I really can’t play an Overton ‘cold’ (meaning preparation and not whistle temperature). Especially if coming from another whistle, I find that I need to really take a few minutes and visualize the playing, meaning bearing down once I hit the second octave E or above. Otherwise I don’t force the airstream enough and the note flops horribly, essentiallly a first octave note with a breaking waver.
In some ways, its the exact opposite of going from a normal volume whistle to one of Mack Hoover’s narrow bore brass jobs. In that case, I tend to overbow the lower D-E-F.
Admittedly the Overton compensation is simpler, requiring visualization and a few deep-breathing exercises. I haven’t yet found a reliable way of avoiding overblowing the narrow whistles.
Hm! My tweaked Shaw (by Jerry Freeman) doesn’t use much air. But it’s no Whitecap either. I’ve tried many “stock” Shaws at Lark in the Morning, they’re fairly variable – I shoulda grabbed that C that seemed nice and tried tweaking it! Some use less air, some more, but all I tried used significantly more air than a Generation. Not nearly as much as a stock Clarke Original, though.
See, I’d say the Shaw was consistantly a much higher air whistle than the Clarke - by quite a noticeable bit. The Clarkes are also noticeably quieter than the Shaws as well. The “improved Feadóg” was mentioned earlier and this one probably ranks quite close to Mack’s narrow bores in terms of air. I think the improved requires a finer degree of breath control than Mack’s whistle do too.
This may have been already gone over since I mainly skimmed through this thread, but I noted that some had stated it took some getting used to playing a low-wind/air requirement whistle because of oxygen deprivation …
I took this approach… when I turn my whistle all the way down where it’s very quiet, it takes so little air, that if I try and play it ‘sealed’ or that is to say my mouth sealed around the mouthpiece, my lungs start burning for oxygen pretty quick due to the fact I run out of oxygen before needing to take a breath!
So I simply let a bunch of air escape around the mouthpiece, that is to say I basically breathe into it instead of so much forcing air through it, also letting some air out through my nose if necessary, and find a happy medium that mimics the requirements it would take if I were playing at a normal volume level… requiring me to take a breath at all the same places in a tune I would normally have to.
Just some ideas.
Hopefully that made sense (and wasn’t too much of a duplication somewhere). If not, then sorry about the lengthy post.
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