I’m beginning to shift to throating flute,
having been taught how to do this by Catherine McEvoy
at the St. Louis Tional. She encourages us to use
this and if it’s good enough for her…
‘Throating’ is also ‘glottal stops.’
What I wonder is whether throating works on
whistles? Anybody know? I ask here cause
I figure you’all are most likely to know.
Yes, I use throating on whistle, but not as my default mouth articulation. It’s in addition to, not in place of, tonguing. Useful for starting phrases, pushing out certain notes, etc. But if you play a more articulated whistle style (as I do), it’s just not agile enough to substitute for a good variety of tongued articulations on whistle, IMO.
Thank you. My impression so far is that throating works better on flutes,
which is why I asked.
I wondered where I picked it up from.
If you get really good at throating your flute, you might get a job with the circus!
Rob
duuhhhhh rob 
berti
Do you whistle Jim? I mean really whistle.. without an instrument .. using what God or whoever gave you .. if so, the default is the throat. You can tongue but it sounds awful.
Thanks, I see. Whistling is the way to learn glottal stops.
Now Jim, are you doing full-on glottal stops, or the ‘milder’ version that’s more like pronouncing a hard letter ‘C’? I find I do the latter on the whistle, but almost never on the flute. Vice versa for glottal stops. Cheers,
Rob
Catherine M was doing a slight cough or catch in the throat.
Basically she was telling us to do that, just that.
It’s what Flutered said: what we do to articulate
when we whistle without a whistle. She said it
doesn’t even need to necessarily stop the breath
entirely, just slow it.
I actually trained myself to do a ‘C’ in the throat,
as if pronouncing a ‘K’, mistakenly thinking
it was ‘throating.’
Hello All - I’ve been consciously working on ‘true’ glottal stops, having, as mentioned, mistakenly assumed that “K-ing” was the thing I was looking for.
I’m getting better (the mouth-whistling recommendation made it click for me), but in doing it I get the little ‘cough’, which to me sounds quite loud.
The noise (whatever it is), is rarely in tune, and I am concerned that it may be overly noticable to listeners and potentially quite the negative distraction.
I know I should record myself and see how obvious it may, or may not, be.
But, let’s assume it is. How would one try and stop from “grunting”?
just stand on one leg…
don’t worry,
be happy!
Throating and ‘K’-ing, as you put it, produce completely different attacks. Personally, I like the rounded note I get from the ‘K’ stop on whistle, though I’m sure I unconsciously do glottal stops in other places (I don’t care for the ‘K’ on the flute much at all). I tongue as well, which is a third distinct sort of attack. You don’t have to choose one type exclusively, and none is objectively right or wrong for the whistle. Cheers,
Rob
Good points, Rob. Technically, the “K” articulation is a Velar Stop. If you move it way further down in the throat, then it’s a Pharyngeal Stop (there’s no letter for that in English; the “Q” that transliterates Arabic words like Iraq and Qatar is it). And finally the Glottal Stop, which is like a cough.
I think of the K articulation as just a normal variation of the T articulation on whistle (what linguists would call free variation). I use it mostly when sometimes articulating cuts. And, of course, as part of double T-K and triple T-K-T tonguing.
The Glottal is different, because it’s more “explosive”. It’s good for starting from a dead stop or after a pause, because it gives more definition to the note than a gentler “Huh”. It’s also good as a “breath push” - for example, when you really want to push out the backbeats in a particular phrase; or to push across the registers without tonguing. You’ve got to be careful, though, not to push too far and break the note (unless that’s what you want).
[P.S. I moved this to the Whistle Forum, with a link.]
What a pity that Micho’s no longer with us; we could’ve asked him to do a few aul’ velar stops for the day that’s in it.
Wha?
It all sounds vaguely dirty anyway, don’t it? 
Since we all like tetrapyloctomy here 
, I thought I’d just mention the latter consonants are usually described as uvular, not pharyngeal: pharyngeal stops are generally considered impossible.
Cheers,
Julien
You got me … I had to look that one up. 
Yes, I guess that’s hair-splittingly correct, since the pharynx can’t be completely closed. And maybe the terminology has tightened up since I did articulatory phonetics back in the Paleolithic. Back then, grunting was our only phoneme, and choking on aurochs bones was considered good diction.