Could someone please tell me what I’m doing or not doing to cause the “blip” when I have intervals between the octaves? It’s not clean and is irritating me. For example, intervals between B and D or E? Have I described that well enough? Thank you for any insight.
nansaidh,
Are you tonguing ? Playing legato ?
trill
Trill - not tonguing, legato/slurring. There’s a chirp before the higher note.
It can depend on the individual whistle, but also the speed you’re playing. You might not have time to hear it in a fast Kerry polka set, but find it irritatingly obvious in a slower tune.
I’d solve it by tonguing it. It doesn’t have to be a percussive sound, as long as you interrupt the air flow at exactly the right moment, you should lose the chirp. If the percussion is what you’re trying to avoid, maybe make a K shape with your tongue instead of a T – or a D?
Thanks moof, I figured it was cheating to tongue. 
I can certainly tongue softly, that’s not the problem, finicky me just wanted to have smooth transitions over the break. So this issue is dependent on the particular whistle? What causes it?
Quirks of geometry, and it’s down to luck. My Generation whistles make ugly noises during some note transitions, but the wider-bore, thicker-walled whistles I make don’t suffer from that problem, and it wasn’t expertise on my part that made the difference. I doubt there’s any part of of a whistle you can look at and say, that bit’s shaped badly and is causing it.
Nothing’s cheating on a whistle. Whatever it is, it’s called technique! 
But there’s nothing wrong with tonguing, and in places it (or another approach) is needed. Starting the Kings of Kerry slide on a series of C#s just sounds wimpy without definition.
It’s about taste. I don’t like over-frequent and aggressive tonguing that sounds like a machine gun, but what qualifies as ‘too much’ of anything will vary according to who you ask.
David’s right about the thicker walled whistles. I mostly play Killarneys, which aren’t heavy lumps of brass by any measure, but they’re substantial enough that I don’t get the transitional squeaks of my old Feadógs. (Though having said that, I have a thin-walled PVC whistle that doesn’t have any gremlins.)
I am not sure I understand what you mean by ‘chirps’ so I didn’t comment. I don’t, however, believe certain types whistles like Generation or Feadóg have inherent faults that cause unwanted sounds. .The more easy playing instruments will be more sensitive to certain ways of handling, it’s the flipside of being agile, nimble and easy to play.
Hit the right amount of breath required to hit a note and you will hear clean transitions. It requires practice. In my opinion, and experience, that’s the crux of the matter.
Blow the low octave note and then increase the breath to jump the octave, repeat until you can do it cleanly without thinking.
Thicker walled, wide bore whistles suffer issues of their own, I don’t fancy them at all myself, but YMMV.
Thanks so much to everyone!! I’ll nail this down at some point. I have a set of Wild (McNeela) whistles (thick-walled brass) which are lovely in most every respect. I’m going to work on my breath support and see if I can’t make the transitions sound cleaner.
Like Mr Gumby I’m not quite sure what sound you’re producing. Without being able to hear it we would be guessing. Could you make a recording?
If you mean going between B in the low octave and Middle D, if you’re fingering it like this
XOO|OOO (low-octave B using no anchor finger)
OXX|XXX (open Middle D)
you will notice that all six fingers are changing, five going down and one going up, meaning six different places where a lack of complete synchronisation could occur, leading to a “not clean” note change.
Whereas for me, using a bottom-hand ring-finger anchor finger, and closed Middle D
XOO|OOX (low-octave B using anchor finger)
XXX|XXX (closed Middle D)
two pairs of fingers are going down, and none are going up.
Likewise, if you’re fingering this
XOO|OOO (low-octave B with no anchor finger)
XXX|XXO (second-octave E)
four fingers are in motion.
My fingerings change according to the passage, the thing in fancy-talk called “economy of motion”.
Oftentimes that B-e change occurs in such a way that I’m fingering it like this
XOO|XXO (low-octave B with two anchor fingers)
XXX|XXO (second-octave E)
one pair of fingers going down.
So the “rocking phrase”
B2 e B f# B e B
I’ll finger
XOO|XXO (low-octave B)
XXX|XXO (second-octave E)
XOO|XXO (low-octave B)
XXX|XOO (second-octave F#)
XOO|XXO (low-octave B)
XXX|XXO (second-octave E)
XOO|XXO (low-octave B)
only moving a pair of upper-hand fingers, and lazily lifting the lower-hand middle-finger for a moment (it doesn’t have to be strictly synchronised with the upper-hand finger to sound clean).
When people show up for Irish whistle or flute lessons they’re often coming from Baroque/Renaissance Recorder or Boehm Flute, where the habit is “when in doubt, tongue”.
The problem is that tonguing serves to mask sloppy fingering, sloppy note-changes.
Since Irish flute and whistle are essentially Legato in nature* I have to be able to hear all the student’s note-changes, and I have to insist that they not tongue at all.
Sometimes it’s very hard to get them to stop their habitual tonguing.
(*Even when there’s loads of tonguing it’s used to articulate chosen spots in a Legato milieu. If you listen to an Irish whistle player who tongues quite a bit, and a Recorder player, both playing the same tune, you’ll hear the distinct difference between a basically Legato style and a basically tongued style.)
I of course agree with you about ITM being a fundamentally legato style. That said, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anyone playing the whistle who doesn’t either tongue or use glottal stops (which accomplish the same thing) at all. Sure, there are people who keep them to a minimum and only use them for octave switching. Sometimes I play this way, just for fun (and it’s also good practice for finger precision). But even then, I still tongue when suddenly switching octaves, or when starting a phrase in the upper octave. If I don’t, the upper octave tends to come out sharp and blaring, because I have to give a big heave of air every time I switch. This is especially bad on larger bore whistles.
Do you really have people practice, say, switching from low-octave G to high-octave G without tonguing or using an alternative like a glottal stop? I can do this on some of my whistles, but it doesn’t sound very good and it hardly seems to be a worthwhile, except perhaps as an occasional exercise.
Right, as I said there are people who do plenty of tonguing, however it’s used to accent or articulate specified points along a fundamentally legato flow.
Are there? Interesting.
It sounds like you’re playing the kind of whistles I avoid 
As I’ve mentioned I had an interesting chat with Chris Bleth about the topic of the “break” between octaves on whistle. I said that I wanted as sweet, smooth, and effortless octave jumping as possible from my whistles. He said he preferred instruments which would ‘break’ when you switched octaves, something like the instrument is more firmly settled in each octave and the musician has to produce the break. (If you’ve heard Boehm flute, bamboo flute, whistles, recorders, panpipes, or any other flutelike thing on a Hollywood film soundtrack you’ve probably heard Chris Bleth.)
Yes indeedy. As I’ve mentioned, on flute a warmup I always did in my flute days, and an exercise I have every flute or whistle student do, is
D E D F# D G D A D B D c D d D e D f# D g D a D b D
completely legato with no tonguing or breaks between notes.
I think people should be able to get to anywhere from anywhere without having to resort to tonguing. It’s about breath control.
Again, as an occasional breath control exercise, I can see how this would be beneficial. But long-term I don’t think I could play with the kind of precision and exact intonation that I aim for if I had to only use breath every time I switched octaves.
I guess it comes down to which whistles I prefer. It’s true that I play Goldie high whistles, which are extremely “octave stable,” so maybe that’s why I feel this way.
By the way, do you have the same philosophy when it comes to low whistles?