Octave balance

Whistle
1

Was experimenting with improving the tuning of my generation D and ended up taping 3 holes and filing out the top of the F# hole as the second octave note was almost a quarter tone flat. I also added a C natural thumb hole as priviously it could only be played in tune by half holing. In my opinion it also improves the ergonomics of the note.

It’s a lot better than it was, but still in comparison to my clarke C whistle the intonation balance of the genertion is poor, the upper second octave being really flat, yet the clarke is pritty good. Is this an effect of the tapered body or something else? My silver flute also dosn’t show this flat upper second octave, due to the sound hole being away from the tune end?. Is there any way to solve this issue in whistles?

2

Yes on Generation D’s the F# is often flat, which is OK if you want to play closer to Just Intonation, but not OK if you want to play in Equal Temperament. I file out whatever holes are necessary to bring the scale into line with ET.

There’s somewhat of a shared technique, in many cases, between the Uilleann pipes, Irish wooden six-hole flute, and whistle, and on all three instruments it’s standard to use a crossfingered C Natural, on whistle and flute usually fingered:

oxx ooo (or) oxx oox (or) oxx xox

Yes it’s a combination of the fipple design and the body design. It’s quite possible to have whistles that have a tube body have perfect octaves, if the mouthpiece/fipple is designed right.

Generations vary from whistle to whistle. You’ll find that some Generations have a slightly flat 2nd octave which is easy to ‘blow into tune’. Some Generations have a very flat 2nd octave.

What many whistleplayers have done, over the years, is to start with a Generation that has the sharpest 2nd octave they can find (it still will be, probably, a bit flat) and then pack the head of the whistle with blue-tack or wax or something. Getting rid of that cavity underneath the windway sharpens the 2nd octave a bit.

Indeed when the silver Boehm flute was first introduced one of the main objections was that the octaves got progressively sharper as you went up. In the 2nd half of the 19th century an entire generation of professional flutists, who had learned on the traditional wooden conical-bore 8-key flute, had to relearn how to blow the octaves to control this tendency. Now, over 100 years on, flutists take for granted how the octaves of the Boehm flute are tuned.

3

The differance between ET and just intonation from what I’ve seen from reserch is only +/- 10 to 15 cents, which aligns with the tuning of a set of Swayne pipes I borrowed for a while. It was around this in the first octave, but the relitive flattening effect of the second lowered it to almost 50 cents flat, which is verry obvious to my ear.

[quote=“robehickman”]
I also added a C natural thumb hole as previously it could only be played in tune by half holing.
[/quote]

There’s somewhat of a shared technique, in many cases, between the Uilleann pipes, Irish wooden six-hole flute, and whistle, and on all three instruments it’s standard to use a crossfingered C Natural, on whistle and flute usually fingered:

oxx ooo > (or) > oxx oox > (or) > oxx xox

I’m aware of these fingerings, but at least on the generation, all of them are verry sharp, closer to a flat C# than C natural, and also have a verry muddy tone. The thumb hole solves both issues and also unifies the fingering with the silver flute, which is easier. There are some tunes I find easier to play on the whistle due to the D to E involving lifting and dropping a finger symultaniously.

[quote=“robehickman”]
in comparison to my clarke C whistle the intonation balance of the genertion is poor, the upper second octave being really flat, yet the clarke is pretty good. Is this an effect of the tapered body or something else?
[/quote]

Yes it’s a combination of the fipple design and the body design. It’s quite possible to have whistles that have a tube body have perfect octaves, if the mouthpiece/fipple is designed right.

Generations vary from whistle to whistle. You’ll find that some Generations have a slightly flat 2nd octave which is easy to ‘blow into tune’. Some Generations have a very flat 2nd octave.

What many whistleplayers have done, over the years, is to start with a Generation that has the sharpest 2nd octave they can find (it still will be, probably, a bit flat) and then pack the head of the whistle with blue-tack or wax or something. Getting rid of that cavity underneath the windway sharpens the 2nd octave a bit.

[quote=“robehickman”]
My silver flute also dosn’t show this flat upper second octave.
[/quote]

Indeed when the silver Boehm flute was first introduced one of the main objections was that the octaves got progressively > sharper > as you went up. In the 2nd half of the 19th century an entire generation of professional flutists, who had learned on the traditional wooden conical-bore 8-key flute, had to relearn how to blow the octaves to control this tendency. Now, over 100 years on, flutists take for granted how the octaves of the Boehm flute are tuned.

Thanks for the input, do you have any reccomendations for whistle makes with consistently well tuned octaves?

On the boehm flute I’ve found the first two octaves well in tune, the 3rd is rather wonky, though I don’t make much use of it, and not at all in irish music. I guess it depends what you’re used to.

