i am new here and new to the world of whistles. coming from a recorder background i thought i’d give the old tin whistle a try after making the pogues sound terrible on my battered old descant!
as a cheap skate i have a clarke MEG in D (very inexpensive!) and can’t really afford new keys at the mo. so i wanted to play in G but can’t get a C natural to sound quite right. the whistle is conical with a plastic mouthpiece. anyone now if it’s me or the whistle cos it just don’t sound right.
There was a thread here recently. I am too lazy right now to go find it. :roll:
There are lots of ways to play Cnat. The two most common that I know of are 0XX 000 or 0XX XX0. Just find something thereabouts that souds right and there you have it.
One thing to also consider is the context of the song being played and the length of time the note will be played. It may not sound “just right” for a long note, but a particular fingering may be perfect for the place in the song you are playing it and facilitate a quicker transition to the next note.
hey cheers!
that 0XX_0XX seems to be the best so far
i take aboard the coments about the not needing it to be dead right, especially with fast stuff, i have come up woth some dodgy fingering for a few notes in some twiddles but as its said long notes do need to sound pretty right and i think that fingering is gonna be the best ill get, i hadn’t even considered it!
One of the good things about that fingering is that it’s 1 finger away from the second octave d, and that’s a strong finger. So this is good for doing fast cdc triplets, for example.
i will keep that in mind. i think im gonna go out and splash out on a generation tomorrow as its only £2.80 and i jut got paid! what what do people think of nickel v brass. i have just read that spider stacey used nickel ones so that is always a plus point!
unfortunately here in deepest darkest basingstoke (don’t ask were it is , it’s not good for the soul to know where it is) i can only get generations or the meg that i bought a good few months ago which has now disappeared form our music shop…
I wonder when c natural became so important as to be mentioned like this.
I am also the one who tries to get ‘correct’ c natural though.
I once heard from several bamboo flute makers that the tastes for c natural(minor 7th step from bell note) varied between people. I was very glad to know that the makers themselves thought like that.You know, the makers are destined to be conscious of c natural issue because bamboo flute has no tuning slide. I think tuning slide is in order to adapt various tastes for c natural more than standard pitch.
If you want to play a Cnat scale on a D whistle, BTW, you have to play F natural by XXX XDO (The D symbol means half-holed)
The crossfingered C natural does not work in the second octave on any whistle I own. Use DOO OOO (Again, the “D” is half-holed)
It’s hard to play recorder music using this scale, though, because of the small amount of room above the whole scale. It’s always good to practice your scales, though.
I recently purchased a D Sweetone, but it’s disticntly flat when compared with my other D whistles (Oak, Feadog, Clarke). Has anyone else run into this? Any “tuning” solutions?
Someone mentioned keeping a whistle with the first hole partially covered with a bit of tape, say 1/4 covered for tunes in G. Then the C nat is in tune, but C sharp is flat. Hey, for 3 bucks, you can afford two. Not a bad idea really. Some tubes are better than others about C nat. I’ve found the thick body whistles I have play the C nat in tune better than tube styles. My Dixon has a very decent C nat, C sharp, and even an alternate B fingering. I’ve made an adapter so I can use the dixon body with gen style mouthpieces even.
i went out and splashed out on a generation folk whistle today and it is totally better for c nat.
thanx happyturkeyman for the advice on half fingered for the second octave, i’ve always tried to stay clear of halfing it cos it has always felt too clumsy, but maybe that’s the point, i’ll give it some more attention. i was never trying to play in c scale i wanted to play songs in g. i had been playing tin whistle music on my recorder not tother way round and that sounded terrible so i thought i’d best try the whistle and lo, it is far far easier. hooray.
