Well well well I’ve posted many times of my disdain for putting a C natural hole on an Irish whistle.
It always struck me as a crutch for converted Boehmists, an unnecessary mutilation of the pure Irish whistle.
So just yesterday I got a Burke Low D from somebody and it had a C natural hole on the back. Bummer! I thought. I’m going to have to put tape over that thing or always be vexed by it.
What I found, though, was that it was no trouble at all to keep my thumb covering that evil hole. My thumb never slipped off of it once.
And furthermore it came in handy for certain passages that use High C. (Though I still think crossfingered Middle C is far superior to the thumbhole Middle C, both in timbre and in usefulness.)
What I wonder, though, is: does Michael change the size/location of the C# hole on whistles that have a C natural hole? Because the crossfingered C natural on this whistle is a bit on the sharp side, but it’s in tune, I think, on all my other Burkes (which lack thumbholes).
Good question. I don’t believe Burke does anything different for the C nat whistles though. I’ll check things out later on when I have a chance and the calipers are handy. I have a couple duplicate Burke whistle keys where one has the C nat and the other does not. So I’ll measure them to see if the C# is different.
I’ll admit that the ones I own with the C nat holes have tape over them and will likely stay that way. I never was able to come to grips with them as easily as you describe.
Edit: A quick check of two pairs of high D’s seem to indicate that the C# holes are in the same position and are the same size. I’ll get out the digital calipers later. I had a low D with a C nat hole but I’ve sold that one so I’m out of test cases here.
Strange, when I’d have expected the opposite if anything given the possibility of a smaller T1 hole with the option of opening the thumb hole to sharpen the C#.
FWIW, I’ve now come down against thumb holes on my whistles because I don’t like the required position between T1 and T2 (especially on larger whistles where I’ve found both thumb hole and T3 positions affected by a mutually-dependent, tension-inducing relationship where I like both offset for my short-changed left hand), but find the same positional relationships working for and not against me on transverse flutes (which I wouldn’t order without, though naturally to my offset specifications).
I do find the thumhole C nat superior in tone, as it will give you a C nat similar in power (volume) and tone than the adjacent notes, which fact I regard as superior than the shaded C nat you get from cross-fingering. You may prefer the latter, but this is probably because you are used to it. [I use “you” in a general sense, meaning anyone]. As to usefulness: that depends how much you trained your thumb in using it (how easy/difficult it is), how much you trained yourself in switching between cross-fingerd C nat and thumb hole C nat, to have fluidity in both, and thirdly how convenient one is over the other, especially in fast passages.
There are other advantages of having the use of a thumb hole:
You can use it, by opening it and all other holes, for a sharper C#. This may be desirable for effect, but also for finely tuning C#. On traditional tuned whistles C# will be a bit flat, to allow for a just intoned C#, but even more flat to allow for a just-intoned cross-fingered C nat with OXXOOO.
Correct me if I am wrong, but from the Burke whistles I played the tuning is equal tempered. The OXXOOO cross-fingered C nat is quite sharp in all three Burke whistles I got here (low D, middle-low G and high D). This is a consequence of C# being tuned ET. A OXXXOO fingering works much better, but shades the C nat even more.
I used a Burke low C for a recording. I found the cross fingered C nat. (in D whistle terms) to be a tad muted when listening to the recorded result. To bring up the volume I used 0XX000 for it, but it was a bit sharp. 0XXX00 was noticeably more muted. That was the first time I wished I had the thumb hole.
What I was thinking was that the thumbhole for C natural would work like the thumb key for C natural on the Boehm flute: since the C# hole is now relieved of its duty of creating an in-tune crossfingered C natural, it can be moved up the tube to create an in-tune ET C#. In other words that hole now only has two duties (open C# and D vent) rather than three. I would think it would be a bit clumsy to have to open the thumbhole for C#, at least in fast tunes.
Odd that people talk of crossfingered C natural as having a poor timbre or volume, because I’ve always thought it sounded better. On this new Burke Viper crossfingered C natural is just as loud as the open C natural made with the thumbhole and has a more pleasant timbre also.
Depends on the fast tune(s), but my key words were ‘if anything’ and ‘option’ (no ‘have to’ implied!) when the flatter C#'s by no means a given for thumb hole configurations and would tend not to show so much at speed even where it was. All academic to me now I’ve rejected thumb holes on my whistles, but not on my four-keyed flute with thumb hole where I’ve got the option of thumb on (with forked C nat) or off (thumb hole C nat) for rapid transitions between C and C# (handy for The Flight of the Bumble Bee!) as well as fine-tuning the C# (where I may even open the thumb hole while keeping the RH fingers down) at any tempo.
