New style whistle heads

Whistle
61

Just to clarify, the wall I built around the window was highest on the player’s end, tapered down at each side, and was non-existent at the downstream
end near the ramp. I experimented with the shape of the wall between the player and the window. The effects seemed to be amplified by introducing a
bit of an overhang/roof over the window.

So what I did is quite different to the Dolmetsch tone projector which seems to build up a large ramp below the window, and have only a minimal wall between
the player and window, while remaining completely open above the window itself. The Dolmetsch approach seems like a kind of loud speaker for the window,
directing the sound towards the audience. In the approach I used, the wall is between the player and the window, but yet the sound experienced by the player
is noticeably louder, not so much because it is focussed or amplified, but more because the player is able to push more energy into the whistle without the
resonance jumping to the next octave.

The most similar thing that I have come across is the leather window cover featured on Màndeh-Pàhchu flute discussed here:

https://www.flutopedia.com/dev_flutes_northamerica.htm

and shown in more detail here:

https://www.flutopedia.com/img_BodmerFlute.htm

62

And do we think (or know?) that the features marked 23 are a pair of holes each side of the window perhaps to reduce the flattening effect? Remembering recorders don’t have a lot of room on the tenon for sharpening. I wonder if the holes reduce the tonal benefits much? Presumably not, or Dolmetsch wouldn’t have persevered with it.

I met Carl Dolmetsch very briefly in late November 1974 when I toured the Haslemere factory. You got the strong impression that though he was there in front of you in body, his mind was elsewhere, and he quickly made his excuses and slipped back into the room where he did final voicing. The staff seemed in awe of him, and referred to him (at least in the presence of visitors) as Dr Dolmetsch.

63

Harrumph! Cheeky young whipper-snapper!

No, I was never a fan of those in the flute, so definitely not for the whistle. I do find it interesting that we don’t seem to see tapered whistles with flares in the end - this is done routinely on wooden flutes since baroque times to lift the low D to the same pitch as the middle d. But then I haven’t seen or experienced any tapered whistles lately, so what would I know?

Oh, I did have to do it for the Wallis English flageolet I fixed up for a chap about a year back. This was the one that I had to extend the length as both Ds were on the sharp side of other notes. I extended it too far (purposefully) and then trimmed back, monitoring both Ds. It became clear that the middle D was sharpening faster, so I started back reaming to keep them in tune, then trim a bit, ream a bit, until both were where I wanted them. Now I don’t know if that experience has relevance to tapered whistles in general, as we don’t know how optimum the Wallis taper was. But a trick to keep in mind if you come across a tapered whistle with a flat foot!

64

Heh heh, I’m not surprised 20mm high walls had an effect, given the base material is only 0.3mm thick! And we don’t want to make that second octave dramatically harder or louder! But given that it probably follows the laws of diminishing returns, we might see some benefits from something a little more modest. But that’s encouraging - I sense a more controlled experiment might now be called for. Anyone got anything in mind or in train?

65

And pondering my own question: “Anyone got anything in mind or in train?”, I am wondering about something along these lines:

Tubing Bore: 12.8mm, based on 17/32" (13.5mm) K&S tubing, which takes us pretty close to Bracker’s mid range recommendation of 13.0mm.

Stopper OD: “a little bit less than the bore” to set the windway floor “a ribbon of light’ lower than the bore” (Tunborough). How much lower? Any suggestions or experience?

Head bore: To match Stopper OD at front end, Tubing OD at rear end, and Tubing ID in remainder?

Head OD (in the window area): Maybe 23.5mm, to give a 5mm wall thickness at the window? That’s pretty big compared to most D whistles. (I wouldn’t want to be making this in brass!) I could probably turn it down later if it proved a complete joke!

Head cover (Mouthpiece) OD. To match Head Diameter? Might need to be machined down at the mouth end? Or market as “Gob-stopper Whistles (TM)”?

Head cover (Mouthpiece) ID. Sets the Windway height over the Stopper Diameter. Would +3mm, giving a height of 1.5mm be too much? (Woah…)

Window Width: Say 8mm?

