Often as I peruse the On Topic discussions on this board, I get a feeling of… say,… inadequacy. It seems as if the long time whistlers speak an esoteric language that I am just beginning to vaguely understand. This often deters me from asking a question, or raising an issue that may seem ignorant or stupid to those who fully understand terms such as; chiffiness, waifiness, breathiness, etc.
Whew! Now that I got that out in the open, here is my ignorant question.
I have a Dixon alto G. I love it. The breathy flutey sound, the feel of it, the key, even the appearance. But it (or my playing of it) sometimes has a problem. Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, it just stops playing. It’s almost as though it is just plain stopped up. I figured it could be plugged with condensate (or whatever) since the fipple opening seems quite small, but this doesn’t always happen after I’ve been playing for a while. Sometimes it will happen when I am first playing it. When this happens I attempt to clear it by shaking it, or blowing it out. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. It rarely seems to have a lot of condensate in it (compared with my low D). Sooner or later, it just starts playing again.
Is this something I am doing wrong?
Is this a common problem?
Is this endemic to Dixon whistles?
Could this be a problem with this particular whistle?
Yes, it likely is a problem of condensate, even if you can’t see much of it. It’s a problem endemic to a lot of whistles until they get warmed up. I don’t have a Dixon, so I don’t know if that happens with them, but it certainly sounds like that’s what’s happening, since it often happens while you’re first playing it. Try the soapy water trick that Cranberry suggested, and see if that helps. Just don’t get the soap on the outside of the mouthpiece (yuck!). Also, you might want to try warming up the whistle a bit before you start playing. Some people do this with body heat – hold it close to your body, under your arm, etc. until it warms up some. That might help too.
The theory of it is that soap breaks the surface tension of water (that property that permits water to form into drops). With less surface tension, the “condensate” will blow through the windway, and not clog it.
If you are chemically undaunted you can try the same trick with Rainex, stuff that you can put on a car windshield to make the rain blow off it.
Story has it a teacher handed out a test of 20 questions. Everyone completed the test and handed them in. All got failing grades. The 20th questions instructions were to skip the 19 previous questions and turn the test in with just Name and Date at the top of the exam.
Seriously, on whistles with narrow windways a tiny bit of food from something you ate quite a while back can easily block the windway – just one of the reasons why many whistlers frequently wash their mouths with their favorite beverage…
You can actually get a substance made just for this…if memory serves it’s called Dupanol, and is made by Moeck for use with their exotic hardwood recorders.
That said, in my experience 1 drop of ivory soap in about a half cup water drizzled through the windway with an eyedropper works and is cheaper.
Also, some recorder players keep a feather with them to dry the windway if they start to clog up.
–James
Edited for an important PS: don’t drizzle the whole half cup soap solution through the windway! Use just enough to lightly dampen the windway surface, and allow to dry completely before playing.
Honestly, I wasn’t trying to be completely literal here. To my knowledge, there is no Irish word “mor”.
Besides the fact that when I started on this message board I didn’t know how to put a “fada” in the existing font, I kinda like to fiddle with words. The Irish word “mo” (short o, no fada, no r) is “my”. So I thought, if I contracted the two words into a linguistic hybrid, it could actually mean “my long journey” (at least to me). That was the kind of mood I was in when I was trying to come up with a username and, it almost sounded like a name. I guess I was using a sort of a “username license”. As I was first browsing this board, I thought I noticed a few other instances of this going on, so I figured it would be OK.
Sorry for the confusion, I didn’t realize it would be dissected.
You don’t have to worry about being literally. I understand very little (VERY LITTLE) Irish, but I know that o and ó (hold ALT down and press 0243) are different.
(If it makes you feel any better, the only reason I know the ó is because of Feadóg).
