New style whistle heads

Whistle
41

Ah, and a sudden memory of an English Flageolet that did work. Old Tim Whelan was an Irish musician who came out to Australia in the late sixties, and settled in South Australia. Back in Ireland he was a dance-hall musician, and played sax, flute and tin whistle. Frustrated that the whistles available to him didn’t provide the kind of power he wanted (these were the days before sound systems, hence the sax), he conjoined an English Flageolet body with a large windway recorder head. Then played with a powerful, throbbing vibrato that really lifted the volume and presence of the instrument so it could easily compete with the other instruments.

Tim is passed on now, but remembered by his fiddle-player son, also named Tim, at: https://timwhelanmusic.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/tim-whelan-snr/

There is a recording of old Tim on that page, but to my reckoning, Tim is playing pretty sedately there, which was generally not his style! And in Dm and C, which probably makes it less likely that he was playing the recorder/flageolet. But it’s nice to have reason to remember him.

42

Have you come across any of these piccolo-flageolet combinations that worked well in both modes? I have a period one here which is a dismal failure in both.

I would have thought that jemtheflute demonstrates the musical viability of the flageolet half of a combo set far more than well enough in the video that ends the blog post linked to in my preceding comment: https://www.youtube.com/embed/o31VMOmrwuE.

Because I haven’t found a piccolo / flageolet combination that works, I wonder even is it a practical idea? We know that the taper of the flute is needed to correct the tuning between the octaves. Would that same taper work for the flageolet mouthpiece as well, or would it overcompensate, driving the upper octave top notes sharp with the higher pressures one needs to get up there? Anyone had practical experience of this?

At least one contemporary maker seems to feel that interchangeable piccolo/whistle mouthpieces are worth fitting to a single cylindrical body. I own such a pair, albeit with an aluminum body for which alternate mouthpieces are no longer available. Again, it strikes me as being more than an eked-out proof of concept: https://www.tonydixonmusic.co.uk/product/piccolo-whistle-duo-key-of-d-2/.

The piccolo-flageolet illustrated in the 1897 Sears-Roebuck ad also appears to have a cylindrical bore. If so, that would fully open the piccolo vs fife can of worms but, on the earlier historical record, it is the latter that is explicitly paired with the flageolet.

43

Yes, Jem’s playing the flageolet is encouraging. Matthais Barr, London, 1875-1918. Seems late for that instrumental pair! Barr is described as “Instrument dealer, music seller and concert agent”, so probably not the maker.

Has Jem also recorded the piccolo combo? A comparison of the two would be very interesting.

Interesting the Dixon combination with cylindrical bore. How do you find the intonation in both modes? In the link provided, it looks like we can see the face of the stopper right at the edge of the embouchure hole. Correct? Trying to shore up the upper octave tuning? At the expense of the fullness of the low notes?

Interesting to speculate how one might approach trying to come up with a really good combo. Perhaps start by optimising a whistle head, tapered bore combo? That would presumably then give a slightly flat top end if fitted with a piccolo head of the same diameter. Correct that by making a piccolo head with a slight taper downwards at the stopper end? À la Boehm, but presumably to a lesser degree, as you already have a fair amount of octave compensation in the tapered body. Or can anyone think of or have come across a better approach?

44

Heh heh, and I was reminded of this YouTube of a Bainbridge flageolet, played by William Waterhouse, of New Langwill Index fame. I think we can conclude from his playing that it was for demonstration purposes, not habit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98aB56-1OeI&ab_channel=EUCHMI

Note that, following modern convention, they refer to it as being in Ab, where we call it Bb. Sigh.

45

Back on the topic of shading the window, I wonder if there was an element of that going on in Jim Donoghue’s whistle playing.
He was renowned for having a unique tone on the whistle. In the video below you can see that he played his Clarke whistle through the side of his
mouth, with quite a lot of the head covered by his lips and cheek. I think I read somewhere that he started playing this way when he lost his teeth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOLIJUq9Lg0

46

Wow, Paddler, that is interesting. I just tried a whistle myself both played normally and in the way he’s mouthing it, and can hear a clear hardening of the tone when further in. And a lowering of the pitch. Now, my whistle was a fairly typical plastic head one, but you’d expect his Clarke’s would be much more susceptible given how thin the walls are around the window.

It would be interesting, if one had a Clarke’s or other thin-metal whistle, to try mounding up poster putty around the window to see what we could learn. Anyone?

47



OK, did a little experiment with a Sindt-style whistle I had made which had the stopper diameter the same as the bore through the head. Which would mean the windway floor is at the same level as the underside of the blade. Applying your “looking up from the foot” test, Tunborough, it would have failed, but now it would pass. And yes, the whistle is sounding considerably stronger now. A bit too strong, but I suspect that’s because in messing around with it, I now have the window length a bit too big. Or restrict its use to the great outdoors!

