I would say that until you’ve got the head piece made, you can’t say precisely where the holes should go and how big they need to be, to get the tuning right. Makes it hard to outsource that part.
Probably, but you could make the head a seperate piece to make it tunable. So far I only made tunable flutes but not whistles. I use square tubes and while it would be possible to make a tuning slide, I haven’t really tried it yet. It would probably be rather time consuming to do it properly with o-rings. So normally I make one piece instruments, starting with the mouthpiece/embouchure holen then cut it to size and drill the holes.
There’s a market for them.
My impression of them is from my decidedly un-Irish point of view, coloured by these factors
-
having spent quite a bit of time in the Hollywood/LA studio musician scene
-
having spent quite a bit of time in the Church music scene
-
having spent some time in the NFA/Boehm flute/Baroque flute scene, attending their conventions etc
which has put me in contact with players coming from a very different place than I did (as pure a trad learning process as was possible here in the 1970s).
What I’ve consistently found is that musicians coming from the “mainstream” music world, recorder players and Boehm fluteplayers and so forth, prefer a quite different sort of whistle than I do.
I see the booths at the NFA conventions, people making incredibly expensive whistles out of Sterling Silver and African Blackwood etc.
It’s the market: a Baroque fluteplayer with an Ebony or African Blackwood flute that cost thousands of dollars, and a Boehm fluteplayer with a Sterling Silver flute costing thousands of dollars, isn’t going to be interested in a Feadog or Generation whistle. In these fluteplayers’ eyes those are mere toys. Their flutes are made by boutique craftspeople using the highest-end materials, and they’re only interested in whistles that are like that.
It doesn’t matter to those fluteplayers that the whistle’s action isn’t nimble enough to play a complicated reel at full speed, or that it’s not efficient enough to play the long high notes of a sean nos air. They’ve never heard trad Irish music, or if they’ve heard it they’ll never play it. In fact most of these boutique whistles will never get played at all. They’re ornamental. They’ll sit on a shelf in the fluteplayer’s living room, more of a conversation piece than a musical instrument. I’ve seen them.
Remember that professional musicians can write off instrument purchases. Buying a thousand dollar instrument on a whim is nothing.
As I’ve mentioned before, I was at a booth of one of these makers a few years ago, and tried a couple $700 sterling silver and ebony whistles. They were virtually unplayable for ITM, with quite stiff intransigent 2nd octaves. I doodled for a bit. The maker asked “how do you like it?”
“The second octave is too stiff for me.”
“That’s what Mary Bergin said when she played one.”
Now if Mary Bergin tells you that, wouldn’t you think you would get it sorted? But this guy’s market isn’t Mary Bergin, or me.
Interesting indeed. I guess those people are really not like us. I am always on the lookout for the best-playing whistle. Easy 2nd octave, highly responsive, etc. And that is what I try to do with the ones I make, too. I wouldn’t have thought there really was a market for 700 dollar silver whistles that don’t really play. Crazy. But I have known people spending 20,000 € on a clarinet. So maybe it isn’t that surprising.
But that also corrects my assumption that “botique” whistle means anything more expensive than a Feadóg. I guess that wasn’t what you meant with “botique” whistles. I think all the slightly “more expensive” whistles that I know of, are still aimed at traditional players looking for the best playing instrument not the best-looking or most expensive. Like Goldie, Tilbury, Carbony, McManus etc. Those are still meant to be played not to sit somewhere on display to be admired.
For sure. With high whistles I want clear notes, a pure clean 2nd octave.
With Low Whistles I’m cool with a dirtier sound, though none of my current Low Whistles are like that.
Seems to me that High B, which is the highest note normally found in trad Irish music, is the trickiest note for whistle makers to get sweet and easy, and that’s one of the first things I check when testing a whistle.
About the 3rd octave, I don’t use that for ITM.
Not sure exactly what you mean there.
I know that that quality, timbral homogeneity, is big with orchestral instruments and performance practices but AFAIK it’s never been a thing in ITM, or for that matter in other trad musics I’ve studied.
