whistle to keep solid contact with your lips. This is probably a good thing in the long run. You know, posture, posture, posture!
The E hole looks like an ovoid as opposed to being perfectly round.
I’m at work, so I could only sneak out a few soft notes and they are so sweet!
I just wanted to make sure I have the first day facts correct:
The Rosewood version does not need oiling. The Blackwood version does.
The whistle is in tune when the head touches the second o-ring.
There is no break in period for this whistle.
The fit is very tight, so cork grease is a must.
I have a slotted wooden cleaning rod and some silk swabs for flutes. Should swab after each playing.
I believe I read a discussion among low-term owners of these whistles who recommend not taking them apart after each playing to lengthen the life of the internal cork. Just make sure to swab them out after each use. Did I get that right?
Now here is the puzzling thing. To my surprise, I can finger it without the piper’s grip. I would need a lot of practice to gain flexibility and speed, but I need a lot of practice any way. On the other hand, I do like the sound of metal low whistles and maybe I should stick with piper’s grip (I have a few weeks experience) on this whistle so I can more easily tackle other low whistles in the future. On the other hand, maybe I should sign up for ukulele lessons.
I play mine (Dymondwood) with regular grip and can finger it quite easily. So does my wife, who couldn’t handle my former Copeland or Burke. I LOVE this low D!
The real question is: what is the angle of your wrists? How bent and awkward?
It may be that pipers grip, with the hands slanted so that the rt (bottom) hand
covers the hole at the mid-finger will give you a straighter wrist.
If your wrists are OK without piper’s, fine. If not, I would do pipers.
Nobody agrees about oil. I don’t oil anything. Also Sweetheart flutes are
soaked in tung oil and are nearly impervious to moisture, so as to
minimize the need for oiling. I wouldn’t worry about oil, personally.
I play lots of sweethearts and never oil them and never have
had any problems.
The Sweetheart low D’s are fantastic for tone and hand comfort.
I’d be inclined to retain something of the piper’s grip - you don’t want to fall out of practice, just in case you want to use a more traditional whistle for variety.
That said, the Sweetheart is the only low D I can use a first-pad finger technique on.
With all your first-day questions: Did the whistle not come with an instruction chart?? If not, I’d email the Sweets for a copy. As I recall they recommend storing the whistle detached to save the cork from compression. Mind you, I have heard varying reports one way or the other.
I have also heard all kinds of varous stuff about oiling. Whisle Sweetheart whistles have had a lot of effort put into sealing the wood, I would not fail to oil any wooden whistle - at the very least it will give it a nice look
Swabbing is something that every wooden whistle should get - if only to keep the greeblies out of it!
With oiled-wood whistles - fail to oil + fail to swab = the whistle might become a bag full of splinters in a very short time.
IT all very much depends on the wood being used and what the maker has decided is a reasonable level of sealant to produce the result. For instance, tonewoods suitable for whistles are already quite resistant to moisture. The maker must then decide if the sound of that wood is worth preserving. If it is, then he/she will not encase it in plastic. Surely there is nothing wrong with a wood-colored plastic whistle. Then again, some sealants are good at firming the grain without altering it, but can be semi-permeable and still require oil. There are a ton of variables in all that - the sum total of which is: consult the maker for the care required for the whistle. If you accept opinions on a buletin board you may be getting good advice for a whistle you don’t have.
(Edited to say: regarding the O rings and tuning: I understand that the maker has designed the whistle to be in tune with the O-ring spacing required at the altitude, temperature and humidity in which the whistle was made. YOur conditions will probably be different add the number of O-rings needed where you most often play the whistle .. download one of the free tuner programs if you need to check. These O-rings are a standard hardware-store item - they are very handy for “fixing” the tuning for your environment simply by having enough O-rings in place - much more convenient than hunting for the thing every time you re-assemble the whistle! (it’s a function of having to dissassemble the whistle every time you put it away - as the care chart suggests … unless they have changed that policy in the last year or so!))
I think all the bases are covered, you seem to have all the Sweet’s care instructions correct. They do list them on their site if you need to double check.
I’ve played a pair of solid rosewood Sweethearts for about 20 years now. Their tung oil treatment and the fact that they are rosewood does make them nearly water-proof, yet I oil them several times a year just to help clean the gunk and give them a nice shine. Oil may not be necessary, but it doesn’t seem to hurt them either.
Mitch is right about the endless opinions and techniques of oiling. It’s a big subject because there are so many makers with so many woods, designs, treatments, and recommendations, not to mention so many players with their own personal experiences. Stick with the Sweet’s recomendations unless/until you see a reason to change.
As to the cork, the one thing I’ll say is that I spoke to Ralph Sweet directly on this subject. He advises that should the cork become compressed it will need to be replaced at his shop. Unlike conventional corking, it is not a DIY project. He does say that he has had none returned since they introduced the design a couple of years back. I’m a player that leaves things assembled forever and simply re-cork every eight or ten years as needed. I prefer their old design that can accomodate traditional corking for that reason. I’m pretty leary of the internal cork design, as I don’t think it’s seen enough road testing for my taste.
The beak does take a lot of getting used to, but once it becomes familiar you’ll be doing everything you do with any other whistle. It only seems restrictive at first.
I can’t say anything about piper’s grip, as I don’t use it on even the largest whistles.