4

If you listen to Mary Bergin or other good whistleplayers back, say, 30 years ago, when Generations were the only whistles available (save for the Clarke C), you’ll hear that they are all able to play the octaves quite in tune. What people did back then was to troll through as many Generations as they could to find the best-playing ones, and if necessary modify these by packing the heads and doing a bit of carving on the holes and/or putting tape on some of the holes. To this day many whistleplayers will tell you that there’s no whistle quite as good as a really good old Generation.

I still play the Generation C I got around 1980, and I’ve yet to play a C that’s its equal.

Here’s Mary Bergin playing a Generation. The octaves are just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4hos7ZkRl8

To save the trolling, and the work of doing the modifications, you can get a modified Generation whistle from Jerry Freeman. I don’t know how he does it, but his Generations have the octaves in perfect tune. A common problem with whistles in general is to have the two octaves in tune, except for the D’s. Oftentimes if Bottom D is good then Middle D will be sharp, or if Middle D is good then Bottom D will be flat. Jerry Freeman’s whistles somehow correct this issue too, and every single note will be true.

Or if you want to get out of the Generation thing altogether you can get a high-end whistle such as a Burke. A Burke D, in aluminum or brass, with narrow bore or wide bore, will have perfect octaves and quite smooth even voicing. Over the years I’ve noticed that people coming to the whistle from the Boehm flute (or Recorder) tend to love Burkes.

Traditional whistleplayers tend to like Sindt whistles, if they decide to go to a more high-end whistle. I have a Sindt D and it plays like the very best old Generations do.

With the Burke you can get a thumb hole, because as you say:

“The thumb hole… unifies the fingering with the silver flute, which is easier…”

However the vast majority of whistleplayers find the traditional 6-hole whistle completely satisfactory as it is and do just fine without a thumbhole. A whistle can never be a Boehm flute, and trying to make a whistle play like a Boehm flute is, to not put too fine a point on it, a fool’s errand.

With a good whistle, in the hands of a good player, the crossfingered C natural is quite in tune and the tone of the crossfingered note is considered by many traditional players to be as good as, or better than, the tone of other notes.

The Baroque flute used many crossfingerings, and these crossfingered notes had a special tone colour, which was used to excellent effect by many Baroque composers. Needless to say most of the special colour of Baroque flute music is lost when played on a Boehm flute (the very goal of the Boehm flute is to make every note sound the same as every other note).

5

I have been experimenting with ways of improving the octave tuning on a cylindrical flute for quite some time. Out of despair I abandoned the hobby of flute making for quite some time. I have tried some of the usual remedies, e.g. Fajardo’s wedge and Sandner’s spike device.

The flutes that I managed to make this way, sounded pretty good, but unfortunately I could never manage to make a flute that was pleasing to the eye. So, I seldom felt condfident that I have a marketable product.

I have had the pleasure of buying two flutes from Doug Tipple. He uses Fajardo’s wedge and he hand-crafts them beautifully. I think he has also perfected the use of Fajardo’s wedge. I think Dough Tipple can outdo many a professional flute.

Out of desperation, I resurrected one of my flutes recently and tried the following.

I was a simple cylindrical flute. I used the flutomat to space the fingering holes out evenly.

I pushed the cork about a centimetre closer to the embouchure hole than usual and I used a drill bit to enlare the the lowest fingering hole by two millimetres, whilst keeping it in the same position.

The result is that, when played in the low octave, I could see that the tone rises a notch or so on the chromatic tuner, but this difference is not really noticable to my human ear or when I compare it to a piano. But, when I play into the higher octaves, I found that the tuning has improved.

A green light on a chromatic tuner has never looked so lovely.

I’m not sure whether what I am describing makes any sense in terms of the physics of music.

I tested this whilst playing a German hymn that containted quite a few flats and octave jumps at unexpected places. In the past the inaccurate octave tuning used to be irritatingly obvious. Now, I think, it sounds much better - although my stocky playing makes it clear that I need a lot more playing practice.

I have made a recording on youtube and I would appreciate any feedback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaA3bFSiudg

6

Another thing just occurred to me, the Irish traditional fluteplayers who take up the Boehm flute and go the opposite direction: trying to unify the fingering with the traditional wooden flute, and use crossfingered C natural rather than the thumb key on the Boehm flute!

I’ve seen old guys play like that.

7

I think in a lot of cases a simple tubular whistle can suffer from a flat 2nd octave, but as Richard says, good windway/fipple design can go some way to mitigate this. The Burke whistles mentioned have ‘perturbations’ in the upper section, basically where the bore narrows and then widens again, more than once. This helps to give an in-tune 2nd octave. Another method is to create a parabolic bore in the head section of the whistle, which is exactly what the (cylindrical bore) Boehm flute has. Alex DeWilde of Hermit Hill Instruments does this, and he made me a brass and a brown ebony whistle to this design which work very well.

Your Clarke whistle, being tapered, may have quite good intonation across the octaves. Simple-system wooden flutes have parallel-bore heads and tapered bodies; Boehm flutes have parabolic-bore heads and cylindrical bodies.