Trying to learn some English Country Dance tunes and am having a devil of a time trying to deal with D# on my keyless flute (and whistle), both in D (the tune is in Em). The particular tune I’m learning is the Female Saylor, in Em, and a phrase is (in abc, eight notes):
|g2 f e2 ^d|e3 B3|
I cannot half-hole the d and get anything good, so the question is – what’s the workaround? Change the D# to an E? I guess my general question is, when faced with a half-holed pitch on a simple instrument, are there “rules” to work around it?
I just tried it and used an F# instead of the D#.
Keep practicing that half holing though. With practice you CAN do it and the same skill will let you play Cnat,Fnat,Bb, G# etc. Well worth learning.
Keep practicing. I’ve just learnt Crested Hens which also features a D#. It was just a case of keep practicing until it came right. All you need is a slight cover of the hole and reduced breath or else it gets squeaky…well it does for me anyway.
Like Hotblack, I know the D# from Crested Hens. Also from Roly Gentle.
I’ve found that half-holing is less a matter of covering half the hole, than of sort of covering-ish the hole.
On my own home-made whistles, to sound a D# my finger is perched at the side of the hole, above it, but not touching the hole itself. Hovering closely over the hole, in other words. It’s easier to do this than to partially cover the hole, especially on a high whistle with small holes close together, and using piper’s grip.
I am not expert enough to give advice, but I agree - practice. For me the tune was ‘Cape Clear’ and my low whistle has small holes, so I did almost despair at times.
Another tune where you might encounter a D# is the Humours of Ballyconnell (hornpipe); second measure of the B section as a leading tone for E (E-D#-E). D natural works okay here too but if you can nail the D# it adds a little extra flavor to the phrase.
Should be a piece of cake on any whistle. Especially in the E-D#-E figure. For this, I halfhole with the fingertip, or hit the edge of the hole with my knuckle, the finger angled ~30 degrees over the hole. I’ll post a clip later if I can.
Accidentals are an odd issue. You’ll hear loads of pipers, fluters, and whistlers playing a particular tune using only “normal” notes, then hear the same tune played by boxplayers, banjo players, or fiddlers with accidentals all over the place.
It’s not set in stone. There’s always a workaround. Even Matt Molloy, playing a fully keyed flute, will often have a version lacking accidentals in places most boxplayers or even fiddlers would put them in.
Paddy Carty, now he would put all the accidentals in!
Anyhow I’m not familiar with that tune but I’m sure there are a dozen acceptable ways to play it that don’t have the D# in them.
About Humours of Ballyconnell, I play it on the pipes which have a hole for D# and I put it in, plus a G#! Many pipers throw in D#s in many of their tunes, in places even a boxplayer might not put them.
Yes it’s just a matter of practice. I find D# easy to play on whistle but more problematic on wood flutes, where that hole is often very small.
The problem in that tune is that the D# is the leading tone (major 7th) in the key of Em, and it occurs throughout. So it really is a critical note defining the harmonic minor scale of the tune, and substitution changes the character of the melody significantly.
There seem to be loads of French Cabrette tunes like that, a minor 3rd but a Major 7th.
They play them on the Cabrette using the chanter’s 4th as the tonic. I might be temped to do the same, playing the Em tune on a B whistle on which a nice crossfingered G natural is possible. Or just get good at playing D#s on a D whistle!
Yeah … Plus the fact it’s such a well-known melody to anyone who knows the Christmas carol “Masters In This Hall”, that alteration might be very noticeable.
Is it possible to modify your breath so as to bend down a note while in full flow?
Any harmonica player can do it, but on a whistle it’s a much more subtle thing, and only seems possible on the top three holes - on a D whistle that would be any of the accidentals around C B A and G.
As with any new whistle skill, practice practice practice.
It took me a while, but I got the D# half-holing down eventually. Now that I’ve got a feel for it, I find that I usually can adjust for different whistles pretty quickly too, since not every whistle will require the same amount of shading over the hole. Usually the first time through a tune (usually Crested Hens) will let me know how much my initial half-holing is off, and the second time through I usually have it.
