I’ve got a question for flute playas out here…and it’s about the Hard-D effect on
a whistle
Is that ever possible on whistles with physical breath flow concentration / acoustic tweaking etc? My Cillian Low D is seriously weak on the lower 1st octave notes, so I tried the trick on playing sideways so that my breath is flowing from, say, circa 50 degrees tilted to NW which seemed to work on Susato and Overton…sort of, but never as loud or hard-D-ish as I’d like it to be.
Any thoughts?
Perhaps i should learn to play a fulte first, but
If you have really good breath control, preferably playing an untweaked cheapie you can blow the D right between the octaves. That sounds almost like a hard-D. I do it sometimes without thinking about it.
“Hard D” is a term I’ve only ever heard used in reference to piping. I was unaware that a flute or whistle could do this without a reed. I was under the impression that hard d required the reed to be overblown while still holding the first octave due to closed fingering and the ensuing bore length of the chanter. I would think this would be impossible to replicate on a non-reeded instrument.
I think Matt Molloy was the first one to use it on a flute. (Matt Molloy from A guide to the irish flute)
"The hard D, that’s hit and miss too. It’s never going to sound like the pipes. You’re talking about a reed instrument, as opposed to blowing across an embouchure. So you’re never going to crack it as good as you would like.
Q: Is it [the hard D] in the embouchure or the fingers?
A: Well, it’s both. It sort of has become an ornament that can be done on flutes, and some players are doing it quite effectively now. It’s no big deal really."
The hard-D on a flute, for me is accieved chiefly by overblowing the first octave D but with soft lips- too soft for the flute to pop up to the second octave, the embouchure is also a bit too unfocused at this point. It sounds really good in some tunes, but sertainly sounds better on a flute than on a whistle, and surely better still on a pipe. It’s just another piping ornament wich people have incorporated in flute playing, another example is the almighty “cran”.
A hard D can definately by applied on a whistle. Certain whistles lend them semselves to it better than others. I’ve had best luck with Overtons and Abells, but I find it really be done with any whistle (this includes generations, Sindts, etc).
Not being a piper, this is the first I’ve heard of a hard D. From what you are all saying, it is a D that sounds simultaneously in both octaves. Is this right?
If it is right then there are some whistles that play hard, Ds, Es, F#s and so on whether you want them or not. These are not whistles you would want to own.
There are two bottom Ds on a (correctly working) uilleann pipe chanter: the soft D, which is often a bit flat of pitch, and the hard D, which is (ideally) spot on, and louder. The way it was explained to me, the hard D is the note plus a strong harmonic note - the A in the second octave - and some additional harmonics in there as well. The hard D creates certain problems of a sort in piping - you have to silence the note sometimes before moving on, or you’ll find yourself inadvertantly playing in the second octave. This is one of those peculiarities which pipers just learn to deal with somehow, like the way the fingering which is most in tune varies from chanter to chanter.
Listen to a piper’s bottom D, you will hear a very penetrating note, much stronger than the notes directly above it. That is the hard D. D Crans on many chanters involve the hard D and soft D “battling for supremacy” in a way, although the hard D should come out last. Some chanters have a hard E as well.