Tragic. I might have wasted $1 worth of delrin! ($1 well spent in learning terms!)

Which then raises the question, how much lower than the blade should we aim for? And do we think that is a given that would apply to whistles of all sizes of bores and to all pitches, or is it something we should proportion, presumably to bore diameter?

48

Back on the topic of shading the window, I wonder if there was an element of that going on in Jim Donoghue’s whistle playing.
He was renowned for having a unique tone on the whistle. In the video below you can see that he played his Clarke whistle through the side of his
mouth,

It sure doesn’t look like a Clarke whistle to me. Paddler, are you identifying it as such on the basis of some visible detail that I’ve failed to recognize or is there additional contextual information about it? If the source of the latter is the heading of the clip here, one of the comments to it credibly states that the depicted instrument is not a Clarke. This clearly indicates that Donaghue did not invariably use whistles of that manufacture.

This doesn’t really matter in the present discussion. Clarke and Generation whistles are both sensitive to shading the window with the same basic effect — as are all the other whistles I have at hand. It is not an attribute of bore or voicing design but is simply the nature of the duct flute beast. Mechanical detail can make the window more or less accessible and raising a wall at its upper side would obviously have the latter consequence. Are we talking about incorporating a correlate to shading in the hardware, or about finding a whistle design that is maximally conducive to the use of a dynamic shading technique?

49

That’s definitely a Clarke that he is playing in the video footage with his son Seamus, which he modified. He’s one of my favourite whistlers, and a few years ago I collected every bit of his recorded music I could find, and researched quite a lot about him.

You can even see the gold section at the top with the big Clarke stamp in that video (which they don’t currently use on their whistles, but did for some time).

50

From what I understand, the embouchure/ window generates a whole load of frequencies, the ones which match the resonances of the bore (i.e. length, pitch, harmonics) are amplified by the returning reflected pressure wave from the open end of the bore. In other words it is that reflection that is the main cause of setting up the oscillation of the jet that moves between one side of an “edge” and another, and that then harmonised input (by a now physically oscillating jet) then further amplifies that frequency. There is some theory to how easily that jet might oscillate (the edge shape, and where the jet is directed onto it), as well as theory that the shape of the edge governs or even creates the initial oscillation by vortexes that appear behind the edge that cause it to shift back to the other side.

I don’t know, even when I look really hard I just don’t see anything happening at all, so it remains a mystery to me.


I don’t think a flat edge (if such a thing exists) need be a problem, because you will have a high pressure zone between it and the jet which acts like an edge, and a low pressure zone just behind corners that works towards the same.


When blowing “into” a flute, I have the impression mostly that I am both increasing air pressure in the embouchure space or bore, and that that finds the tone/harmonics, and that the actual “jet oscillation” is due to a fine balance within embouchure space with only a minimal flow of air over the top of the embouchure, but enough to act to amplify the note.

Thanks for all those links Paddler, I pretty much agree on the views.

Stringbed, I was looking at your blog and find it interesting and well written . You use Oxford 1730 first usage of penny whistle but advanced booksearch gives

1696 " ‎… no more then a Penny Whistle . The generality of Men know not what to make of this Language , but your Politicians understand one another very well , and take their Measures accordingly . To return to the Duke of Saroy’s Letters …"

1631 "And yet in this abhomination of de- folation , haue Proteftants stood this 1500. yeares together , or elfe haue had no Itanding at all to fell a pipe or whistle of a penny : "

Straight off .

(Short off topic related to strings- earliest tension stringed instruments were likely mouth bows

https://www.polarityrecords.com/mouth-bow-historical-and-contemporary-photos.html

Bowyer’s Bible vol 2 has a lot of practical information on early string making, but I expect you already are aware of that. )

51

To avoid confusion of terminology etc. flageolet is a french latin derived word for whistle, e.g. in 16th century was not an English word


The Treasurie of the French Tong: Teaching the Waye to Varie All 1580
Flageolet - a whistle , a pipe


It eventually came to denote a whistle with two thumbholes, with or without windcap, conical or straight bored.

https://www.flageolet.fr/flageolet-19e-gb.html#pompe

The English version had a different layout (six finger holes in front) . From some time in the 19th century on it seems that “flageolet” came to signify any whistle with windcap .

Interestingly there, apart from collecting moisture, in the day they were said to make the whistle sound more like a flute. The windcap is questioned as a type of resonator, which might also fit with Jim Donoghue’s playing technique if it is considered that any resonance will be different if the whistle end has near 360° to expand resonance from , as opposed to maybe 180° or less if played normally.