Window Length: Say 5.5mm?

Ramp angle (not that we seem to be obsessed by that any more): circa 22º (about what I’ve found on other whistles)?

Or should I be really bold? Remembering that it’s much harder to put the material back, should I:

  1. leave it vertical at first? Just for the fun of it?
  2. try a 45º angle, then
  3. try a 45º angle, but mill away the top half of the ramp into a slot, in the manner we see say with Setanta whistles?*
  4. steepen the angle,
  5. other, please specify?

How should the top surface of that slot relate to the top of the windway (inside of Head Cover)?

  1. Doesn’t matter?
  2. Must equal or exceed?
  3. other, please specify?

And now, the hardest question of all, what have I forgotten entirely?

These are all in the manner of musings, so do feel free to debunk, deride, dissociate from…

Or beat me to it!

66

The patent specification states: “A pair of holes 23 is drilled one in each of the side walls 12 close to the upper edge 14, so that they will be immediately adjacent to the sounding slot in operation, and these serve to improve the quality of the tone.”

I met Carl Dolmetsch very briefly in late November 1974 when I toured the Haslemere factory…and…he quickly made his excuses and slipped back into the room where he did final voicing.

I was doing the same thing with Moeck’s Rottenburgh recorders in Celle a few years earlier.

67

You’ve labeled this a “controlled experiment” rather than a shared design exercise. The long and presumably growing list of variables is certainly appropriate to the workshop context; indeed it’s essential to it. From the statistical perspective, however, the evaluation of a multivariate array of measured data presents a daunting challenge that is avoided wherever possible.

A control specification is needed in any case, so we have to zero in on precise reference measurements for each of the structural details on the list. We’d then need to prioritize the order in which they are varied systematically, one at a time. The objective basis for comparing the results attained by the participants in the effort will otherwise be shaky at best.

And the most elusive question of all — how are the evaluation criteria to be formulated? With the exception of glaringly and egregiously stinkeroo designs, there is positive and negative commentary to be found about pretty much every whistle out there.

68

“The quality of the tone” is interesting. I wonder if we should be investigating that too.

I met Carl Dolmetsch very briefly in late November 1974 when I toured the Haslemere factory…and…he quickly made his excuses and slipped back into the room where he did final voicing.

I was doing the same thing with Moeck’s Rottenburgh recorders in Celle a few years earlier.[/quote]

What prompted that, stringbed?

I spent 7 months in England, Scotland and Ireland in 1974 to find out what was happening in folk music in those countries. So I was going round festivals, venues, museums, etc, interviewing their staff and exploring their facilities. Unexpectedly, lots of things steered me more and more towards instrument making, and so I sought out the collections, makers, etc, gathering all the information I could. Hence the visit to Dolmetsch. I also visited Boosey & Hawkes and Zuckerman, from whom we bought a harpsichord kit. No turning back now…

I wasn’t aware of any whistle or Irish flute makers (if they even existed), but it was a great period for baroque instrument making. I never thought to visit Clarke’s or Generation, probably because those instruments were so readily and cheaply available. I did buy two boxes of Generation D whistles to feed the starving masses back here in Australia. At that time, the quality of Generation whistles had suddenly nose-dived, and you had to go through handfuls to find one that worked. Needless to say, the music shops were not amused by all us long-haired folkies mouthing their whistles and then handing them back!

69

Heh heh, open to any better ideas!

70

Terry

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

The French probably, but already flageolet sounds like something out of botany and I have no idea how the English manage to pronounce it …or even how they (we) do…at least I pronounce it in french … now I’m really confused.

I think the windcap would even out the pressure a bit, make everything more stable, whatever that does to playing.

The sponge would be just the right size for cleaning behind the ears, there being often unfathomable utilitarian aspects attached to questionable design concepts. However, something tells me that the space in the windcap would be the sort of place a very large spider would mysteriously find its way to, and so having experienced the difficulty caused by that, and the shriek resulting from inspection of the windcap having disfavoured the musician to the rest of the orchestra, a sponge was chosen to be placed there. Nothing to do with humidity, it is a spider repellant.





