I have mysteriously come into possession of one of Daniel Bingamon’s Ahava Rabba (“Hava Nagila”) keyed whistles.
Wonderful, mysterious scale. Just noodling around on it is terrific fun and sounds magically sophisticated. It has a very nice sound, good balance between octaves and plays cleanly and predictably, easy to play right out of the box.
Daniel, I’m impressed.
Everybody get one.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Jerry - How does this keyed whistle sound if you finger for example Danny Boy on it? Would that be ill-advised? Does it only accept certain types of music, or seriously then what is the result if you should try ITM?
Philo
It doesn’t sound like Danny Boy.
It sounds great, however. Very exotic. The problem is, it becomes a completely unfamiliar tune, and I can’t play it all the way through.
My fingers are connected to my ears, and I go to the next phrase based on where my ears tell my fingers to go. With this whistle, it turns into an intellectual exercise of trying to remember the fingerings for Danny Boy while a completely unfamiliar melody comes out of the instrument. Like a musical version of trying to pat one’s head and rub one’s stomach at the same time.
But it’s quite invigorating to pick up an instrument that knows these mysterious intervals and plays them for you with no effort or thought on one’s own part.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Interesting point. I think this may be why I didn’t like playing ITM
on this whistle. Though, It’s pretty sweet for trying out Klezmer I’d
otherwise need my clarinet for.
This isn’t something you’d be playing with other, more conventional (and more conventionally keyed) instruments then?
Why not? If I could play Klezmer on my clarinet with a guitar and a
fiddle and an accordian, why couldn’t I do the same with the Ahava
Rabba whistle? As long as the other instruments are playing in the
Ahava Rabba mode, you’d have no problem.
Well, maybe I need to hear it play a familiar tune so that I would understand - Maybe Jerry could post something . . . 
I have great fun playing my Ahava Rabba…tunes like My Darling Asleep and Tripping up the Stairs take on a whole weird twist. But mentally it is quite challenging to play the fingering for something that you don’t have memorized well.
I wish Daniel would put a fingering chart in there. I don’t know if fingering for a ‘G’ scale plays anything recognizable in any key. When someone asks me what the notes are, I have to say I don’t know. The scale itself is called Ahava Rabba.
I find the whistle is NOT easy to play ‘out of the box’. The finger spacing is unusual and the whistle itself is rather rough and ready. Hard to feel those holes! But for the price it is a Very Cool Thing.
MHO
Tyg
Oh, yes.
Good point about the finger spacing. That does take awhile to get used to. Getting the notes to sound cleanly and alternating between registers was well within what feels natural, at least for me, however.
Best wishes,
Jerry
I’ll not try to record a clip. But here’s Hava Nagila. If you just pick up the whistle, it pretty well plays it by itself. Of course, you have to blow into it and move your fingers a bit, but otherwise, it knows what to do.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Oh, I knew the tune, I was just trying to understand what you meant by the whistle making familiar tunes sound different - I guess what you mean is that it automatically transposes any tune you play into a minor key? 
I don’t think that’s a conventional minor key. Minorish, to be sure. Perhaps someone who’s familiar with the scale can post the intervals.
Now let me get this straight …
You want me to pat my head, rub my stomach AND record a soundclip at the same time?
Best wishes,
Jerry
Child’s play for someone of your talent! 
Hi Jerry,
This seems like exactly what I am looking for.
What it sounds like is a whistle with a barel holed to produce a harmonic minor scale - this is like a phrygian mode with a sharpenned 3rd. in a practical sense it’s like what you’d get if your t2 was sharp (half-holed) (if starting and ending on B1). This scale is used extensively in Turkish and spanish music - e.g. most flamenco stuff is phrygian and wafts into the harmonic minor to balance an Emajor as the tonic chord. Since I’m trying to hook my Turkish friends into celtic music I have to go some distance into turkish/arabic stuff and it’s a pain half-holing the t2 on the signature ornament.
Where might I get one of these lttle treasures?
Here’s Daniel Bingamon’s C&F whistle board profile, including email and website.
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=113
He’s a nice fellow, very generous with his knowledge. In addition to making whistles in interesting keys, he also happens to make the biggest pennywhistles in the world.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Here’s the scale, BTW.
D, Eb, F#, G, A, Bb, C, D
Best wishes,
Jerry
I have one of these and I love it too. It’s tremendous fun to just noodle around on and see what comes out. I’m not bad at fingering my way through trad tunes and seeing how they transform. You feel as if you could charm snakes with this baby. Mine is brass and a bargain at the price, but the plastic one is even cheaper. Dan is a mucho inventive fellow indeed.
Huge thanks!
btw here’s a clip of one of the tunes we’re learning:
http://www.slaughterhouse.com.au/clips/esmerim.mp3
The clip also has a key change that forces half-holing b3 (with a C whistle).
strangely, this source has an instrument sounding somewhat like a penny whistle. I’d originally tried to get a grip on the the zurna (turkish shawm) but all I got was blue in the face 
At some stage we’ll be descending into some of the more esoteric scales. At which point I may have to think about … say , has anyone tried to put keys on a whistle?
Oh, I misunderstood your question. If you tried to play an Irish tune with this
whistle, using the same fingerings you would use on a regular D whistle, then
it would come out in the mode called Ahava Rabba, Freygish, altered
Phrygian, or Hijaz, depending on who you ask.
I have recorded a few tunes so you can compare. I did noise cancellation,
but they still sound kinda iffy. Sorry.
They are available (hopefully) on this page:
http://fearfaoin.tripod.com/Tunes/
Donnybrook_ahava.mp3 is Donnybrook Fair on the Ahava Rabba whistle
Donnybrook_sweetone.mp3 is Donnybrook Fair on a Freeman-tweaked
SweeTone (so you see how the tune sounds in D major)
Let’s_Be_Cheerful.mp3 is a tune that’s originally in the Ahava
Rabba mode, called Let’s Be Cheerful, Said the Rabbi
(edited to [hopefully] fix link)
It’s great to see yet another convert to Daniel’s Ahava Rabba whistle. I’ve had one for about three or four years and I love it. The hole spacing and size is a bit odd at first, but I got used to it very quickly. This is a mode I have been playing on guitar and saxophone for decades so it was very cool to find a whistle that delivered.
Forget about playing Irish music on whistles like this. This is not a scale used in Irish music. As others have observed it is widely used in klezmer and a range of Middle Eastern musics. There is absolutely no problem playing it with other other instruments tuned to equal intonation unless they are diatonic; i.e., you will need to be able to get a chromatic scale on those instruments to be sure of getting the unusual intervals in this mode.
The odd intervals in this scale mean that klezmer tunes employing it are often harmonised in surprising ways. It took Jewish musicians a couple of hundred years and many failed attempts to find ways of wedding Jewish secular and sacred music to the new harmony developing in Western concert music since Bach. The harmonies used now don’t violate the spirit of the modes in my opinion. I have a couple of books which trace the use of modes and the development of harmony in Jewish music if anybody is interested.
One problem you will find with trying to play klezmer on whistle is that many tunes change modes mid tune. This means that a whistler needs a number of instruments and something of the ability of a juggler unless he or she is happy to sit out certain passages.