I’ve looked in four dictionaries now and can NOT find “chiff” in anyone of the them. I almost feel what it is from the many posters using the word but that’s not enough.
Chiff me, someone!
BillG
I like Dale’s definition (at least I think it was Dale’s…): chiff is everything in a whistle’s sound that isn’t musical. “Pure” and “chiffy” are often used as opposites.
I believe the term comes from the pipe organ, where it means much the same thing.
There is an element of chiff in the attack; with a purer-sounding whistle, the sound just begins, but with a chiffier whistle, there may be a little “pop” or even a little raspy sound at the start of the note.
Chiff mainly refers to the sound of the sustained note, though–a chiffier whistle has a stronger, maybe even almost harsher sound, with more overtones and more “bite” to the sound. Note that we’re not just talking the addition of air to the sound, either.
A purer whistle has few overtones, and a sweeter, almost thin sound.
That’s all my $.02 though; you may well get different and even contradictory answers from others. And that’s the magic of chiff: we’re all right, in our own way.
Best,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
BillG -
Check out this thread:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?topic=6114&forum=1&28
(or do a search on “spectrum analyzer” if I did the thread reference wrong)
It even gives you a picture of chiff.
On 2002-10-01 11:09, dkehoe wrote:
BillG -Check out this thread:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?topic=6114&forum=1&28
(or do a search on “spectrum analyzer” if I did the thread reference wrong)
It even gives you a picture of chiff.
dkehoe beat me to some of these observations but a couple of verbal remarks might help you interpret what the pictures are telling you. I suspect that it’s less a matter of how many overtones get generated as which overtones get emphasised. Put really crudely there are nice overtones and raspy overtones. People who design synthesiser patches have a very sophisticated grasp on this stuff and can speak about it with alarming mathematical precision—they get different textures by editing the overtones and either they really know what they are doing or quickly go out of business.
Okay, this may be a dumb question, but I’ve been wondering for a while. What exactly are overtones?
On 2002-10-01 12:31, Cees wrote:
Okay, this may be a dumb question, but I’ve been wondering for a while. What exactly are overtones?
This will be very rough since I don’t have any theory books handy to fine tune things. (Others will jump in to correct me if I get something badly wrong so you have nothing to lose. When you sound a note on an instrument, not only the fundamental note (the one you thought you were playing) sounds. Loads of other notes bearing mathematically interesting relationships sound also. They’re often called harmonics. Tone and texture depend on which overtones get played up and which get muted. You can sometimes even make a harmonic dominate—this is what happens when a guitarist ‘plays harmonics’—notes higher than you would get if you fretted and plucked the string at the point you are playing. False fingerings on saxophones generate harmonics that can be way above the normal range of the instrument. Almost every good sax player uses this technique but check out John Coltrane. Sax harmonics can be tonally very raspy and interesting—sorta chiffy actually. When I played sax semi-professionally I could play tenor in tune (mostly) to about an octave above it’s legitimate range by using harmonics. In having that ability, I certainly wasn’t a virtuoso or a circus act—it’s just one of the tricks you learn.
On reflection, a wombat playing a tenor saxophone is already a circus act I’m afraid. Why don’t people understand?
[ This Message was edited by: Wombat on 2002-10-01 12:59 ]
James - Under your definition (which sounds pretty good to me)then, Copeland, Overton and Abell would be chiffy; Burke and Silkstone would be chiffless; and Sindt semi?
At the low end, for example, Clarke would be chiffy and Sweetone chiffless?
What do you think? This just helps us direct each other when people ask for recommendations and explain that they want more or less chiff.
Regards,
Philo
Yeah, I think we’re speakin the same language here. 
I’d call Sweetone low to nonexistant chiff, Generation moderate to heavy chiff, Waltons medium chiff, Cronnolly heavy chiff, Oak low to medium chiff, Acorn a touch chiffier than Oak, Feadog too durn chiffy (almost), Susato moderate chiff, Susato VSB little to no chiff.