52

Yes, the proper name for the instrument is the English Flageolet, but who’s going to bother with that!

I don’t have much confidence that the addition of the windcap is likely to change the instrument noticeably in musical terms. It certainly doesn’t with the dismal period instrument I have here! Resonance is unlikely given the windway between windcap and window. And, the small volume of the air inside the wind cap. According to many sources, you were supposed to have some sea sponge in the windcap to soak up condensation*. That would tend to damp any resonances that were excited.

*I guess the risk was that you wouldn’t be invited back to Lady Bracknall’s if your flageolet dribbled on her knee. Or worse, on her Pomeranian.

And presumably after the soiree, you would squeeze it out to dry? Eew…

53

Tin whistles are still marketed as flageolets and the flat bit mouthpiece of the namesake design was retained on whistles into the 20th century. There is also a tantalizing hint of that being the form played by Whistling Billy, now the mascot of the Clarke Tinwhistle Company. I go into this in detail in an essay here and won’t rehash it now. (GreenWood has already made reference to it and, just to clarify, it starts with the first lexically attested use of the term “penny whistle” I could find that clearly applies it to a musical instrument; the qualifier “penny” otherwise denotes something that is inexpensive or a toy.)

The reason I’m even mentioning it, is that it now strikes me that the bit mouthpiece has a place in the general discussion of how whistles have been held by their players. I’ve also taken a closer look at the video clip of Jim Donoghue in light of Sirchronique’s helpful remarks about it and no longer question that Donaghue is using a Clarke whistle. I enlarged and enhanced what seemed to be a particularly informative frame from the clip (online here) but it doesn’t reveal much detail about the position of the instrument in his mouth. Nothing in the video suggests that he’s using a dynamic embouchure nor can I hear any such effect. He’s not the only flute player to hold a whistle at an angle, which still has me wondering if that might be all there is to the explanation here.

The same goes for Kwela. There are YouTube snippets showing the whistle held in the conventional manner and not all of those that show it placed more deeply in the player’s mouth indicate the utilization of that position for actively shading the window. Just in case it’s been lost in the meander of this thread (rather than having been politely ignored :slight_smile: ), I’ll repeat my earlier question about the labeled topic. Are we talking about incorporating a correlate to shading in the hardware, or about finding a whistle design that is maximally conducive to the use of a dynamic shading technique?

54

I don’t think I’m hearing any dynamic effects. I think what’s unusual about Jim’s approach is that he flattens the pitch and darkens the tone the whistle by the proximity of his lips to the window, then increases his pressure and flow, bringing the pitch back up and making the tone more edgy and powerful. That has parallels with how we play the flute - turning the head in and covering more of the embouchure hole darkens the tone and flattens the pitch; aiming the jet down into the hole and increasing pressure and flow moves the energy into the 2nd and 3rd partials, again making the tone edgy and powerful. Given Jim had been a flute player, this is quite probably him actively seeking out ways to get back the power he used to have.

“Just in case it’s been lost in the meander of this thread (rather than having been politely ignored :slight_smile: ), I’ll repeat my earlier question about the labeled topic. Are we talking about incorporating a correlate to shading in the hardware, or about finding a whistle design that is maximally conducive to the use of a dynamic shading technique?”

I imagine there is interest in both, but I have to say for my part, I’m more interested in what we can lock into the hardware. I’d like to optimise head and body for powerful and dark tone and best intonation, so that when I play, I can relax and let the music out, rather than having to be there manipulating it note by note. But being well used to flute (having made over 1100 of them!), I’d like similar levels of volume to what I’m used to. Probably like Jim. And having heard Jim again (it’s been some years and I’d rather forgotten about him), I’d have to say “I’d like what he’s having!”

55

Not to drag thing too far off topic, but- I can’t say for certain, but it seems the Kwela guys mainly only put their lips over part of the window when they are using Hohner whistles, rather than something I see done by Kwela whistlers in general as part of their whistle technique. However, I’m not a Kwela expert, so maybe I’m wrong about that.

Those Hohner whistles indeed have a very short beak that makes it easy to use this technique with them. I’ve wondered if they did this specifically with that type of whistle to get a certain sound, because I don’t recall seeing them do this with Generations.

I have a low G and Bb Hohner of the type favoured by early Kwela musicians, but I’ve only played them briefly because of concerns over the lead solder in them. Mine are pretty weak and raspy in the low notes, so I wonder if they just did it with those whistles specifically to make up for certain “deficiencies” that were common with those whistles, rather than as a technique they would apply to all whistles. I guess Hohners were all they had available to them in those times.

