My feeling is that it’s not saliva in the whistle but rather condensation. The reason is when I play on my PVC whistles I don’t see a lot of water in them like I do with the aluminum whistles. I think if it were saliva I’d have it on the PVC whistles.
I’ve noticed after playing for a while with an aluminum whistle, there is a small “stream” of water visible inside the tube. It’s not dripping out of the tube so it’s a very small amount but it is visible. And I wonder if that can contribute to the slight buzz / vibration sound that I sometimes here. Would water in the tube vibrate and make any sound? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just hearing normal breath noise. The MK is known to have breath noise as part of its sound..
I read on Brother Steve’s site how some people play the whistle like the pipes and never tongue
While much (but not all) whistle ornamentation should work like pipe gracing (ie to articulate existing notes rather than ‘add’ new ones), some folk seem to have this strange conception of seamless legato playing as some kind of trad holy grail. But some folk also produce lifeless whistle style and, while the glottal stop may be the weapon of choice for trad flute, you’d be struggling to match crisp tongued articulations for tightness or speed that way. So, while idiomatic trad whistle (as opposed to, say, baroque recorder, which uses a whole array of varied tonguing techniques) is still going to be a predominantly slurred style, there’s (supported by the playing, teaching and writing of far more significant players than me) nothing to be lost and everything to be gained from appropriate use of the tongue.
Thanks for the feedback Peter, what you say makes a lot of sense to me.
I think I’m very familiar with too much tonguing and in order to find the right balance for me, I will try to tongue less and experiment around.
I would really appreciate it if someone could give me some specific tonguing advice regarding this particular tune (Higgins). I’ve been working on this for several weeks and I listen to it often. What I’m currently doing is tonguing the first 8th note of the pair and then slurring to the second shorter one and then tonguing the next 8th note. But I’m really not sure.
I just pulled it up on irishtune.info (a new site I discovered this week) and got a list of recordings of this tune. I’m going to see if I can find some of them to hear how they do it.
Hard to answer when style’s personal, it’s not one I play and I’m not wanting to make suggestions based on sight-reading it. But treating every eighth note pair like that is probably too much and (above all) too formulaic so, although I’d say hornpipes can (maybe should?) take more tonguing than most dances, I’d be looking to break that up a bit. And, sticking my neck out here when I might just get shot down, here’s an approximate analysis of what I might be doing with the first few measures of Off to California (where T = tongue, C = cut, S = slide and R = roll, and you can see that I’m sometimes using fingered and tongued articulations in combination and sometimes on their own):
4 & a 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 & a 1 2 3 4 1 2 3
D E F# G B B G A G E D G B d g e d e f# g (g g) d e d B G A B A G E
diddledy dum-de dum-de dum-de dum-de dum-de dum-de dum--- diddledy dum(de dum)de dum-de dum-de dum-de dum-de dum---
T (T) T T (T) T T T T (T) T
C C C S R------- C C S
Thanks Peter. it’s easy for people to say “more tonguing” or “less tonguing” but I really appreciate you taking the time to write out your example. I’m not familiar with this tune so I’m going to learn it and see if I can apply what you’ve shared. I’ll report back in a few days.
I really don’t believe tonguing could have anything to do with moisture buildup. As Peter says, tonguing is the default articulation in, for instance, recorder. And once a recorder is well warmed up, condensation is not a problem.
Warming up is the real issue here, I think (once you’ve eliminated actually drooling into the instrument, which is unlikely behaviour for anyone out of kindergarten). Both the MK and Overton style whistles seem to have solid aluminium blocks, and these take a while to warm up. It’s a big lump of metal. Just blowing down the windway a couple of times is not enough when the whistle is very cold - as it likely is during the winter. I suggest that warming the head in hot water (and rinsing out the windway while you’re at it) will cut down condensation problems considerably. I also occasionally scrub out the windways of my aluminium whistles with a strip of folded over paper - keep it as clean as you can.
