OK, pure beginner here, been playing a Feadog D for about a month now and play just fine within the first octave, but once I get above the high D it gets very difficult to get the higher note alone as the lower note seems to creep in there. This is particularly difficult when I try to slur notes, but I have had some success in separating the lower octave note out by tonguing, but this doesn’t sound exactly right (I don’t hear much tonguing in the tunes I’ve listened to). Thus the question: how do you play high notes without having lower notes also sound? Is it my whistle? Is it me? More practice?
It may be the whistle, but more likely it is your technique. High notes need a bit more air pressure in order to start speaking cleanly. Most beginners are simply too hesitant to blow harder. Tongueing a bit does indeed help. Experiment with the difficult notes-- blow the note in the lower octave, then blow quite hard. The note may come out very harsh, too sharp, you may even get a higher overtone. Now try the note again, blowing just a wee bit softer. Somewhere between the low octave note, and the really bad, too high note is a sweet spot where you will find the second octave note nice and clearly. This will greatly from note to note, and whistle to whistle.
If you can, try to have an experienced whistler check out your particular whistle to make sure it is playing OK. It is possible to tweak a whistle to make this easier, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could ruin the whistle.
Part of the challenge of making a good whistle is voicing it so that the transition from low register to high register does NOT take a lot of extra breath, and all notes sound sweet and clear.
Second the above. Keep at it, and also
try another whistle–different brand.
The Clarke Sweetone is cheap and
reliable.
I personally don’t enjoy practicing anything but tunes, but you might try a technique that’s also very handy for testing out new whistles (not dispositive but helpful). Go up and down the scale, sounding first the lower octave then the higher of each note, one note after another. This may help you to identify easily the different breath required for each octave and will help to test new whistles as a by-product. Regards, Philo
This may not be pertinent, but for a first octave Cnat, oxxooo sounds better on my new whistle; the second octave requires oxxxxo to be in tune.
thanks much guys
Well, I tweaked my feadog. First I boiled it to get the glue to soften, but the mouthpiece wouldn’t come off. So I froze it. Then I boiled it. The plastic got all wrinkled and gross, and then I soaked it in nailpolish remover. THEN the mouthpiece came off. After all that, I sharpened the blade with a knife, more and more whenever I got tired of the tone, then I tried the guitar pick tweak they were talking about a while ago. I put the guitar pick on a piece of sticky tac and put it on the blade and tried a few positions first, then when it was where it sounded good I used a toothpick to put glue underneath, because it was at an angle and there was room for a lot of glue. Now the upper octave is perfect, except I have a little trouble with the D sometimes. It sounds really sweet though. Good luck!
has any one suggestions for making the third octave sound decent? I can get the first two but the third sounds very squeeky. I know it is me since i get the same squeeks on different whistles.
The third octave is never really pretty. Learn the notes as best you can, and hope they don’t come up too often, and play them quickly when they do.
On 2002-04-18 13:06, Kendra wrote:
This may not be pertinent, but for a first octave Cnat, oxxooo sounds better on my new whistle; the second octave requires oxxxxo to be in tune.
try xooxxo for top cnat, works on most
thanks for the tips
well, I took everything I was told and did it (except for the boiling and freezing and nail polishing and guitar picking) and started to sound actually much better. But must say that I just returned from the music store where I bought a Clarke Original and lo and behold, problem now COMPLETELY solved. Anybody wanna buy a slightly used feadog?
I had the exact same problem when I was first learning to play of a feadog. I also got frustrated and switched to a Clark original. A few months of practice on the Clark, and I found I could go back to the feadog and play between octaves without a problem. the Clark seems to be a bit more forgiving when it come to breath control.
Stef.
I love my Burke D Session brass but I have problems with the high B (cracking or octave jump). Sometimes its from clogging maybe but it happens nevertheless.
I have found the following x00x00 makes that B more stable. Hope it might work for you or others. Hard to remember for fast stuff except that in some passage work, you can leave the lower finger down anyway.
Cheers.