56

What is the acoustic and ergonomic significance of windway/beak length? Could part of its function be to get the window away from the influence of the face ?

I tried a Kwela/Jim Donoghue style with a ‘new style whistle head’, a Generation and a Shaw (similar to a Clarke which I don’t have). A quick try didn’t produce anything useful sound-wise but I did find that the new-style head was an uncomfortable mouthful and the Generation doable. With the Clarke-like Shaw played sideways it’s quite hard not to get the lips close to the window. So I wonder what the balance is between ‘need to’, ‘want to’ and ‘can easily do’. I’ll stick with flute and whistle played ‘normally’.

57

OK, so I’ve been experimenting a bit with the Kwela style of blowing and I can say that it definitely has the potential to produce a much louder, richer and edgier
bottom octave on most whistles. I have experimented with the following whistles, all high D:

Sindt
OZ vambrace
Generation
Clarke Original
Clarke Sweetone
Shaw
Feadog first generation
Feadog second generation
Freeman bluebird
Freeman blackbird
Oak
Guinness
Walton’s Mellow D

The effect can be obtained on all of them, but it requires some nuanced adjustment of whistle angle, depth of insertion and lip shape. Each whistle has its own
response and some are much more difficult than others.

It seems to be important to have the whistle at around a 45 degree angle, which makes me wonder if a certain amount of asymmetry in the shading is a factor.

When holding the whistles at just the right angle I was able to increase the volume of the lowest notes on some whistles by a huge amount – almost to the point of
blowing as hard as I could, at which point it was really loud and still not breaking to the next octave. A warble starts to occur on some of them some of the time.

The Clarke Original was not as easy for me to get the effect as most of the others, but I think this was because I had bent and tweaked the blade to the point where
it was almost perfect playing normally. I think I see why Jim Donoghue spent a lot of time messing with his Clarke whistle. You can change their behavior quite
dramatically with very minor adjustments, and I suspect the adjustments you need to optimize playing shaded are different to those for normal playing.

None of the whistle are very comfortable to play this way (with the head inserted far into the mouth), but I think you probably do need to do a certain
amount of dynamic embouchure adjustment to keep the balance just right across the full range of notes. Whether this is something that would be acceptable
to the average whistle player is a separate question. I suspect probably not.

So getting to stringbed’s politely ignored question, which I hadn’t actually ignored, but was pondering about because it seemed to be right on point,
I think the approach that will be more likely to optimize the end result would be one in which the head is designed in such a way as to make this style of
dynamic shading easier. However, for widest community acceptance I suspect that trying to take some insight from the physics/acoustics that is going on here
and trying to build some of that into the hardware would be the way to go. In either case, it is probably going to mess with the tuning, because a significant amount
of flattening seems to occur, especially if you don’t compensate with a lot more pressure.

Are you planning to start making whistles with a flat foot Terry? :poke: :laughing:

58

I just tried building a poster putty wall (about 20 mm high and wrapping around the sides) around the window on my Clarke’s Original whistle. You get a significant change in tone
and a much stronger bottom end. You can really learn into the bottom notes a lot more, and it is easier to get a forceful roll on E for example. But you also have to work harder to
get it to kick up an octave and the high B becomes stiffer.

You can change things by manipulating the shape of the putty wall and quite easily get a better overall balance across octaves than before.

The pitch is lowered by around 50 cents though, and not uniformly across notes, so there would need to be some tone hole lattice adjustment to compensate.

I tested this out on various other whistles and the effect is similar. Building a tall, overhanging, wall around the window, which wraps around the sides, strengthens the lower
notes, and ornaments, allows for more breath pressure there, and lowers the overall pitch. It also changes the quality of the tone in a way that I find pleasing.
It allows the whistle to be played with more breath pressure, which for me (a flute player) is a positive.

59

A fipple flute with a high wall at the windway exit, resulting in a strong bottom end, a flute-like tone, and a second octave that’s difficult to reach… Add in a large bore and a wind cap (or slow air chamber), and it sounds very much like a NAF to me.

Is it possible that angling the whistle in the mouth is useful because it keeps one’s nose out of the way of the window? (A moustache precludes me from doing experiments myself.)

60

Dolmetsch used to manufacture a “tone projector” shown in the drawing below. British patent GB666602 was issued for it in 1952, covering “instruments having a mouthpiece restricted by a fipple or plug, or otherwise formed, so as to direct a stream of air onto a ramp-edged sounding aperture in the wall of a tube.” I remember when they were being sold and occasionally even used, but not when they disappeared from the market (assuming they’re not still to be found).

ETA: There’s a good review of a plethora of recorder innovations here.