I came across a piece, the castlerock road reel by GLIN (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLWPR2QGAg) and became obssessed immediately with this recording for how various techniques are deployed to add to the expressiveness.
I have been trying to replicate the piece, and everything’s going well, except for one technical detail, which I tentatively call “enhanced tonguing”. At 0:46, 0:58, 1:34 in this recording, you can hear some notes tongued with special enhancement, as if the player is overblowing into the whistle to make this airy effect. (Sometimes he combines it with flutter tonguing, which is not the focus of this post though)
My conjecture is that this sound is achieved by tonguing harder. But on my whistle it’s impossible to get something this airy without overblowing into overtones / noise. After some experimentation, I found a way to achieve a similar effect by slightly moving my mouth away from the mouthpiece and tonguing hard while allowing some air blown out of the mouthpiece. However, this looks different from what they do in a “live” version (at 0:42, http://youtube.com/watch?v=ParVjYSZ1e8). So I’m thinking maybe I’m doing something wrong. Does anyone know what this technique is called and how to do it?
Another possbility is that it has something to do with the instrument: it could be achieved by tonguing harder but only on a Goldie whistle. I’m thinking this because I can achieve a similar effect by tonguing harder on my Irish flute. However, currently I’m replicating on a cheaper whistle of a different brand (alto F, made by Phil from kerrywhistles.com) and it doesn’t work. I’m by no means saying this is a bad whistle. In fact I enjoy it a lot! I’m just a bit bothered by the fact that it doesn’t do the trick, if my conjecture is correct. So if you own a Goldie and can do this, I’d appreciate it if you could share how it goes for you. Thank you in advacne!
At those places we have three tongued notes in a row.
Sounds like at some or perhaps all of those places the first two notes are attacked with normal tonguing but the third note is attacked with a really brief flutter-tongue.
At least one time (on one of the first two notes) it sounds like it might be simultaneously tonguing and playing a very short lower neighbour-tone gracenote.
Hi Richard,
Thank you for the reply! Could you explain a bit more on how to tongue those notes? As I explained in the post, they sound extra airy and accented to me compared to “normal” tongued notes. I tried to blow harder but it easily overblows into overtone / noise instead of giving me the sound.
Okay, so there are two questions: How to do this and if it is whistle-specific.
As far as I can tell, you’re on the right track with the tonguing slightly harder. If you think a normal tongued note, say to break one note into two, the tongue just provides a brief break in the airflow. In this technique, you allow pressure to build up behind the tongue so that the tongued note actually has a slightly higher ‘blip’ of pressure to start it off.
Is it whistle-specific? To some extent. It seems as though the higher the backpressure of your whistle, the more noticeable this effect will be and the easier it will be to do it. I tried on my MK whistles (low F and low D) and got very mediocre results – not like Ali’s playing.
I tried on my alto A, which has the highest backpressure of any of my whistles, and I was able to get a sound definitely closer. I’ve seen it previously mentioned that even the soft-blowing Goldie whistles have a higher backpressure than almost all other whistles, if I’m remembering correctly, and that would explain why this technique is most frequently done on Goldie whistles. If you have a harder-blowing whistle, you might give it a try.
On the first set of three at 0:46, you can hear that the first note is tongued harder, using the OXX XXX fingering for the octave note (F, in this case). He gets a brief overtone of the third harmonic that way, giving it that punch. On most whistles I’ve tried, it’s easiest to get this effect on that note, and hardest to get on the octave E note (using D whistle terminology).