I have been using Brother Steve’s tin whistles pages (http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/) to practice with. I have noticed that as I work through the cuts under twiddle bits that when I ascend the scale from low D to the high D the cut utilizing the lifted G finger (cut using A) rather than play the upper A it jumps down to the lower A. Is this a whistle trait (I am playing this on a Clarke; waiting on my Burke ) or is this an issue of breath control? My main instrument has been trumpet and I often “overblow” the whistle so I am trying to be conservative with my airflow. Yet as I experiment with different airflows I can’t seem to get the upper A to cut.
In my experience cuts in the second octave sound better the closer they are placed to note being cut. So I would cut the middle d with R2 or R1. The e and f# and g in the second octave tend to cut with the L3, a with L2 and b with L1 (of course).
You may want to also try venting the middle d: oxx xxx rather than xxx xxx.
Strange… I’ve come to really like the always-cut-high method. However, because I
play a vented D, it doesn’t work.
On low D, I cut:
xxx xxx note
xox xxx cut
xxx xxx note
But on vented high D this doesn’t work, because oox xxx is a weird sound and trying to
go from oxx xxx to xox xxx has some finger-tangling tendency and doesn’t come out very
sharp for me, so I cut,
oxx xxx note
oxx xox cut
oxx xxx note
At E, I cut with xox xxo (cut fingering).
But, when I cut, it’s an articulation cut, not really a grace note at all, so I can’t possibly tell you if it’s in the upper or the lower octave. All I know is it starts the next note with a good pop.
(All of these fingers are kinda mostly usually sorts of things, I tend to form fingering habits specific to the tune, and since I ornament differently on the flute, when I switch back to the whistle it sometimes gets the flute cuts instead, where I tend to stay closer to the ornamented note.)
I don’t think it’s breath control..
I think it’s a matter of the relationship between the breath pressure of the 2nd octave D and the 1st octave A.
I noticed this exact thing happening this morning on the Jerry-tweaked Sweetone I’m testing. On whistles that seem to blow easier in the 2nd octave (like my Burke) this cut (using G finger) seems to work better.
As Bloomfield says, venting the middle d: oxx xxx rather than xxx xxx will work wonders, as the grace note sounded will then be c-naturalish (oxo xxx) rather than 1st octave a, which sounds a lot better.
) or is this an issue of breath control? My main instrument has been trumpet and I often “overblow” the whistle so I am trying to be conservative with my airflow. Yet as I experiment with different airflows I can’t seem to get the upper A to cut.