“Bop” is my best approximation of the sound when I try a fast transition from high D (second octave) to high E on my Burke DAN and my Feadog for that matter.
If you know the opening of the second part of the Leitrim Fancy then you know that there’s a “twiddly” bit between high D and High E. When I play it slowly, it sounds great. However, when I speed it up, I get a “bop” sound.
I was first aware of it listening to a YouTube video of a beginning whistler playing Leitrim/Whelan’s/Morrison’s. He said he had been playing a few months and his speed was faster than mine, but I could notice this “Bop” sound every now and then. That was when I realized I was creating the same sound.
By isolating the notes concerned, I realized (I think) that this is caused when the high D is played with the T1 hole open, then when the transition to High E is made, the T1 is not replaced before the B3 is lifted. Obviously, my T1/B3 movements are almost simultaneous, otherwise I would squawk, but I think that maybe the T1 needs to be in place before the B3 is lifted.
Has anyone else experienced this “Bop” sound? Is there are remedy? I am playing totally legato - should I tongue the “bopped” note?
Maybe, the “bops” will go away as I become more proficient. Maybe I must force myself to play only at a tempo at which the music is “bopless” and slowly bring up the tempo.
Hmm … It sounds like you’re simply describing Chiff: the little non-harmonic transient noise or “chirp” or “pop” that you sometimes hear at the onset of a note or the transition between two notes on a duct flute, such as a whistle or an organ pipe.
Some degree of chiff is an inherent characteristic of most whistles, and not a matter of sloppy fingering; though careful finger movements and tonguing can emphasize or de-emphasize it for particular note transitions. Amount of chiff is a matter of taste, but generally desirable in ITM.
Most of my whistles exhibit a slight chiffy “pop” when moving from 2nd octave D to E. I like it. T1 should have little effect whether open or closed. As for a remedy, why eliminate something that’s supposed to be there?
Whether or not it is “chiff” and whether or not it is desirable, sometimes simply banging ones fingers down on toneholes causes the air in the tube to resonate at a pitch related to the particular fingering. We don’t usually notice it consistently while playing, nor is it really audible at any distance, but it is always there. On fully keyed instruments such as Boehm flutes or saxes, avant-garde composers may actually make use of this phenomenon. It is less distinct on open fingered holes, but still there - more prominently on low whistle perhaps than on high. It is not possible to eradicate it totally. Finger your way through a tune without blowing the whistle but with the fipple window by your ear and you’ll hear what I mean.
That said, good clean, relaxed, well co-ordinated finger changes without excessively violent movement will reduce the effect and avoid any other noises such as you already understand, it seems. For a 2nd 8ve ED-E shift, putting down L1 before raising R3 won’t make much difference so far as I can tell (save if you linger on it the D is a bit wolfy that way), and you don’t have time for it in fast passages anyway - I’d say just concentrate on a perfect simultaneous swap.
When I play Leitrim Fancy I get a far more noticeable pop on the 1st 8ve B over-the-break to D in the 2nd 8ve shift than from the D/E change - more fingers banging down!
Whose YouTube vid are you referring to, BTW? I posted a high whistle vid clip of the set you mention a while back - Leitrim Fancy Set
and also a low whistle teaching demo clip of just The Leitrim Fancy
Don’t worry about it Charlie, those little pops and blips you hear are all part of the beauty of the sounds that can be coaxed out of a whistle without much effort. Like mentioned before, why try to take out what is supposed to be there?
Yes, seems to me I had to play one of those pieces once, banging the keys down on my baritone sax. Big holes and pads make quite a poppy racket.
For D to E, T1 has to come down with considerable distance and force to be really separately audible. But you might be right, if the grip is too agressive, or if it’s picked up by a close microphone. Those little air bangs are just a normal underlying component of the tone anyway.
Have you tried playing middle D with all fingers down?
In dance music, I usually play “closed” D. It not only smooths out many passages, but you get a nice percussive effect, the “honking” D. This effect works best on flute, but also pretty well on low whistle.
It makes me scratch my head when I see a newbie whistle player struggling with a tune such as the Kesh Jig, trying to play all the D’s open.
It not only is easier, but sounds better, to used closed D’s.
The longer you play, the more efficent your fingering becomes, moving fewer fingers, to play cleaner and faster. It comes through the use of so-called “false” fingerings.