Since I don’t have that much experience on the high-end whistle side, I’d rather use cheapo’s for definitions like this.
I really can’t claim that definition for my own though–I don’t have time to search it out, but I’m almost positive it’s something Dale wrote somewhere on the main site.
Best,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
If you slowly breath into a whistle, you’ll find that a certain amount of air is needed for a whistle to start - do this real slow and you here some of the chiff. You won’t here all of it but essentially good voicing of a whistle can almost eliminate it. Chiff is random sounds made by the initial charge of the bore and how goes into oscillation. A leaky head on the whistle can be very chiffy.
I recently got to try a very good Generation Brass D, ok, maybe it’s just a working one. But when compared to my Clarke Meg, it’s purer, sweeter, less breathy. And less chiffy.
So that’s one small comparison range.
I find my Soodlum to be very pure in sound, and the Sweetone a little chiffy, but not so chiffy as the regular Clarke.
Variations among the same make/brand of whistle is one thing that makes defining terms like “chiff” a moving target.
I have a red-top Generation that has an achingly pure tone, almost no chiff at all. I have a green-top Generation that has a sparkling tone with a little chiff and a little bit of an edge, and I have a blue-top that has a good amount of chiff.
I have a Sweetone that has quite a bit of chiff, and another that is absolutely pure with no chiff at all.
I have gone through many Clarke originals, and they’ve been everything from very pure to very chiffy.
So I’m not sure it means much to say things like “Generations have more chiff than Sweetones,” or “Clarkes are chiffier than Waltons.”
Really I think all you can say is “this whistle here sounds more chiffy to me than that other whistle there does.”
Best,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
At the risk of creating controversy, here’s how I view chiff & purity & tone:
Chiff - I think this term describes the slightly different sound that is heard at the very beginning of the note. The organ pipe people describe it as the “consonant before the vowel”, and I think this is apt. I think also that Daniel Bingamon is right in his description. On the second page of the spectrum analyzer discussion, vaporlock drew arrows that pointed to the chiff sound. Organ makers will put nicks in the windway floor to adjust the amount of chiff in a pipe, and note that Boroque organs with smooth windways (like a whistle) have a large amount of chiff.
Purity - As I see it, the width of the lines at each harmonic and the amount of stray frequencies is a measure of the purity of the note. An ideal pipe would oscillate at a single fundamental frequency and its overtones. Pipes are not ideal, however, and so you get other stuff as well. The less other stuff, the more “pure”.
Tone - As everyone have said, in addition to the fundamental, you get overtones as well. Some whistles will have more of one overtone than another. For example, conical bore whistles will tend to emphasize the odd harmonics at the expense of the even ones, and hence have a different tone than a cylindrical bore instrument.
Just my opinion though, and I’m open to discussion.
On 2002-10-02 15:33, dkehoe wrote:
Organ makers will put nicks in the windway floor to adjust the amount of chiff in a pipe,
Organ makers refer to this as ‘nicking the languid’.
Organ makers make use of chiff and other tonality tricks to make the organ pipe imitate certain instrument characteristics. It’s too bad Copeland doesn’t speak much on the forum, I here that he used to work on Organs.
The organ pipe only plays one note, a tin whistle has to be tweeked to play two or more octaves.
Chiff is one of those ‘beauty in the eye of the beholder’ things.
With three tin whistle players in one room, you’ll likely have four opinions. 
Chiff is the breathy sound of organ
pipes–a whistle is an organ pipe
with holes in it so that it can
change pitch.
On 2002-10-03 02:41, jim stone wrote:
Chiff is the breathy sound of organ
pipes–a whistle is an organ pipe
with holes in it so that it can
change pitch.
Thank you, jim stone, for the most concise and accurate explanation of chiff possible! 
I remember first reading this info several years back on the C&F website, although it escapes my memory who offered it to us. Instinct wants me to credit DW as the original source, but I may well be mistaken. 