Per the title, I’d like to mod one of my cheap D whistles to play in E mixolydian so I can play pipe music in the lower octave instead of having to play on A (higher, shriller, more crossing the octave break). What would be the simplest way to do so? Would slightly enlarging the tone hole throw off the rest of the scale above it?
Have you tried closing (from the top) holes 1,2, 4, 5? That flattens the A enough to get a reasonable G-sharp on some of my D whistles. May have to vary the lower hole closures between the upper and lower octave to get a better G-sharp.
I’ve played some whistles that will give a cross fingered G# like a flute, but it’s rarely very in tune, especially on cheap high Ds. It’s usually way too sharp, and if anything I want it slightly flat for a true just third.
Years ago when I doing studio gigs fulltime I modified an ordinary High D whistle to play G# instead of G natural.
Why? It was just so I could sight-read things in three sharps without having to transpose them for an A whistle or E whistle.
All I did was carve out Hole 4 until it played an in-tune G#.
It’s ugly yes but with studio work nobody sees you.
Well in case anyone else is interested, I had a spare hour this morning and figured worst case scenario I’m out a $10 plastic whistle, no great loss. I enlarged the hole with progressively larger drill bits and then did a bit of cleanup filing and undercutting the upwind side of the hole to get a G#. Tone seems unaffected tho it did throw the A and B about 30 cents sharp, easily remedied with a couple strips of gaffers tape over the top 3rd of the holes and a dot of super glue to make the tape firm where my finger will touch it so it doesn’t collapse into the hole. I now have a cheap whistle that plays DEF#G#ABC# and is perfect to leave on the dash of the car to bang out some pipetunes at lunch or while waiting for appointments, etc.
Indeed, this is what I did tho it did require taping down the A and B above it as above.
Why not just buy an E whistle? Carbony and Susato sell them. They play G sharps. And you’ll never have any trouble playing in E myx, E major, or A major if you buy one.
Because I want to play mixolydian in the lower octave with a low b7. So a whistle that runs b7123456b7 makes much more sense and is much closer to how the music lies on a pipe chanter. And I want something small and cheap to take out or leave in the car. The modification proved simple and I got what I wanted out of a $10 D whistle.
Ah I see. Come to think of it, an E myx whistle would be pretty useful.
I wish there was more of a market for a whistle with a pipe scale/fingering. I think it’d be a great travel practice instrument. I know there are a few on the market like the Carbony Highland whistle but it’s so expensive I’d just buy a second plastic practice chanter instead. Bit of a niche I guess.
I’m not following. A Highland pipe chanter?
As a Highland piper who has also played uilleann pipes/Irish flute/Irish whistle for45 years, if I wanted a dedicated whistle to play Highland pipe tunes I’d approach it in a different way.
For me the wheelhouse of Irish whistle/Irish flute/uilleann pipes is the key of G. It’s in G that you have the full range of accessible ornamentation.
Why? because with crossfingered C natural you can perform a “cut” (upper gracenote) and a “pat” (lower gracenote) with much greater facility than on open C#.
So if I was going to gig regularly on whistle, playing along with a Highland piper/Scottish Border piper/Scottish smallpiper I’d get a whistle where my G was the same pitch as the piper’s “Low A”.
If they’re playing a “A” set of pipes therefore I’d want an “E” whistle.
BUT I would have the “F#” of the whistle (the note emitting from Hole 4, on an “E” whistle Concert G#) to be made a half-step lower, thus being Concert G natural on my E whistle.
Whistles just play better in the mid-range, and as I had said a wider range of ornamentation is available. When the Highland pipe tune is playing a GDE triplet on “C” (actually C# on an “A” chanter) I would be doing a Long Roll on “B” (Concert C# on an E whistle) which is far more facile than doing a Long Roll on open C# as I would be if I were using a D whistle to play Highland tunes in A.
To be clear the Highland pipe scale on my “Highland whistle” would go
xxx xoo Low G (natural)
xxx ooo Low A
xxo oox B
xoo oox C#
oxx oox D
oxx xxx E
xxx xxo F#
xxx xoo High G (natural)
xxx ooo High A
I’m surmising that you’re talking about the Great Highland Bagpipes (there are dozens and dozens, probably hundreds, of different types of bagpipes), so you may be interested in this:]
Yes highland/smallpipes chanter is what I play. You’re overthinking my aims a bit. I’m not looking for an instrument to play along in a matched key with pipes or to exactly copy pipe fingering. I just want to play pipe tunes on a cheap and small (thus my modification of a cheap D) whistle I can leave in my car without worry and without having to play half the tune in the frankly shrill and loud upper range of such a small whistle, which is what I was doing before by playing in the key of A on the D whistle.
By modifying G to play G# the D whistle now runs DEF#G#ABC#D. I now only need to overblow for a single note, the high E to get a complete mixolydian scale + low b7. In other words the bagpipe A mixolydian scale transposed to E.
Very cool!
As a longtime Highland and uilleann piper, and an Irish flute/whistle player, in my opinion that’s the wrong approach.
It has its place, appealing to the Highland pipers who don’t want to take the time to learn whistle. Trouble is, it doesn’t work well. The underlying physics and voicing and the way that tunes and ornaments sit on the Highland chanter just don’t correspond to the low octave of a whistle.
Where everything sits far better is where I outlined above, in the heart of the whistle range, from G to g.
A to a works as far as whistle voicing goes but open C# is clumsy to ornament, while with crossfingered C natural everything is right under the fingers and facile.
As a whistle player I think a whistle is best at being a whistle and doing things the way whistles like to do things. My goal is to have the best whistle to play Highland pipe tunes, not to turn a whistle into a wonky imitation chanter.
If I understand what your proposed layout is, it comes close but doesn’t exactly copy GHB fingering.
The only thing I’ve seen that does that is the Whistle ecadre linked to above. It has the little-finger hole for Low G and presumably the thumb-hole for High A.
Yes my aim, as a whistle player, would be to have the best-sounding best-playing whistle for performing GHB tunes, which means placing the GHB’s Low G to High A range in the wheelhouse of the whistle range, the range with the best sound and most accessible to ornamentation.
Yes, as I said I also play pipes (highland fingering), so I’m aware it’s not exactly the same. I’m not sure why you seem convinced that the lower hand of the lower octave isn’t a good range on the whistle? I have no trouble playing down there on most of my whistles and on higher pitched whistles I’d dare say most would find it mellower and smoother and nicer in tone than the often shrill and more poorly intonated second octave.
I do play pipe tunes in A on my Low D whistle, no problem. But on a high D it can be a bit harsh.
Maybe I am not following this.
Does a D+ whistle (D whistle with an extra hole for low C natural) played with a crossed fingered C natural give a D mixolidian scale with a bagpipe-like lower 7th? If so drilling an extra hole and adding a bit of tube to a cheap D whistle would do the job and still be playable as a normal whistle.
Yes extending the range of a whistle down by a whole tone would be another way of accomplishing the same thing.