Do you leave the top hole open when you play high D? Why or why not?
I have left it open till now, because the books tell you to, but I think it makes more sense to just leave it down…
Depends on the whistle and the tune. Keeping it closed is easier, especially in fast tunes, but sometimes the transition to/from the surrounding tones sounds better when I have it open. And my Gen Bb doesn’t like it closed.
the only whistle I have that it makes any noticable difference on is my serpent, so, um, no, I don’t. I probably should on the serpent as the note comes out a bit odd sounding if I don’t but, you know, force of habit and all…
As far as how it affects your playing - whatever works best for you in any given situation is fine. But…if you are planning on entering competitions - or the All Ireland Fleadh - points can be subtracted for not having your top finger off for high D…ridiculous, maybe, but if you want to play their game, you have to follow their rules.
How in the world do you do a cut on D if the top hole is open? If you lift any finger except R3, the pitch goes down to C or C#, not up.
On many whistles the tone is sweeter and louder
with the top finger raised–but this concern
can be trumped by others in particular
cases.
Indeed. On my Burkes, the tone is sweeter with the top hole closed. When I raise the top finger, I can distinctly hear the second harmonic overtone (an octave higher), which makes it sound louder but also slightly more strident.
It depends on the whistle. However I tend to do it open when flipping up quickly. That’s just because that’s the fingering on a Boehm flute and it’s what I’m used to. It seems though that the combination of fingers that make a good D vary depending on the particular instrument.
I use both fingerings, depending. On whistle, I don’t think it makes a shred of difference. On the flute, xxx xxx gives a bit of a dirtier sound, which is effective if the d is an a position I want to accent (e.g. the backbeat). On both instruments, I always use the oxx xxx fingering for middle-d cranns, because as Ridsard observed,
If you lift any finger except R3, the pitch goes down to C or C#, not up
Which makes for a nice hard rattly-sounding crann.
Ro3b,
Do you do the middle-D crann by sequentially lifting and replacing
L3, R1, R3?
Bill
I find on most of my whistles that I get a better high D by overblowing the G fingering xxx 000 than overblowing a D fingering. This one doesn’t seem to work nearly as well with the first hole open ( 0xx 000 )
I think you are an octave higher than the D cranberry
is asking about. There is the low D, the high D,
and the third octave D, we might say.
Yes, there are lots of ways of getting the third
octave D.
By the way, it’s possible to get
finger tremelo on the high D
by tapping the index finger.
If you go to this webpage:
http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/
and click on the section titled “Not lifting a finger”, you’ll get a nice distillation of when it might be appropriate to lift that top finger or not from an economy-of-motion point of view. And if you haven’t been to Bro. Steve’s webpage at all yet, the whole shebang is a worthy place to spend some time.
I use both fingerings, depending on context and what whistle I’m playing. That probably doesn’t help you much, but Bro. Steve’s site will give you some good pointers. It’ll be up to you to determine what fingering works best on your particular whistle, in different circumstances.
Have fun,
Aaron
Do you do the middle-D crann by sequentially lifting and replacing
L3, R1, R3?
It depends. 
I do use the same cuts for the lower-octave and higher-octave D’s, if that’s what you mean. If you go to my website, you’ll find out more than you ever wanted to know. (Sorry about the popups.)
your avatar is too scary. 