I recent purchased a brass Killarney D whistle. It produces the best sound out of all of my 5 whistles. It is very clear and effortlessly goes from the lower octave to the upper octave. But, I am having a strange problem with it. It literally slips out of my grasp when I am playing it. When I am playing an A or B with only L1 or L1 + L2 fingers on the whistle (plus my thumbs), it tries to slip down and roll clockwise in my grip, which I counter by gripping harder and pressing the fipple harder against my mouth. Today, I wrapped an elastic band around the tube above my left thumb, which seems to stabilize it somewhat, but certainly looks unattractive.
I have been playing for 10 months now and this is the only whistle that reacts this way. I really want to be able to play my Killarney, but this problem has been making it almost impossible to do so.
I have a nickel plated Freeman BlackBird which is a little slick to hold at times. Sometimes I use a little (just a dab) of hand cream on my hands, which anymore at my age tend to be quite dry, to get a little more ‘traction’. Also, since I am also a piper, I always have a blob of Bee’s wax nearby to wax thread, and just handling this to warm it a bit will transfer a minute tackiness to my fingers. I would guess resorting to something like a baseball pitchers rosin bag might do the same thing, though I’ve never used one myself.
I have had this problem with a few low whistles. What worked for me was placing a vertical piece of plastic tape on the back of the whistle for my thumbs to rest on.
I also bought a brass Killarney D whistle recently. At a glance, I realized their finishing of finger holes is quite incomplete. Edges of longitudinal direction, upper and lower edges are scraped properly but those of lateral direction, left and right are mostly left un-touched with drill marks. So I scraped lateral edges using fine files and sandpapers and made a little bevel similar to that at the upper and lower edges. As a grip force is a product of your finger force and the area of contact between your finger and whistle, I am sure that this procedure will help to resolve your problem.
Concentrate on playing your Killarney whistle for a while.
This is my second advice to you. I can understand that you wish to compare the Killarney with your previous whistles to evaluate how good the new one is. But this induces confusion in your brain. The centroid of typical plastic head whistle is around the top hole or your left thumb, but that of Killarney is 2 inches above because of its heavy head. Your brain needs a time to get used to this. Once your brain established a playing-Killarney-circuit in it, it will switch easily from one to another immediately when you grab the particular whistle.
That is so very true, what you wrote. The Killarney is top heavy but the brain will adjust to its weight distribution. When I play the Killarney for a long time and switch to a plastic whistle head variety, the plastic head one feels incredibly light. On another note, I tend to use the Killarney and the Sweetone for learning new tunes. They clog very little and are somehow forgiving.
Some of those are pretty slippery.
I like the bee’s wax idea. You could rub a bit of it where your thumb rests on the whistle for some grip. It would be easily wiped off if need be with no damage to the whistle.
A tube of brass Killarney D whistle is without coating and brush finished. I worry that application of hand lotion or bee’s wax will cause quite miserable look of the whistle in the future when patina develops.
Rub the hand lotion well into the skin. I haven’t had any issues with the patina after using hand lotion. The hands shouldn’t be wet or slippery from hand lotion.
A tried and true trick for bones players- if your bones tend to slip out of your grip while playing, take a little piece of beeswax and run it along only the very edge of the bones, just once or twice like a crayon- only along the sharp edge where your fingers are holding the bones. This works great and the wax just wears off by itself after a while. Just one or two swipes of wax is plenty, don’t overdo.
I think you could take a little chunk of beeswax and draw one or two strokes of it along the bottom of the whistle occasionally, right where your thumbs rest. This I believe would work like a charm.
Beeswax is also traditionally rubbed around the edge of tambourine skins to facilitate doing the ‘thumb roll’ that depends on the ‘braking power’ of the wax to cause the thumb to ‘shiver’ as you run it along the edge of the tambourine skin to create a long jingly ring of the zils…similar effect as when you slam on the brakes while driving and leave ‘rubber on the road’.
Beeswax is great for providing traction, yet also works to lubricate sticking bureau drawers and window sashes. Go figure!- it’s a modern day miracle cure! ;D
I’ve tried Gorilla Snot to get a better grip on low whistles. Need to be careful and use just a tiny touch of it, otherwise it gets everywhere. I landed up putting a small bit of double-sided tape where the thumbs go. The beeswax works too but my hands are warm enough to take it off the whistle pretty quickly.
A friend used super glue. Worked wonderfully and now he can hardly put the whistle down… (Lest anyone actually do this, I’m just joking. Don’t send your lawyers after me.)
Carolyn Nausbaum (Flute4You website) sells some stick-on pads, either white or black that give a nice
non-slip surface but are easy to remove when you want. You can easily cut them down if you think they’re too big.
They’re meant for flutes but I’ve been using them on my Rayburn low Ds and they work a treat.