When I learn a dance tune (jig/reel/hornpipe), I finger the middle D “closed” or “opened” naturally. If I find more comfortable to finger it with the first hole opened, I do so, if not, I close it.
Particularly, I don’t worry about that, because I think that in most whistles if you give the right pressure, you will have a nice in-tune middle D.
The example of “The Kesh” was nice. At the beginning I was one of those who tried to vent all those middle D’s, and I found it much more difficult than finger them with all the fingers down. Now, I continue doing it in the latter way, and nobody ever told me that it sounded bad (till now).
I found your video and was mightily impressed - you look very pleasantly surprised at the end of it, or maybe it’s the reaching to switch off the recorder!
It was good to see this, and it made me decide that when I can play a set such as this (maybe there are easier jigs), then that will be when I order a new Burke DAN. I don’t know what it is about them, but they look very desirable and the reviews are astounding. Anyway, I have to get that good.
If the “bops” actually more like “tchuks” are what is know as chiff, then I had misdiagnosed chiff as a breathiness.
I like the B-bop idea, even better couple with a high D and High E, cause then I would get B-bop E D-bop !
If I am simply chiffing (is it a verb?), then I feel very reassured. I need to record myself and listen so that I can be sure of how it effects the overall sound.
Whatever, I am having a thoroughly good time with my learning - Leitrim, Humours of Dingle, Boys of Ballisodare - what fun and why didn’t I take the whistle seriously when I purchased Generations when I was a kid?
Aha!. I suspected as much. That YouTube clip is by my pupil, Tom, hence the same set! It’s over a year old now (he’s lost the hair! - well, most of it), and I’d only been teaching him a couple of months when he did that (I haven’t looked at it before). That set is one I often teach at an early stage as all the tunes are quite easy and approachable, but offer/require certain technical things from a teaching point of view. Tom is 16 and currently sitting his GCSE exams (end of secondary school), though apparently he hasn’t any tomorrow so is coming out to our local sesh this evening. He plays rather better than that now, certainly more evenly with his tempo.
I’m afraid I don’t really agree with Pancelticpiper or Bothrops about fudging the middle D fingering by leaving L1 on for it. If you practice the oxx xxx fingering in all circumstances, learn it properly and habituate it, like many such technicalities, it quite quickly becomes normal/natural/easy/second nature and you never really (need to) think about it again, or fudge it at all. I don’t see it as in any way a problem other than one of those that seems hard at a certain stage… compare to learning to signal while riding a bike - at first taking one hand off the handlebars seems impossible and the results of doing so are scary, but persist and soon enough you can do daft stuff like “no hands” without a second thought.
A possible advantage of fully habituating the oxx xxx fingering is that it works well on all whistles, whereas xxx xxx for 2nd octave D does not - it’s fine on some but breaks or buzzes or is muffled or whatever on others - and you’d (unnecessarily) have yet another thing to specifically adapt for.
Until I watched the vid, I thought you meant that he had gone bald in the space of a year from playing the whistle. Yikes!
Yes, that’s a common misapplication of the term chiff. Your “tchuks” is a good onomatopoeia. Try alternating quickly between D xxx|xxx and B xoo|xxx leaving the bottom hand down. That’s usually a good indication of how inherently chiffy a particular whistle is.
The bottom line re. your bops is that it doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything wrong.
Charlie… Do you attend any of the sessions out here in Phoenix? Tim Finnegan’s, Fibber Magees, or Seamus McCaffery’s? I’m out on the west side of town, so I rarely hit Fibber’s, but shoot me a pm if you’re interested about the sessions out here.
I guess I should ask first, do you even live in Phoenix…
Actually, I work in Phoenix at the botanical garden in Papago Park. However, I live in Apache Junction, so if there’s anywhere in the East side of the megalopolis it would be great.
I do intend taking lessons at the Irish Cultural Centre this Fall. My wife also suggested that maybe we should learn some dance stuff so that we could dance at Ceilidhs and the like.
Sounds like Fibbers’ is going to be your best bet… They’re located in Chandler at Dobson and Elliott, southeast corner of the intersection. They have ‘slow sessions’ on Sundays from 1pm - 3pm, then the “regular” session same day, from 3 - 6pm.