As a beginner on lowD whistle, I have found this thread helpful and very encouraging. Having found it very difficult to get a clean low D (and E to a lesser extent), I was beginning to think it was either me or the whistle that was dud. Reading that so many others have experienced similar difficulties at the outset and have overcome, or at least learned to manage them gives me the boost needed to continue. And if I look back I am already slightly better than I was on day 1! Thanks to all.
I don’t think tonguing has anything to do with it either. I tongue a fair bit playing my Goldies and MK, certainly much more than has been suggested here, and the never clog, maybe with the rare exception of me not having kept the windway clear. As a highland piper I was always a wet blower, though not so much so now. Look at Brian Finnegan, probably the most tonguey of them all, who plays Goldies, which gain a reputation for clogging by folk who don’t play them properly. Do you see his Goldies clogging?
I agree with what AvielMael & says, it’ll keep improving as long as you keep improving. Make sure the whistle airway is always spotlessly clean, dry your mouth and blast warm air through the whistle (while covering the sound hole) for a few seconds before each set of tunes, and keep at it. You’ll be fine. And don’t worry about tonguing. A good reassurance is looking at players you admire playing the type of whistle you play, the natural conditions inside their mouth is exactly the same as your own.
Suggest blowing it gently rather than blasting because it stays far warmer that way (try it on your hand to see or just feel the difference as you warm up that whistle).
That certainly works too, though with Goldies I prefer to blast air through in rapid tuts for a few seconds. Not only does if warm up very quickly it also gets rids of moisture droplets and minuscule bits of peanut.
A seasoned professional such as Brian will have learned how to tame things before they get to the clogging stage. I don’t think Brian has to deal with moisture from his tonguing. But Brian does deal with condensation as does any player of that type of whistle. He warms the whistle before he plays by introducing warm air and when he has a break in the playing he covers the window and clears the build up. Look through enough videos on Youtube and you’ll see him at it. Nature of the beast.
Playing style - started out trying to be almost 100% legato but now use loads of tonguing techniques to get emphasis and punch
Recently I think my saliva glands have decided to go mad and it starting to cause a problem, but only with the susato. This whistle seems to make me dribble and I think it’s because it doesn’t go far enough into my gob. It rests on the lips.
The Burke, on the other hand, I try and push onto my lower teeth, when I remember, to keep it still and I don’t dribble so much then.
But I worry that my salivary glands have become self aware and that I’m doomed to drool like a big ole hound.
Quite right, methinks: you prompted me to look at the label on my Dawn dish detergent bottle–it says “Do not add bleach.”, a sure clue that it contains ammonia. (Ammonia and chlorine, i.e., bleach, combine to make mustard gas, as you Europeans learned all too well about a hundred years ago, in the trenches; people have died in their kitchens from mixing the two, which might lead one to wonder why government agencies don’t require more prominent warnings. The reason is, the awesome lobbying power of Proctor and Gambel).
Ammonia is a principal component of brass cleaners, and would probably be all right in a brass whistle, but I don’t think it would be good for aluminum. I’m going to go get some liquid hand soap.
No, I don’t think so. You can easily check the MSDS. Only ethanol is listed, and I’m pretty sure that ammonia would be required to be listed if present. There may be other good reasons for not using Dawn or similar dish soaps (as opposed to plain sodium lauryl sulfate, e.g. Duponol). But imaginary ingredients are not one of them.
OK, I did a bit more checking. Dawn contains small quantities of several amine compounds as surfactants and cleaners. While these may be derived from ammonia precursors, they are not ammonia and do not, I think, create ammonium hydroxide in solution.
I have no idea if it’s the amines in Dawn which react with chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite), and mixing cleaners is never a good idea. But hopefully you’re not adding chlorine bleach to your anti-clog solution.
At least Duponol / Anti-Condens eliminates any doubt about spurious ingredients unrelated to the surfactant action.
