There is an an optimum value for the diameter of a length of tube that gives the maximum Q value. For those not up on there their physics the higher the Q for a resonant system the more it wants to resonate.
Making a tube of a particular length too narrow or too wide will result in the tube ‘not wanting to resonate’.
Now a whistle (as opposed to a pipe organ pipe) has to resonate over a range of frequencies which makes the choice of a diameter more ‘interesting’ and a compromise.
Because as a player (who knows nothing of math or physics, I leave that stuff to my sister who has degrees in both) I can feel a distinct difference between the best instruments, say a bagpipe drone, bagpipe chanter, whistle, or flute: they have a “willingness” or “eagerness” to sound. They don’t have to be coaxed or forced, they want to resonate.
You play a couple hundred wooden flutes and a few stand out in this regard from the rest, the ones that almost play themselves.
With Low D whistles, I’ve gone through dozens of them since giving up the flute around a decade ago, and rare is the one that plays like that.
I recently sold my 110-year-old set of Highland pipes due to ivory now being illegal. I replaced it with one of the best sets being made on the planet today, but the difference is clear, the old drones having a locked-in eagerness to sound that no modern pipe does, as far as I’ve seen.
Without doing the math, I feel like it must be possible to create a tapered bore that would yield the optimal average diameter bore for each tone hole. This would be an interesting and expensive experiment. Anyone have a CNC machine to create a reamer to these specifications?
Hi guys,
this thread inspired me to make a new DIY whistle (low D) - this time with a proper fipple block - so far I only made whistles with Quena-style mouthpieces (or transverse flutes) as they’re easier to make (yet harder to play) and suffer less from a flat second octave (don’t really know why however),
I took a PVC-tube with a 2.8 cm bore and used this page to calculate the holes: http://people.adams.edu/~rjastalos/Flutes/6-holeFlutomat.html
I wanted to keep it as minimalistic as possible so it only has two parts - the tube and the fipple block.
Here’s some pics with my Chieftain v.4 Low D for comparison:
As you can see the holes don’t need to be any bigger - in fact some are actually smaller than on the Chieftain and the spacing is also more comfy - I can play it without piper’s grip if I want to.
However the already mentioned problems occured:
it gets more and more out of tune the higher you go
the 2nd octave is hard to reach and only sounds good until you reach the G5
Well - it is playable but I’m not really satisfied - at least now I know that a simplistic design for the head actually works as I wasn’t sure of that.
Yes, those two go together: With a larger tube, you need larger holes to keep the second octave in tune.
And those two go together as well. With the soundblade above the windway like that, I’d suspect you’d have trouble getting a clean sound over the whole range.
I think I’ll try the same design with a smaller bore or I’ll modify this one.
However I don’t think the size of the holes matters much as my low C whistle with the Quena mouthpiece design has even smaller holes and is perfectly in tune. I think I’ll have to check that again however. At least it’s much better in tune than this one.
Edit: just checked and the low C is in fact much better in tune and has smaller holes for the G and B - they’re 6 mm and on this one here they’re 8 mm. Too bad I can’t try the Quena mouthpiece design on the larger bore as it doesn’t work because you cannot properly cover the tube with this large bore. I could modify it with an inner ring but I guess that will affect tuning, too.
Edit again: I didn’t take into consideration that the bore of the low C is 6mm smaller so it might indeed be the small holes together with my messed up windway design that led to the poor result. I’ll have to do some heavy redesigning…
Hi,i agree with everyone on this topic…but yeah i made …well tried to make an overton style low whistle in D i went with the specs of my aluminium whistle and decided to make it out of a different cheaper type of african blackwoo…the bore was a ridiculous 22mm wide and i made the fipple from blackwood as well i used a few tips on the internet by a flute maker in australia who no longer makes flutes (im pretty sure hes not making proffessionally anymore any way) i have to say that this guy sent e a flute even though i disnt actually order one from him…no ones done that before and it inspired me to extend the same type of thing where i send a practice set to so e one who is without a set at all but wants ro learn…while im making the set ,and at the end a simple return policy policy is in place,however half of my practice sets get sold to another begginner.
Anyway…i made this huge bored whistle and it was sucsessful
However mike grinter told me that i could do the same thing with a lot smaller bore,which i totally agreed with but didn’t pursue it any futher.
All in all it was a sucsessful endeavore nice tone and easy to play wich means no one ran out of breath playing it…it has alot to do with the delicate sharpness of the fipple it was quite an eye opener, so i was happy.if any one wants one let me know.
22mm bore diameter for a low D whistle seems to me a good and fairly optimal size, not ridiculous large.
Making a low D with a lot thinner bore will most likely result in a whistle with a weak bottom end, as well as increasing finger stretches.
A tapered bore may help to bring second octave tuning into line, i.e. eliminating the second octave notes from being flat. But it will not provide optimal Q for each note over the range of the whistle. Such is impossible, as we play over two octaves. As highwood wrote because of the range of frequencies a whistle produces, we need to make a compromise when choosing the diameter of a whistle tube, and adding a taper is not eliminating the compromise. The usual compromise whistle makers choose, out of experience rather than theoretical calculation, is that a whistle’s ease to resonate (the Q factor) is not optimised for the bell note, but a note much higher up from it, about a sixth I say, which provides good speaking over two octaves. This is something organ makers do not need to consider, and whistle maker consider empirically, by aiming for a balance between bottom end and second octave higher end.
Expanding on this … “Optimal Q” would suggest a large bore for the low notes and a small bore for the high notes. For one octave, this would suggest an expanding taper, exactly the opposite of the contracting taper that some whistles have to bring second octave tuning into line. And the bore size for “optimal Q” in the second octave would be totally different from that in the first octave.
On top of this, for a whistle, Q is a more than a simple function of bore size. The window and open toneholes offer more places for resistive losses, and the steady-state (DC) flow of air through the pipe increases viscous losses (see the Liljencrants paper that highwood links to above).
The Pipers’ Guildhttp://www.pipersguild.org/ promote the use of larger-bore whistle-like instruments. Out of interest I bought their leaflet and made a “treble” (high D) instrument to their dimensions from a piece of 3/4" bore bamboo. It plays nicely up to F# in the second octave with a very “different” quiet tone, very suitable for the repertoire they recommend.
There are also dimensions for “alto” (in G) and “tenor” (in D) pipes using approx. 1" and 1 1/4" bore material.
I have seen reference to inserting a partial baffle just below the mouthpiece which has the effect of extending the range of these instruments, but I can’t find it at the moment.
