Question regarding Susato whistles

Whistle
1

Ok, I just started learning how to play.

I have: (all in the key of D)

Clarke Original style
Clarke Sweetone
Feadog
Dixon Trad
Susato (Dublin Series S)

By far my favorite is the Susato. I love the deep almost recorder like tone. But I find that is does take a lot of wind to blow it, which in a way is good. I am a big guy and I find it hard to blow gently enough on the other whistles to play them.

I am thinking of getting a Susato Kildare in D. BUT I have two concerns…

  1. Should I get the V series for a little easier time blowing on it

  2. I have no idea what the advantages of having a tunable whistle are, and can’t seem to find any info online. Plenty of info on HOW to adjust a tunable whistle but no WHY and in what circumstance.

Thanks for any help with this!

2

The advantage to a tunable whistle is that you can, well, tune it :smiley:

It’s useful if you’re playing along with a recording, or other musicians.

If you’re mostly playing by yourself the Dublin should serve you well, I don’t know that you would get a huge benefit from the Kildare. I don’t have any V series…so I can’t speak to the playability question. I would imagine it’s pretty close as far as wind requirments but I could be way off.

3

i have both the V and S series Kildare D’s. both are excellent.

the S has a huge sound… huge bell note… huge presence in second octave. the S requires a lot of air properly delivered for good, solid second octave A and B. it’s a great whistle, but (many here will tell you) not necessarily a great beginner’s whistle. this is definitely not a whistle for a timid or quiet player. playing softly will limit your range, your dynamics, and your intonation will be severely compromised.

by comparison, the V is almost delicate sounding. the V requires a lot less air, but it demands a lot more breath control. the V is a very quiet whistle that is easily overblown in first OR second octave.

i had the S before the V. it took awhile to learn what the S wanted. it took awhile to learn just how much different the V is.

either is an excellent choice. either will provide years of enjoyment. neither is a whistle that you will outgrow.

be well,

jim

4

Ok thanks for the information. So with a tunable whistle, you’d adjust it to what? Be in the same key as other musicians? Please keep in mind I am new to music terminology as well as to to playing an instrument. :stuck_out_tongue:

And if so, how would you do it to be in tune with the other musicians? use a chromatic tuner and keep adjusting it till it was in a certain key?

Also, I want to someday play this at SCA events (Society for Creative Anachronism, similar to a Renaissance Faire) so I would like to eventually get a wood whistle, not only for that, but also because I have a feeling I’d like the sound you’d get from a wooden one. I’ve been reading posts here about wood whistles, and I am wondering if the consensus is for commercially made whistles like the Sweethearts and the Glenluce, or handmade whistles like Tommy Dion makes?

Oh, and is there a place on the forums here that has a collected list of the handmade makers for wood whistles?

5

When you tune, you are either tuning to a note from another musician–we usually tune to the box player, if there is one, as he can’t change his pitch and we can change ours–or, to get a starting point, you can pick a good note (like first octave G xxx|ooo ) and tune it against a digital tuner until it centers the needle (or lights the green light). Note the italics: when you tune with a tuner, all it gives you is a starting point–you will have to listen and adjust as you go. Fact is, you will need to always do that, no matter how you tune.

Some basics:

Ok, a musical note has a pitch, which is a measure of how “high” or “low” it is. Each note on a whistle is a different pitch. An accurate way of measuring pitch is in vibrations per second, or Hertz. Most sessions tune so that A is 440 vibrations per second, or A-440. You can look at this tone on an oscilloscope and it’ll look a lot like a sine wave.

If you have two musicians, both playing whistle, and they both play A, and are exactly in tune at A-440, they will sound almost like one whistle. However, if one is two low (“flat,” or not quite enough vibrations per second) or too high (“sharp,” or a few too many vibrations per second), then the sine waves that they are producing don’t line up exactly any more. As the peaks of the waves come closer together, match, and then move apart again, it produces an interference pattern–an audible “beat.” If they are almost in tune, then the beats come very slowly. As the pitches get further apart, the beats come faster and faster.

When you play a note and someone else plays the same note, you’ll hear the beats. You need to adjust in the direction that makes the beats slower, not faster–do this often enough, and you’ll get the hang of hearing if you’re too high or too low–and when the beats stop, then you are in tune.

Note that humans being, well, human, it’s pretty rare to ever get the beats to completely stop. The idea is to get as close as you can, and then keep listening as you play, and keep adjusting, forever honing in on the elusive (and sometimes moving!) target.

I hope this helps.

–James

6

I had never heard tuning by ear explained like that before. Good job, and thanks.

Howie

7

Excellent explanation, James. Can’t improve a bit on what you had to say, but I can add a bit from the perspective of a beginner and musical latecomer.

Even if you aren’t playing with other people yet, there’s still a good reason you’d want to be able to tune, and that’s playing along with recordings. It’s way more fun than playing with a metronome, but it serves a similar purpose in that it keeps you honest rhythmically – when playing alone, one tends to unconsciously speed up for the easier parts of the tune, and slow down for the trickier bits.

And when you play along with a recording (or another person), you’re also learning to adjust each note’s pitch on the fly, via very slight increases and decreases in breath pressure, in order to sound more in tune with the other player. So actually you’re doing tuning twice – first the gross tuning, with the tuner, and then the fine tuning that happens as you play along with someone else, trying to make your notes sound sweet together. And as your ear develops, you will learn to use this skill of fine tuning via breath control in order to help your whistle sound more in tune with itself.

As for choosing your wooden whistle, I’d suggest taking a bit of time to read check out whistle reviews, and then search out the many threads in the archives that talk about the particular whistles you’ve narrowed your choice down to. It’s not so much an issue of commercial vs. handmade as the personal whistle aesthetic of each maker, what each s/he thinks the ideal whistle is like. Though one advantage of a handmade whistle is that you can talk to the maker about your own whistle preferences, but it makes sense to read the reviews first and start with someone who generally makes the sort of whistle you like.

There are lots of great whistle reviews at Wanderer’s site:
http://www.tinwhistler.com/

There was also a thread a couple of months ago with links to various whistle reviews and lists of whistle makers. I’d search it up for you but I’ve got to go now.

Edited to add: Found it:
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/whistle-makers-list-whistle-reviews/62380/1

8

I’ve never had a problem with the tuning on my Dublin D, then again I always play with people who are playing in A 440. Plastic isn’t affected as much by heat and humidity as materials like aluminum and wood are, so I don’t think the tuning is as crucial. The nice thing about the Kildare for me, since I never have to adjust the tuning, is that it sounds a bit better than the Dublin to my ears. Also, you can buy one head and several bodies, making it a bit more friendly to your finances.

9

Plastic isn’t affected as much by heat and humidity as materials like aluminum and wood are, so I don’t think the tuning is as crucial.

But the speed of sound in air is affected by temperature and this is the main cause of wind instruments playing sharper as the temperature rises - in fact if you think about it a metal whistle would become longer as you heat it which you would expect to make the instrument play flatter, but it does not it plays sharper.
It is my belief that differences in the affect of temperature on pitch with different whistles have to do with the heat capacities and thermal conductivity of the materials and how it affects the temperature of the air inside the whistle. Remember some of that hot air you are blowing makes it inside the whistle!