I played sax for a living for a few years, and would love the luxury of a D whistle with a C natural fingering of OXO OOO. Does such an animal exist, and if so, where can I get my hands on one?
Before you good folks start yellin’ at me about my needing to play whistle properly, I promise I can play OXX OOO and OXX XOO when necessary, but it sure would be fun to have my left middle finger do all the work, and play with a couple more pints consumed…muscle memory and all…
You’d have to commission one made specially. It’s perfectly possible. The trick is to shift the 6th hole further up towards the fipple, and reduce the diameter at the same time. As to how far, and how much smaller, well, that’s a matter for a bit of experimentation.
Try this. Take a piece of masking tape, and partly tape over the top T1 hole until you get an in-tune c with oxoooo. Can you breath-push the now-flat c# oooooo back into pitch? If so, there you go.
I’d guess a whistle building maven could finesse the size and position of the T1 hole to give a good c and c#, and build a custom instrument. The Mollenhauer Dream recorder is an example of an almost-cylindrical bore instrument with those fingerings, the c x|oxoooo and both c#s (x|oooooo and o|xxoooo) being very reasonably in tune.
After a while on the whistle, the saxophone c fingering will feel weird to you. Then you’ll know you’ve really crossed over to the dark side. But I’ll admit, as a sax player for 46 years myself, I still do almost all my mental music calculations on an “air saxophone”. The secret is out …
I looked into putting a single C natural hole on the front side of a whistle. But realized very soon that it would be hard to cover being so close to the hole below it. Guess that is why it is put on the back as a thumb hole on a few whistles.
I have used the masking tape but in the long run found it better to practice half hole, and cross finger till they can be played as well as the rest.
Most of the Dixon whistles I’ve had can play C natural pretty well using OXOOOO. Not sure what the meter would say, but to my ears it sounds better than OXXOOOO.
I have a non-tuneable Susato D, one of the cream coloured ones, and the Cnat on that is OXO OOO. I think they are still available. It’s loud, though - I play it in the kitchen while waiting for things to boil!
Can’t name names, but it is possible that some whistles will get an OK C nat with the flute fingering of oxo xxx. I have some that can sort-of do so, but it is much too sharp and oxx xox is far better. Actually, come to think of it, my Susato high d tuneable (which I never play) is best with oxo xxx so far as I recall, oxx xox being flat and oxx ooo sharp/not sounding good. Many whistles certainly get the high C nat with oxo xxo. (I’m not a fan of oxx ooo or half-holing, as I’ve often said in related threads.)
