Has anyone seen a “keyed” whistle before? The thought occured to me when I was looking at “keyed” Irish flutes on the web. I realise that putting keys on a whistle might be more expence than it is worth, but I was wondering.
I have seen photos of a keyed blackwood whistle made by Ralph Sweet. Don’t know anything else about 'em though…
Jens
Not a stupid question – it has popped up a number of times before. You’ll probably be able to find several discussions in the Coolboard archive.
A friend of mine has a customized wooden whistle made by a flute/recorder maker, with keys for G# and D#, plus a thumb hole on the back of the whistle for F-natural. The small size of a D whistle makes it difficult to fit keys without them interfering with your normal finger placement, but it can be done.
The F-natural hole is an interesting possibility. Colin Goldie makes an intriguing instrument which he calls a “modal” Overton whistle.
This has seven finger holes – the extra one is for the little finger of your bottom hand. When you cover them all, the note sounded is low C natural. Use six fingers only and you get a D, as on any whistle. The other addition is the F-natural thumb hole.
This means that you can play in C major. More to the point, it should make many fiddle tunes fully playable on what is basically a modified D whistle.
Colin is supposed to be getting around to making one for me sometime. I’m very curious to try it. I think this whistle was discussed in a past C&F newsletter.
On 2001-08-02 11:13, StevieJ wrote:
The F-natural hole is an interesting possibility. Colin Goldie makes an intriguing instrument which he calls a “modal” Overton whistle.
I am really interested in the possibilities with this whistle. I want to see if there are cross fingerings that make it closer to fully chromatic. That means I have to experiment for the Eb/D# and Ab/G# that may have unexplored cross fingerings. The C natural and Bb should have fingerings that work fine. It will certainly be more usefull for those pesky fiddle tunes (Especially Reavy tunes that tend to end at C just to annoy flute and whistle players.
Colin is supposed to be getting around to making one for me sometime. I’m very curious to try it. I think this whistle was discussed in a past C&F newsletter.
Mine is in the mail. A left hander. The story with that one is about as interesting as some others bizarre whistle prototypes that I’ve stumbled upon (I had a choice of three left handed modal whistles, Colin played them all for me on the phone). I’ll post my review whenever I have an opinion on how it plays. The whistle should arrive in about a week.
[ This Message was edited by: Mark_J on 2001-08-02 12:08 ]