newbie by way of saxophone

Whistle
1

Hi, just introducing myself…

I was renting a saxophone (alto sax) and learning to play. I was doing pretty well, and playing a few tunes, but the rental sax had problems, and I good sick of fighting it and taking it back to get it fixed, so I returned it to the rental company. I may buy a good one in the future, but they are too expensive for me just at the moment.

Still my fingers itched to play something. I was reading about whistles, and remembered really liking one a friend used to play at an irish pub. I used to join in on my guitar back then.

It struck me that a tin whistle in D had the same fingerings, more or less, as the alto sax, and even better, the D would be the same D as on the piano (an alto Sax is an Eb instrument). So easy… :slight_smile:

I went to the local shops, and found someone selling the Clarke. Very traditional. I also bought a Bb Generation brand, because it was cheap and larger (something different)

Well, the fingering was easy, but what-- no octave key. I quickly realised how to hold my mouth and blow to control the octaves (still having trouble with the 3rd (top) octave).

What a lovely sound the little Clarke makes! My interests tend to Jazz, more than folk, and I am practicing stuff like the theme from MASH, Summertime, It had to be You, Red Sails in the Sunset. Even a Rolling Stones number - Angie (it sounds great on the whistle)

I am using Band-in-a-box on my computer to provide backing. Great program, and it makes it easy to transpose and also displays the music as you play.

Anyway, enough for now. That’s my story :slight_smile: Hope to enjoy discussions in this forum now too…

2

Welcome Xoot. I also started on a Clarke original, though mine is key of C. I also stray away from Irish Traditional Music. In my case, I mostly “roll my own,” playing original compositions. I may get a Gen Bb as my next whistle because many people say it is a good key for slow expressive songs. Another huge positive for whistles, is that you can buy a dozen or more whistles for the price of an entry level sax.

Enjoy,

  • Bill
3

That’s for sure. I intend to get a nice little collection of them, although I am not sure about what keys to get. As I am treating it more like a chromatic instrument, the key matters less, than the overall tone.

4

I started out on a Clarke as well. I never play much besides trad though.
About the only thing else I play is “If I only had a brain” from the Wizzard of Oz while wearing the old tin funnel on my head we have at the shop.

5

There are a lot of us ex-sax players on the board. I used to play Alto sax, too, a couple of decades ago, but I passed the sax on to my younger brother when he entered the school band.

Whistles are cheap - but if you want that sax sound you might want to consider a Xaphoon (“Bamboo Sax”) - they are cheap, chromatic (via weird fingerings), and sound wonderful in skilled hands. I’ve resisted, so far, because they are also pretty loud and I’d like to stay married. :smiley:

But you can get a pretty decent collection of whistles for not too much cash - and compared to a Sax even a high-end whistle is quite affordable. Or as I once pointed out to my wife, my most expensive whistle cost about the same as our daughters’ piano lessens do - per month. :laughing:

6

I am considering a Xaphoon, or making something like it (I like challenges), and you are right… my children’s lessons add up to quite a lot as well. Still it’s fantastic that they are interested in music.

My daughter plays a flute, and is quite critical of any mistakes I make, whereas my son came out of his room the first night after I bought the Clarke, and said “that sounds awesome” as I was playing ‘Angie’ He picked up the Bb Generation from the table, and was tootling away for a while himself (he normally plays trumpet and keyboards)

It’s great stuff…

7

Welcome to the world of whistles you will enjoy playing it is fun. :smiley:

8

Hi Xoot,another ex-Altoist here-welcome to the Club!

9

Sax + whistle, huh?

Here goes, heh-heh…

(from http://www.strathmann-musicinstruments.de/dindex.htm )

Well… it works! The lowest tone of this alto is F (for sax “C” fingering). Price is the same as a decent new sax.

Otherwise, with simple sytem fippled flutes, and for these jazz or bossa tunes with accidentals aplenty, I found a “folk” (not baroque) recorder in C with German system gives the closest equivalent to sax fingering, and will play chromatically easier than a whistle.

As for the Xaphoon… to an absolute beginner like me it seems to me harder to play than both a sax and any flute. A pro alto sax player confirmed it’s hard to blow, needs to swallow a lot of the mouthpiece, barytone-like.
The mistake may be its fixed mouthpiece, or the big tenor reed on a tube belonging to a sopranino…

Someday I’ll pay a visit to Hervieux & Glet, Bretagne, to see their “folk” sopranino wooden saxophone, in D with optional Db, C, and even B keys.

10

Interesting instrument.

So a Xaphoon is hard to play? That would be a pity…

As far as those accidentals go, I am working up to them slowly. Picking some jazz standards that only have a few, and those with plenty of time to find, like the F natural in ‘Night and Day’ when played in D - I can do that perfectly with a half hole :slight_smile:

The ones I shudder at are those that shift keys in the middle into something with 4 ‘accidentals’ on a D whistle :frowning:

11

I started on piano very long ago, stopped, played flute in band, learned sax, am learning trumpet, and recently started whistling. The more instruments I play the more similarities I find in fingerings. For example, “A” on trumpet, flute, sax, and whistle are all with the first two keys down. “C” is always everything open (Although this involves pressing keys on many instruments.) The list goes on.

Anyway, I finally know why they use the German pitching system, something I always wondered in elementary school.

E.G. (“But TEAHCER! If that C im playing on trumpet is really a B flat, why don’t they just CALL it b flat?”)

P.S. cool name, xoot

12

Check out this cool instrument,The ORKON Flute,developed by E.V.Powell in the late 40’S and apparently favoured by Benny Goodman.
http://www.tjimaging.com/orkon/

Irish flute/whistle player PADDY BREEN had one of these and reportedly said that it was his favourite instrument.
There’s been a recent thread on the Yahoo Recorder board about these,and I agree with one poster that it would be great if Yamaha or someone would start building them again at an affordable price (though ‘market forces’ would probably rule the ‘affordable’ bit out).