I was at a local Ren Faire last week and came across a shop selling handmade whistles made from hollow pieces of natural wood. I guess they sort of resembled Native American flutes. Anyway, in addition to the normal 6-hole models, there were some with only 4 holes. I asked the lady at the booth about them,but she wasn’t very helpful.
Now, I’m not a music theorist by training, but I speculate that these whistles play some kind of pentatonic scale, so that only 4 holes are needed to complete the octave.
Anybody ever seen one of these or know anything about them?
Just curious.
If you get a chance to play them, see what the overblown notes sound like too. Tabor pipes only have three holes, and playe a 9th with first and second sets of overblown notes.
Thanks, Good idea. I might try that, but it wasn’t like a tabor pipe. There were 4 holes, all lined up on top. That’s what makes me think it was a pentatonic whistle.
Hmmm. I suppose I’ll have to display my ignorance here. What would the tuning be for a pentatonic whistle. It would be easy enough to make a pentatonic body for one of my low tech whistles if I knew what I was trying to acheive.
There are many kinds of pentatonic scale but for one of the major ones put some tape on T1 and B1.
Do the above to two or three whistles and and give them to several people, they don’t have to be whistlers, let them all play freely at the same time and it should sound quite nice as there are no ‘wrong’ notes. I do this sometimes to show people, esp kids, that music is fun and not always hard work even for beginners.
There are many kinds of pentatonic scale but for one of the major ones put some tape on the T1 and B1 holes on your whistle. That will improvise one so you can listen to it. They are great for kids and for people who want to mess about with whistles without having to learn very much.
Do the above to two or three whistles and and give them to several people, they don’t have to be whistlers, let them all play freely at the same time and it should sound quite nice as there are no ‘wrong’ notes. I do this sometimes to show people, esp kids, that music is fun and not always hard work even for beginners.
