Hello all…It has been awhile for me…I am looking for any leads on a nice Low D with a quena head…Shattered and dislocated fingers, along with an old neck injury from rolling my truck years ago, have eliminated my flute playing…I now play my Low D ( MK Pro ) like a flute, and try to replicate the same …Meaning I use a flute embouchure and direct it into the small area on the head…I actually get great results from this, and people often comment on my flutey sound…Try it if yee haven’t…It produces quite a different sound…I thank you all, in advance, for your recommendations.
Is this near enough: G.Ellis ‘Selkie’ thread ?
I can’t work out from that what it is you’re doing with it. Do you mean you’re playing it like a quena rather than a transverse flute, and what exactly are you directing the air onto on the head to avoid playing it as a whistle?
Anyway, the obvious good options are the Selkie, a quenacho, or you could make or get someone to make a quena head for your low D whistle (assuming it has a head that comes off), which should be fully viable.
Thank you Mr. Gumby…That looks to be exactly what I am interested in…I will be contacting Mr. Ellis.
David Cooper…Instead of wrapping my lips around the mouthpiece, I am playing it by resting my bottom llip on the back of the mouthpiece and blowing down into the very small opening of my MK Pro, which has a mouthpiece that can be taken off…my top lip is maybe a millimeter or 2 from touching it…No tonguing, just huffing and diaphragm pulses…I started doing that years ago out of curiosity, while I was developing my flute embouchure…I do it now because it sounds so much better…It is also way easier to control the upper octave., and the volume between both octaves is more even…My MK used to “screech” a little on the high B and above, when I blew it the normal way…I never thought that I could develope thas style of playing, but it is working great and I am quite pleased with the results…I do surprise a lot of visiting flute players when I explain it…Everyone agrees that it sounds great…I was actually explaining this to a visiting fluteplayer last night…I have also started doing it on the high D, it is alot trickier to get the air into the smaller opening, but it is working, and I am now able to play both with the new blow…I used to tongue quite a bit, now I am playing it like blowing a flute…I really like the “forced” breathe of the flute blow, as opposed to the controlled blow of the old way…Think of saying “oh my”, or “ffs”…instead of staying quiet and controlling it. Haha…I suspect I may be the only person playing like that, but who know!
Hand problems forced me to give up transverse fluteplaying quite a few years ago, and I’ve been looking for a “vertical Irish flute” of some kind ever since.
I’ve been playing the “Selkie” for a couple months now and it’s what I’ve been looking for.
Rather than based on a Quenacho (Quena in Low D) it’s based on a Chinese vertical flute called a Xiao.
It has a round blow-hole pretty much like a transverse flute, but in the top, and it plays pretty much exactly like a really good Irish flute plays (or for that matter how a really good Quenacho plays).
The Xiao has a closed top end, while as you know the Quena is open. They’re basically two ways of skinning the cat.
Thank you Richard!! I am familiar with your quest…I take your advice quite seriously, and this is great information!!
I still can’t get a picture of what you’re doing from that. Are you actually taking part of it off, and if so, which bit are you taking off when you still seem to have the head there? And are you blowing at the wedge that the windway points at?
Hi David…I am not taking anything off…I am blowing down into the vey thin opening of the mouthpiece…The place where people clean with a strip of a business car, or the like…I would upload a photo if I knew how…Just picture somebody playing normally…I am just blowing into a bit differently…If you follow the CnF Facebook page, I know how to share a photo there.
To post a photo on this forum:
- Find a free image hosting website like ImgBB. Upload your photo there and click on it so you’re looking at your newly uploaded photo.
- Right click the photo and click “open image in new tab.” In the new tab, you should JUST see the image you uploaded, and nothing else.
- Right click THAT image, and copy the link to your clipboard.
- Use the little picture icon on C&F to generate “{img}{/img}.”
- Between the [img} and {/img}, paste the link you copied.
Voila!
So it sounds as if the air’s still being blown through the windway then rather than bypassing it. I didn’t know that C&F had a Facebook page, so I’ll look that up. That would certainly make photo sharing a lot easier.
I tend to back off my mouth, getting close to the tip, but I found out (at least with the Low D I was playing) that doing so threw off the internal tuning of the whistle.
Specifically, as I went up the scale the notes got flatter. The thing that drew my attention was how flat B was compared to Bottom D and Middle D.
At first I thought it was just a badly tuned whistle. But when I put the mouthpiece further into my mouth, till my lower lip was resting on the curved cutaway, the whole scale came into perfect tune.
It had never occurred to me that a maker tunes his whistles with the mouthpiece at a specific depth in his mouth, and to get the best tuning the player has to replicate it. (I can’t remember if I stumbled onto discovering this, or if it was discussed on these boards and somebody pointed it out.)