Stringbed

“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”

Then from Germany ! … which I am sure the English will accept with traditionally mannered forms of grace.

1680


"Nor do I wish to exclude the occasional ridiculous, rather ignominious, songs of lolitas, combined with hateful mufficas, which are commonly practiced in the streets at night:

A Night Serenade with Pennywhistles and Jaw Harps


they appeal, or, where, indeed, the scorners, who are better equipped, always strike a single chord, or the great diffusion of all the instruments create various troubles for the listeners"

Roughly translated from:


“Nec exclufas volo ridiculas nonnunquam , quin ignominiofas noctu in plateis exerceri lolitas cantiunculas , odiola mufica conjunctas , quas vulgò: Ein Standtgen mit Pfennigpfeifen und Brumeisen appellant , vel , ubi quidem melius inftrumentorum…”

Capitalised in the original text

Pg17

https://books.google.pt/books?id=lENJAAAAcAAJ


Brumeisen

http://www.antropodium.nl/Duizend%20Namen%20Mhp%20NOMENCLATUUR.htm


Standtgen / standchen pg183

https://books.google.pt/books?id=kdmhAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

71

Mess around with all the parameters till one sounds good, offer that design to players, and then wait however long to find out if the design is liked and taken up, unlimited patience being the essence.

If you have to have a control, then persuade someone (preferably by gentle means) to play that whistle an hour every day for several years and then examin the state of them afterwards, the state of their playing as well.

72

Quality of tone is usually at the heart of what makes a musical instrument better, but what constitutes a desirable quality of tone varies from one genre to another.
I suspect that in the Dolmetsch case, “improving the quality of tone” means making it sound more like a recorder, or like a better recorder. I’ve often heard recorder
makers comment that “mistakes” in wind way and blade geometry would have the undesirable effect of making a recorder sound like a whistle.

In other words, “sounding like a whistle” is considered poor quality of tone by a recorder maker, and conversely “sounding like a recorder” is considered poor quality of
tone by many whistle makers. So we have to be careful with this.

Ultimately, even within a genre, I think there is a lot of scope for subjective preferences here, and aspects of this will probably never be amenable to a proper controlled
experiment.

73

Heh heh, I should probably have made clear that I’m not intending to make whistles to sell. Given tomorrow is my 75th birthday, I’m not looking to embark on a new career!

I would like to have a whistle that really suits me, and I’m prepared to put in a bit of work to get there!

74

Hmmm, and maybe there’s an argument that a better starting point would be a Setenta type head? Then you could have covers of differing Outside Diameters to pop on and off at will, to compare the effects of different window heights on the same central core?

It seems a bit weird to refer to them as “Setenta type heads” when I’m aware that there are more than one maker using this approach. Do we have any idea who first used it, or do we have a generic name for the approach?

There’s also the style which is similar, but the cover stops a bit beyond the ramp, but remains open and doesn’t form a slot. First maker or generic name for these?

Do we have a bit of work ahead of us to establish whistle-making history and give credit where credit is due? Or does that history already exist?

Edited to add: Credit where credit is due? Or Rogues’ Gallery?

75

I know, but my point was more that in terms of eventual aim the objective is very subjective. I could imagine a method to relatively easily work through every added window height and angle parameter possible, recording all on spectogram, including variables of air pressure and octaves, to be presented as a readable set of data . Then you would have to do same with different shaped addition , different sized windows , different windways, different bores , different edge, different tonehole sizes and spacing, and more.

So for first you get 1000 readings .
For shaped another 1000 readings.
For third (window size) you might try 500 variations.
Windway (remember we are in micro territory here for the sake of empirical definition) another 500 variations.
For bore hundreds to thousands of possibilities.
Same for toneholes.
And more.

Then you have to multiply those together because for each single bore it is crossed with each single tonehole which is crossed with each window size etc.

