When I started out on the whistle I got my sharps/flats by halfholing, but now I find myself generally crossfingering. I don’t know when I made the change. Perhaps it came from playing recorder–I don’t know. Has anyone else converted?
Crossfingering…I keep seeing that word and have never asked; what is that?
On 2002-05-19 19:21, lollycross wrote:
Crossfingering…I keep seeing that word and have never asked; what is that?
Crossfingering is when you cross your fingers and hope you’re playing the accidentals in tune.
Not all soprano whistles allow “in tune” cross fingering options apart from C nat.My Susato Dublin D acurately plays 1st oct G# XXOXXX, A# XOXXXX and 2nd oct Fnat XXXOXX…no chance on my generation. 
Peace, Mike
Yes, that’s true, on some of them crossfingering doesn’t work so well (as evidenced by another recent thread).I only do what the whistle allows me to.
On 2002-05-19 19:21, lollycross wrote:
Crossfingering…I keep seeing that word and have never asked; what is that?
Lollycross - Crossfingering as I understand the term is generally used to describe any abnormal fingering. “Abnormal” meaning that you have an open hole, then one or more closed holes, then the end of the whistle. In playing a normal note on a whistle (in the first octave at least), you would not have any covered holes between the note being played and the end of the whistle.
For instance, this is not cross fingering: XXXXOO
But on my laughing whistle, if I want to play c natural and not half hole, I have to use this crossfingering: OXXXOX
I use both techniques-- probably comes from recorder playing. Sometimes one is simply easier than the other. I would urge players to learn both ways of playing notes. The more tools at your disposal, the more versatile your playing will be.
BTW-- I used to half hole by sort of pulling the finger in towards my palm, thus uncovering part of the hole away from my hand. Now, I simply flatten my finger a bit, using the edge of the hole closest to my palm as a fulcrum and allowing the tip of the finger to rock up a bit. Much less repositioning of the finger is required. I use this for sliding notes up also.
I find myself half holing most of the time. It’s much more in tune, but it’s more difficult to do well - if done badly, you get loads of glissandi all over the place!
I reckon I probably use half-holing techniques all the time, to compensate for some dodgy tunings in my whistles (that and air pressure).
For a run of B-cnat-d, I can’t see how you can halfhole without it sounding as a slide.
For other notes like fnat, I use half holing in particular tunes, but I started out cross fingering Cnat as 0XX000 and I’m happy with that usually.
I can get an approximate Fnat through cross fingering XXX0XX, but it feels awkward.
One problem with cross fingering, Lolly, is that what works varies from whistle to whistle. At least with half-holing its down to the player to get it right!