I have small hands, (about a 7-inch span from thumb to pinky) and have tried the fingering on a couple of pennywhistles with much difficulty. I tried a wooden whistle whose fingering was perfect for me but the price was $60.00. Does anyone know of a whistle that is inexpensive and where the holes are a little closer together?
I’m a small person with about the same hand width (the user name is misleading!). I can play Feadogs with ease and they are to be found on ebay. The one in D and my brass Feadogs in C which are just slightly larger. Try those if you want and you can’t beat the price of them! They go for $7.00 to $14.00.
I’ve moved on to Indian bansuris and Andean quenas and can play those comfortably by using the same pipers grip that I learned for the tin whistle.
Good luck,
Ernest
Hi Sandy, welcome.
Your span is amall-ish, but not too. So you should be able to handle a D whistle with ease. The largest span required is between the first and third fingers of each hand. And that’s only around 1.75 inches (45 mm) on a D whistle. I can’t imagine you’d have trouble with that.
With my hand span of 8 inches, a C whistle feels about the same to me as a D whistle to you. And handling a C whistle with standard grip is no problem.
So … If you’re having difficulty, it likely that the issue is not whistle size, but hand position. And I’ll bet that you’re trying to play with your fingers arched in a big curve, with the tips pointing down onto the holes.
Instead, try playing flat-fingered: with your fingers pointing straight across the holes, and the fleshy pads (not tips) of your fingers closing the holes. That’s the recommended position, and it should solve your problem with any D whistle.
It’s true that the B1-to-B3 spacing can vary from one whistle to the next. For example, the Dixon Trad D has a spacing of only 40 mm, so you might find that comfortable, but not necessary.
Of course, no one said you have to start with a D whistle. An Eb whistle is slightly smaller, to ease you in, and is nice to have anyway. Generation, Dixon, Freeman offer affordable Eb’s.
Someone’s going to mention EZ grip (piper’s grip) [edit: I must be psychic] but I don’t recommend it here. First you need to come to grips (so to speak) with the correct hand and finger position, and the rest will fall into place.
Good luck!
Hi Sandy,
I just measured and mine is the same. I have no problem with D whistles (B-flat is the first whistle where I first starting to feel a stretch and experimenting with piper’s grip on the lower hand, though it’s possible with some practice I could manage a regular grip).
Which whistles have you tried? I own a Walton and a Sweetone in D, and a Clarke in C, and all are perfectly comfortable for me to play (I haven’t tried any others so I couldn’t speak to them, but I handled a Susato once, before I even started playing, and didn’t try it out or anything but the stretch seemed fine too if I remember correctly).
Sure, the hole spacing on any (high) D whistle is going to about the same, for ergonomic and acoustic reasons, and any variations of distance pretty small for normal adult hands. So if you can handle one, you should be able to handle all.
Right, that’s what I figured too, but Sandy said she had seemed to notice a difference, so…
I started on a Sweetone, with six-year-old-size hands. It was kind of a stretch to play the bell tone without leaking, but doable. It’s possible the Sweetone’s tapered bore means the finger holes are closer together, that would make sense from a geometric standpoint. Might be why the $60 wooden whistle worked.
From experience, a lot of being able to cover all the holes is just learning where they are, and building the flexibility to get to them. I’ve met a professional flutist with hands probably about the size of yours, and Boehm flute keys are farther apart than D whisle holes. So don’t give up.