You cannot say “This window sounded nice and that bore sounded good” from different setups and mix them just like that, because they probably won’t work in a different configuration of the rest.

So even if you do all the above you are left with millions of readings, and you pick out the set which has best range and loudness and clarity of tone.

Then would people or even the maker really like the actual sound ?

It is sort of like searching for an aesthetic ideal without even knowing what it is. Boehm created one, but an old simple system flute might sound as good or better to some. How can you have a “control” sound when there is no such thing as a standard sound.. a synth generated sinewave would definitely not do.

So that is why I say “messing around”, trying different parameters , seeing how they sound and using intuition to combine them to a sound that is liked by the maker/player. If others like the sound so much the better, but they will probably still appreciate the playing more even if it is only the player who really notices the difference in the way his whistle sounds, or how it is to play.

76

Quoting Terry, quoting me:

“I was doing the same thing with Moeck’s Rottenburgh recorders in Celle a few years earlier.”

What prompted that, stringbed? I spent 7 months in England, Scotland and Ireland in 1974 to find out what was happening in folk music in those countries. … I wasn’t aware of any whistle or Irish flute makers (if they even existed), but it was a great period for baroque instrument making.

I spent four months of 1968 on a similar pilgrimage to Europe directly focused on the making and playing of Baroque instruments. One of the ports of call was the historical instrument studio in the Moeck establishment, run by Otto Steinkopf. I had been playing his instruments for a few years and met him in NYC (where I’m from) in 1967. When told of my impending trip, he invited me to visit him in Celle if the itinerary could be steered in that direction.

Making a long story short, I made that visit and returned a year later after accepting a generous unexpected offer of a position there from Dr. Moeck, It was formally as an apprentice to Herr Steinkopf but on regular terms of employment. I had no intention of becoming involved with recorder manufacture. However, when plans were made for Friedrich von Huene (who I knew from the States and had made my go-to alto recorder and traverso) spending the summer of 1970 in Celle working on the production of his Rottenburgh instruments, I moved into that shop.

There was only one tuner and voicer there at the time and I was encouraged to expand that number, while continuing the broader apprenticeship. I was trained by the incumbant, who was the most experienced in the organization, and benefitted immeasurably further from working with Friedrich. A third voicer was taken on board shortly afterward and I became the one of us who dealt with custom tuning and voicing requests.

The historical development of tuning systems for uilleann pipes
77

Ah, great story, stringbed.

Isn’t life funny. You start out with certain expectations - in my case it was landing a dream job designing and making support electronics for cutting edge physical science research - but suddenly you find yourself being dragged off in completely other directions. I’ll admit I didn’t put up much of a fight!

78

For me the career trajectory went through the realm of musical instruments from the very outset. But, boy, did it ever do some twisting and turning.

79

Yeah, even when I seriously embarked on instrument making, I had assumed I would do a mix of early and folk flutes. In fact, my byline on my web page still says: “Flutes for Irish, Classical and Early Music”. Well, that wasn’t the reality. Irish music won, hands down. I still remember attending a Comhaltas event in Dundalk in 1974, where the elders lamented “well, this is the end of the music as we have known it”. Not quite, as it transpired…

80

Interesting topic I just read now!
Coming back to the points about chamfer and block:
By making whistles from industrial alu tubing and using a curved windway and blade, and a block OD cut to the ID of the head tube, the air stream exiting the windway will hit the blade on the high side, if the blade is sloped traditionally, and not much will enter the bore underneath it. Therefore I assumed that a good chamfer on the block (the lower chamfer) is essential in order to unbalance the airstream and initiate oscillation. Likewise by letting the block protrude a little into the bore, further down than the windway roof exit, the whistle will respond quicker in producing a tone, especially for lower notes. For me that was/is an important design criteria. Without the block protrusion the whistle would not speak that easy. For a D whistle I mostly used up to 0.5mm protusion, for low D about 1mm. I did not care much about upper chamfer, just made sure everything is supper smooth, including the inside of the windway.