My orchestral friends marvel at the uilleann chanter when I play up the scale, one remarked that every note sounds like it comes from a different instrument! It doesn’t bother pipers one bit.
I expect all of my whistles to have intonation as perfect as possible, needle straight up as you play the gamut.
All of the musical factors I look for in high whistles are most perfectly embodied in my vintage Generations and Feadogs.
The closest any boutique whistles have come have been Sindts. The Sindts in D, C, Bb, and A that I owned were very close to my vintage Feadog D and my Generations in C, Bb, and A, but the “cheap” whistles were IMHO just a tiny bit better. In each case the “cheap” whistle had a tad more nimble/sweet 2nd octave, a tad more colour to the timbre, and a tad better tuning.
For me, if a whistle doesn’t have a beautiful tone I’m not interested. Obviously, that is purely subjective, and varies from one person to another. It needs to play easily and well too, of course. I’ve owned a bunch of high D’s, including all the inexpensive ones and a couple of tweaked ones. I’ve also owned quite a few expensive ones. I’ve liked many of them, but the only one I’ve kept, first because I preferred it’s tone the most, and also because it plays so effortlessly is my Killarney. I love everything about it. I have never heard or played an inexpensive whistle that sounds as good. I have no interest in getting another high D, the Killarney is a home run for me.
As far as low D’s, my MK-Pro is overall the best sounding and playing whistle I’ve tried. I love how it sounds, the tone is drop dead beautiful. It’s also effortless to play. That said, I like my Optima almost as much, it sounds great too, but not quite as beautiful as the MK. It plays easily and well, again almost as well as the MK. The lowest two notes aren’t as solid, loud or as easy to play as the MK and some finger articulations are a little tricker to pull off, but it’s not a big issue for me. The Optima is a little more air efficient than the MK, and it’s a lot lighter and less tiring to play for a long time. It also barely needs to be warmed up and never clogs. I play the Optima more than the MK, it’s a slightly better practice whistle and is ideal for quickly picking up to knock out a tune. The MK is my performance whistle. I played it for several people in a Yoga studio with awesome acoustics and I could see right away the sound amazed them. It sounded incredible. The Optima sounded great in there too, but not as rich and powerful as the MK. If the Optima is considered an inexpensive low D, then I would say it’s like with high D’s, it holds it’s own with far more expensive low D’s.
For me Killarney and Sindt have been the only two modern whistles that sound and play like my classic Feadogs and Generations.
Though concerning tone, the Sindt was a hair darker/rounder than the Killarney, which had a subtle metallic edge to the tone in the 2nd octave. Better than either was the tone of my c1980 Feadog, which had a little extra something, a bit more complexity or character.
The Sindt’s 2nd octave was both a tad stiffer and a tad flatter than either the Killarney or the Feadog. (That was my first Killarney D. My second had a dirtier and stiffer 2nd octave than the first.)
I agree the MK has a special tone, unique in my experience. So many Low Ds lose character in the 2nd octave but the MK’s 2nd octave retains plenty of colour. It’s strange I suppose to fall in love with a particular note, but for me E in the 2nd octave was the best note on the MK, and no other Low D could match it.
I loaned my MK to a friend who was just getting into Low Ds and was trying various makes. He gave it back saying “I just can’t wrap my head around the tone”. He wanted a pure-sounding Low D. I love the MK’s complex dirty tone.
If you’re in to complex tone I recommend that you try a Reyburn, which like the MK has a unique tone that sets it apart from all others. It has something of the Native American flute in it.
About timbral homogeneity, let’s see with some ITM instruments.
Here’s the pipes. Yes we’re used to how it all sounds but my orchestral friends are amazed how each note has a unique timbre, for example the growl of Hard Bottom D compared to the nasal bite of C natural and the sweetness of F# in the 2nd octave etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsN4rY1D83o
and here the flute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSpaYzZ-Wi8
What you hear is these players, one could say, going out of their way to emphasize the differences in timbre that different notes on their instruments can achieve, rather than eliminate these, as orchestral musicians are trained to do.
Even more so in Bulgarian music! On recordings one at first might not realise that the sweet high whistle-like sound and the gravelly low flute sound are coming from the same instrument