As i understand it, changes in a flute or whistle’s pitch are entirely dependent on air temperature (of the air in the bore) and not on altitude (air pressure) or humidity (the humidity comes from one’s breath). An instrument’s pitch is usually designed for playing at room temperature. If one plays outside in cold air the air column needs to be shorter for the same pitch, so a slide needs to be shortened. If you play in a hot desert, the slide needs to be extended. It does not matter if the whistle is made on top of a mountain and you live beside the sea.
It’s my understanding that elevation is not a factor in tuning, however, temperature is the MAIN factor with relative humidity a secondary factor. The speed of sound varies with change in temperature and humidity so its not just the temperature of the whistle and the humidity in the tube that matters but the temperature and relative humidity of the ambient air. When its hotter the speed of sound increases from the sound source to the listeners ear which increases the pitch (sorta like the doppler affect when a train whistle is approaching and the tone goes up).
Thanks for the corrections! I once tried to find on the web a formula for the speed of sound in air including a factor for the relative humidity of the air, but was not successful. Various webpages mentioned that water vapour makes the air denser, but none said how much.
But as you say, temperature is the main factor, and it is a big factor. Ten centigrades more adds about 10mm to a low D.
I’m sticking with piper’s grip. I was showing off my new whistle and playing bits of “Merrily We Go Along” to demonstrate the sound to neighbors and friends. The more I did this, the more I realized how awkwardly I was holding the whistle to keep up the normal grip. I think Jim Stone hit it on the head there.
The whistle comes with a tiny slip of paper that goes with all the whistles. Speaking as a technical writer, surely each separate design deserves its own care sheet. I read all the FAQs on the Sweet website and these helped me work out the issues.
Heh - temperature, humidity and altitude (air pressure) all affect the speed of sound in your whistle - it’s just physics - you can ignore one or the other if you want, but the physics won’t change: more humidity=higher pitch, more temperature=higher pitch, more altitude(less air pressure)=higher pitch.
In practice, what this all means is that there will be a different equilibrium point reached when your whistle “warms-up” depending on the ambient air conditions. That will also affect the rate at which the whistle “cools-down” and needs to be warmed-up again. As it warms-up it increases in pitch - best to tune AFTER it reaches equilibrium.
Then again, with a whistle, you can adjust the note with breath pressure .. it’s just a little easier if the whistle is just-about-right when you “tune” it to the other instruments in play .. damn distracting if you have to be forcing every note into tune.
The O-rings are only needed if you dissasemble the whistle and want to return it to a pre-set tuning point. Makes sense to me, so long as you understand that it will be different as the temperature, humidity and altitude change …
Then again .. if there’s more than one fiddler in the session, with each having a different idea of “in-tune” all that goes out the window and the whistle can be tuned wherever it likes (sharp seems to sound better than flat) - for this reason, an orchestra needs to have a bunch of fiddlers so that it all gets “smeared-out” into a pleasand blur and the audience is non the wiser .. with whistles, it gets a little bit of a worry if only 2 whistles are at work - if they are out of tune, the result is unpleasant .. I suppose if there were 4 or more you would get that smeared-orchestra affect.
Tuning schmuning - who cares? I just like that the Sweets took the time, thought and effort to add the O-rings
(Edited to say: OF COURSE TUNING IS IMPORTANT - I know here is a kind of hokey charm about listening to a dreadfully out-of-tune irish session .. but it makes my stomache churn - when the players take the time to get in tune (to each other) - then the real message of the tunes manifests and the music succeeds .. anything less is like splashing around in a cliche’d mockery of music with the tune occuring only in the players minds.. historic value only .. )
Those pages were wrong. Surprisingly, considering how it feels, humidity makes the air less dense. So what mitch said.
(its physics - H2O molecules lighter than O2 and N2)
Humidity of air seems to be a very small factor in speed of sound: an increase of 0.1% - 0.6% as i read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound
And air pressure is no factor at all in ideal gases, and too small to matter in air.
Variously it is mentioned that the speed of sound decreases with altitude, but this is only the case because of the decrease of air temperature, not the atmospheric pressure.
In gases, compressibility and density are related, making other compositional effects important. Low molecular weight gases, such as helium, sound propagates faster compared to heavier gases, such as xenon. In a given ideal gas the sound speed depends only on its temperature. At a constant temperature, the ideal gas pressure has no effect on the speed of sound, because pressure and density (also proportional to pressure) have equal but opposite effects on the speed of sound, and the two contributions cancel out exactly. In a similar way, compression waves in gases depend both on compressibility and density—just as in liquids—but in gases the density contributes to the compressiblity in such a way that some part of each attribute factors out, leaving only a dependence on temperature, molecular weight, and heat capacity (see derivations below). Thus, for a single given gas (where molecular weight does not change) and over a a small temperature range (where heat capacity is relatively constant), the speed of sound becomes dependent on temperature-only.
In non-ideal gases, such as a van der Waals gas, the proportionality is not exact, and there is a slight dependence on the gas pressure, even at a constant temperature. Humidity also has a small, but measurable effect on sound speed (increase of about 0.1%-0.6%), because some oxygen and nitrogen molecules of the air are replaced by the lighter molecules of water.
So temperature remains as the main factor concerning tuning.
Yes, seems so.
I did just find some stuff suggesting that increasing CO2 in the players breath could change the pitch by several cents in long phrases, but I won’t divert the thread any further - and the original web link for the info is broken.
