I have a question. When I go from say low E to high E I can do it either by tounging the note or using breath control. When I toungue the note, the transition is clean and pure but when I just use breath control It kind of “sweeps” somewhat like a slide whistle. That, of course doesn’t sound good. The question is should this in fact be toungued or do I just need lots more practice with breath control? Thanks.
Well, that’s kind of an interesting question really, I mean, if all you want to do is jump from lower to upper octave then there is certainly nothing wrong with tounging, that’s what I do, and I think many people do.
If by breath control you mean you are intentionally trying to ‘sweep’ from one octave to another… well… that’s difficult no matter how you slice it. Going from upper to lower octave is not bad once you get the hang of it, but going from the lower octave to the upper, and not just ‘popping’ up there, that’s a bit of a trick.
The only thing I’ve ever been able to muster in trying to intentionally get an ‘upward slide’ is to just start blowing gradually harder until you can hear it start to break into the upper octave, and then give it a ‘push’ or ‘extra puff’ of air to go ahead and break into the upper octave.
That’s about it.Dunno if any of that actually qualified as an understandable explanation or not! 
but anyway… my $.02
Take care,
John
You would need cyborg-like control of your breath to depend on it to get you cleanly and crisply up an octave every time, especially at speed. If you’re that good, it’ll sound like you’re tonguing, so why not cheat and tongue the note?
Tony
Thanks guys. Probably because I am not a cyborg, I was starting to get a little frustrated about this.
-Paul
First off, the whistle physics are such that no matter how good your breath control, you will never get a full-octave slide. A semitone before the break is about the best you’ll ever do. Additionally, trying to slowly jump octaves is asking for squeaks, both upward and downward.Tonguing the note while raising or lowering the pressure will give you a better (cleaner) “break” - so will doing a very short cut, on some notes, and it’s considered better “form” by some to do that instead of using the tongue, where possible. The whistle tube has a primary set of resonant frequencies at each fingering, and those are the notes you’ll get by breath control. Getting the transitions to be smooth and squeakless is a matter of practice.
Cheers,
serpent
All these serious comments, and my first thought was to tell 'm to dress warmly when going between…
John
hehe, nothing like talking about harmonic frequencies generated by tubes ;). if you have serious breath control, almost to the degree of insanity, you should be able to hit every harmonic of a note using the same fingering. i’ve seen/heard a guy do it on sax, it was pretty amazing.