lol This by far is the most challening note to hit so far because half the time it goes right down the crapper with a squeak or higher pitch when I’m trying to practice…I’m guessing that you pretty much just have to get the feel for this note…any pointers to hitting it with less trouble? CURSE YOU D!!!
lol and I appologize if I post a bit much now…before I never had a whistle but now I’m loaded with questions…
Play the D and find at what breath pressure the note “breaks” into the second octave (squeeks). Then practice at staying before that breaking point. The more you play the whistle, the more natural it will become. No worries! But if it the trouble doesn’t go away after say a week of playing the whistle, then the whistle may have a problem. Good luck.
-Casey
Make sure you keep the windway free of moisture which can greatly affect this delicate note. If you can, get an experienced player to test your whistle to make sure it’s capable of a good solid low D-- it may be the whistle, not you.
The very slightest air leak will be the death of a nice bottom D note… You can easily find the D by covering the tone holes with masking tape or blue funtac.
you have to blow it a little gentler than the rest. and make sure all your holes are covered correctly.
Try breathing from your diaphragm. Instead of just blowing as if you were whistling, breath fully and warmly into the whistle. Push the air from low in your chest. It works for me.
Make sure all the holes are covered as well. With my LowDs I cover the top holes with the pads of my fingers and the bottom holes with the flats of the second joints of my fingers. Piper’s grip they call it. If you watch videos of low whistlers you’ll understand.
a good number of whistle players-especially of course beginners-tend in general to push way too much air through the whistle, i.e. overblow. For notes above the lower octave D, you can get away with this to some extent. But not for the low D. So my advice would be: try reducing the amount of air you put into the whistle throughout the entire register. then when you hit the low D the airflow needs very little adjustment.
just a thought.
Here’s a technique I learned on The Fipple Flute That Cannot Be Named: do a big sigh into the whistle; just like you do when your spouse tells you to take out the garbage. The whistle will shriek like hell when the air first hits it - that’s OK. Keep the sigh going as long as you can, letting the air taper off to nothing. The whistle will sound down through it’s whole range and end with a weak little moan. Do this several times until you can make the whistle smoothly transition from shriek to moan. Now start with no air at all and increase breath pressure up through the octave break to just before the shriek starts then go back down to nothing. Do this until you can smoothly run the tone up and down through the full range. Now you know what the whole range for that note sounds like and what breath pressure the whistle takes for each octave. The exercise also shows you how to control pitch with breath pressure.
the anti-shriek version of what walrii suggests would be to use a tuner. park it right in front of you. turn it on. play long notes up and down the scale while keeping each note precisely in tune.
low D tweak:
Reduce the diameter of the open/bore end a little with blutac or putty etc. This will create more back-pressure on the Low D note and make it easier to sound.