Our Morris dancing side has three whistle players, and we like to play close harmonies. Only trouble is, when we play unamplified outdoors (most of our gigs), with just whistles and perhaps a bodran (i.e. no loud instruments like meldodeon to back us up), it’s very hard to hear us over the dancers’ bells, ambient sounds etc.
So we’ve been looking into ways of sounding louder outdoors. An obvious route is the electronic one: mike(s) and a portable amp. Any suggestions of how to mike whistles, which mikes and cheap portable amps might work, etc.? A battery-powered amp seems easiest since we’re often not close to electrical outlets, but a good one gets pricey and heavy to carry around.
What I’d really prefer is a non-electronic solution. I’ve been expermenting with playing my whistle through various bell-shaped horns, with little success. Is there any way to attach a megaphone or parabolic reflector somewhere on a whistle so that you could still play it and make it sound louder?
Another possibility is to get louder whistles. I just bought a new Susato D whistle with a little plastic ledge around the bottom (strangely, this does seem to make a difference in loudness). We’ll try this out at our next practice. Any other suggestions?
Any ideas about the physics of sound production that would help?
What is the range of the tunes you play?
I don’t know nothing about Morris tunes, so how come I suspect they are often one-octave tune, or from d to E. If my hunch is correct, then you could use a low whistle, overblowing it to 2nd octave for a start.
Then all you’ll need to carry is not a portable amp, just an oxygen mask. Just kiddin’, it’s feasible…
Also, it will give you sort of a tabor pipe feeling, too
My dad recently picked up a little portable battery powered amp for $35 USD. I will have to ask him where and the brand. If you can find one of those little neck-tie mikes you can attach a velcro strip to the chord and wrap it around the bottom of the whistle. I’ve never tried it with a whistle but it works on a flute.
That sounds (bad pun) like a good idea. There are flute specific mikes, the strap onto the flute and have a mike that is mounted on a little gooseneck, the mike ends up hanging in front of the sound hole.
The Pignose amp is supposed to be a decent portable amp:
That said, cheap amps usually don’t sound good with acoustic instruments, they are primarily designed for use with transducered instruments (read: electric guitars).
The best kind of amp to get is an acoustic amp, the folks at Musicians’ Friend are pretty knowageable about these kinds of things. The cheapest amps are probably on Ebay…god bless Ebay.
A better idea might be to get a mike that you could sing through and the PA for that, then gather your whistles around the vocal mike.
Good luck,
PC
PS–You ain’t gonna go nowhere with a parabolic reflector, the theoretical best you could get would be to concentrate your sound in one spot…that and you’d look pretty silly with a big dog dish attached to your whistle!
In our band I use a Shure WH20 headset mic for performances in a sometimes noisy local pub. (http://music1online.com/headmic.html) I play flute and whistles and so I can’t very well attach the mic to any one instrument because I would have to change it all time as I change instruments. I found the mic on a mic stand worked fine, but after a three hour gig my neck would be stiff from having to be glued to the mic. I never realized how much I move around till I had to stay still in front of a mic. I find the convience of wearing the mic saves me from having to stay still and also works well for both whistles and flute… Now if only it could make my terrible singing voice less painful to listen to.
PS: Shure makes two headset mics… the one above ($90 in my local music store) and a much more expensive one (over $300). The expensive one is more comfortable and sounds great for singing; but I found that for the sound qualities of flutes and whistles I couldn’t tell the difference between the cheaper one and the more expensive one.
Heh heh heh… I have an evil idea. You could play bombardes instead of whistles, if they’re only one octave tunes. However, whistles sound much… shall we say… gentler than bombardes.
Bombardes (if you’re not familiar with them) are high pitched reed instruments that sound sort of like a cross between a REALLY high pitched oboe, and Highland pipes (without drones). Let me tell you though, their sound CARRIES.
Have you thought of picking up a trio of Ralph Sweet’s high D fifes? You won’t need a microphone, and I guarantee you’ll be heard outside. They’re about $75 for tunable 2 piece conical bore fifes in D, but the non-tunable renaissance fife in D is only $35 (it’s cyclindrical bore like all renaissance fife/flutes were, but mine was well in tune in the first two octaves). I’ve owned both and liked both of them.
I’ve got one of those Sweetheart high D “fifes”. It’s my preferred instrument when I want volume. At the recent renfaire I used it almost exclusive to the whistle. It attracted far more attention which could be good or bad. However they don’t have the nice sweet sound of a Burke whistle.
I have one of those fifes/piccolos too, and i like it.
But, as for whistles, recently i bought Cranberry’s old-style Ralph Sweet D whistle. Let me tell you something, that thing is loud enough that sometimes i feel uncomfortable playing it. It will take a lot of breath, especially in the second octave, but man, it’s a scary thing.
I’m not sure if the new design is also loud, or even if the old design is consistently this loud, but it’s worth looking into.*
g
(*) as long as you don’t mind a whistle that looks exactly like a recorder. It has a tendency to attract Renny people who want to know where you got the pretty recorder.
I still say good amplification is the way to go. Sure the Susato is loud, but why would I give up the mellow sound of my Abells or the earthy tone of my O’Rirodans when I don’t have to. I have found that the right mic and amp stays faithful to the original sound of an acoustic instrument.
Why? They do overblow, you know?
Now, they do get you some back-pressure in exchange
Btw: most beginners, schools, bagadou, here start out with the very affordable Camac bombardes.
You can get decent boxwood bombardes for ca. 120 Euros, but a professional hand-made bombarde with double-keyed foot from Le Coant will be only around 300.
