Transverse flute or low whistle?

Irish Flute
1

Hi!

I’m a musician and composer looking for an instrument which I can bring wherever I go. I already have some tin whistles, but I’m looking for a softer and darker tone so the choice is between the low whistle and the Irish simple system flute. I play traditional, classical and experimental music. I was thinking maybe the transversal flute makes it possible to alter the tone a bit more than what is possible with a fipple. Is this a correct guess?

Also, I recently noticed I’m holding my hands the wrong way around while playing the tin whistle so I’m going to have to start over if I’m switching to a transversal flute.

Are there any other pros and cons for either instrument?

All the best!

Erik

2

1: Flute = Darker tone, hard or soft tone, Low Whistle = softer tone (still dark though, depending on the maker), normally. Although, there is more variation with the flute than a whistle. With flute, you can get a dark or light tone, a soft or hard tone, loud or quite, more range in the octaves, etc. With the low whistle, those kinds of things are more set in stone, but not entirely. So yes, your guess is more or less correct.

2: About you holding your hands “wrong”, if you bought a silver concert flute, yes, you would have to change, but I’m pretty sure most Irish flute makers make flutes for “lefty” players. Although, normally, there’s a small fee.

3:Pros and Cons. Irish flutes (wooden, most common) crack. They also require regular maintenance such as swabbing, oiling, etc. So, I guess you could say with more benefits comes greater responsibility. Now, if you are good with your “regular maintenance”, it shouldn’t crack, but on the occasion, it does… and it sounds horrible… and it makes you want to cry. Flutes are also challenging for a beginner, mainly because one has to develop the embouchure. That normally takes a while, and can take even longer to really get how to change the sound and tone to how you want it, on the fly and consistently. As for the low whistle, the grip is harder, so if you have small hands, that can be a setback in itself. Some makers, though, make whistles specialized for small handed people, so hope is not lost. But over all, whistles are easier to play than flutes. Plus, they can take a beating. Whistlers joke about using their low whistle in a pub fight. Some of them probably aren’t joking though…

4: If you are financially minded, and do not want to spend that much money on the instrument, don’t even think about the flute world, unless you get one of the “affordable flutes”. The lowest that the decent keyless quality affordable flutes go, as far as I know, is about $275. Much lower, and you have a piece of crap. The average price for keyless flutes with the other stuff (tuning slide, for example) is about $800-$950ish, I think. Higher end flutes can be as high as $2000, normally with insane waiting lists. As for the low whistle, you can get a good quality whistle for about $150. They normally range from about $150 to $350 maybe. As you can see, they are much, much cheaper. Unless, of course, you count Copeland. I think there’s one of his whistles in the used instrument exchange is up for $1000. Maybe it’s sold, I don’t know. He’s not making whistles anymore BTW.

Anyway, hope that “essay” helped!

3

Flute is initially harder to get a note out of, but, once mastered, gives a wider variety of tone and volume than a low whistle.

Finger stretch is easier on a flute.

I play flute and also have a low whistle, but don’t really use the whistle any more; I now actually find the flute easier to play than whistle.

I live in a flat and like to play a bit late at night- the controlabilty of volume on the flute makes that feasible, whereas a whistle would require one of the ‘putting stuff over the fipple’ tricks.

Concerning maintanance- I’ve got myself a copley delrin, a quality and respected flute, with zero maintanance (no need to swab out etc) and no chance of cracks.

4

Think about a tenor recorder as well. I have a maple Zen-On 2400B:

http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/ontai/item/2400b/?s-id=borderless_recommend_item_en

which is about the same price as the MK Pro low D whistle:

http://mkwhistles.com/mkshop/mk-pro-1.html

I sometimes play in a session with somebody who uses one of their green ones, and on a very good recording I can’t tell which of us is which. The MK (as perceived from behind the tenor recorder) is a bit louder in the low register; the Zen-On makes a much wider range of keys feasible and has a distinctive plunky attack when you tongue it really hard that the MK can’t produce. I’d say they are comparable value for money.

A flute of comparable quality will cost you twice as much.

5

Hi Eric,

Dave kind of summed it up very well!

I always thought a flute has a wider dynamic range, as well as tone colour control (in the right hands). A fipple instrument like a recorder or a whistle takes a much more skilled and experienced player to produce a similar breadth of tone colour than for a flute in an average player’s hands.

Re: Pitch issues - choosing an alto flute or low F whistle instead of your current standard pitch instrument might work to meet your criteria for a softer and darker tone. The alto flute is very special for its late night smokey jazz like feel. But the longer the flute/whistle, the harder to hold and finger.

The simple system is not Irish either!

If you wish to alter the tone colour, thinking about a flexible embouchure cut really helps. A baroque traverso can have a small circular embouchure about 7mm wide. Bigger circular embouchures helped give more control in later flutes. An oval embouchure was a later development, which seems to help with power and projection. Oval embouchures with undercuts made even more changes and increased the effective surface area inside the headjoint. And then rectangular embouchures - almost double at 12-14mm in some flutes) kind of made it really easy to get power and tone, but maybe lost a bit of the subtle gradations of tone, compared to its predecessors.

Plenty of pros and cons with both instruments. Best to get a few of each :slight_smile:

6

Thank you for all your answers!

I can’t seem to make my mind up though. I’m investigating the the tenor recorder right now. I like that it is chromatic, but it seems a bit limited when it comes to altering the tone. For the moment, I’ll just let all of this sink in.

Thanks again!

7

I have to disagree with this. Doug Tipple http://tippleflutes.com/ makes a very credible flute out of pvc tubing for under $100 US. Definitely not “a piece of crap”. It offers a good, low-cost intro to the world of flutes that many of us here have taken.

Best wishes.

Steve

8

Woops! Sorry, I forgot about the Tipples! I must have been thinking conical bore.

9

For baroque music, 1960s/70s avant-garde repertoire or other areas where it benefits from being a recorder, not at all limited tone-wise. But for trad I’d take the flute or whistle most of the time.

Think this one’s £32, but sounds OK in Calum Stewart’s hands!

10

I say flute, definitely, without a doubt, no comparison, period, end of story (this the “flute” forum after all, so I’m a bit biased). :wink:

11

Hey, we heard that next door. The walls are paper thin around here, you know.

You go ahead and take 10 years to get a decent sound out of your flute, while we pick up our whistles and play some sweet sweet chunes.

:laughing: :stuck_out_tongue: :laughing:

12

Whatever. I happen to know of one instance where at a session a whistler was such that he got his whistle taken from him - by a bodhrán player, if that tells you anything.

13

Did you ever get it back? :stuck_out_tongue:

14

Har har. Actually, after the purloining, yer man had been carrying it around in his bodhrán case for something like five years because he’d forgotten about it, and one day when I needed a whistle he remembered he had it, and gave it to me. I still have it, if for no other reason than the story. But it’s actually a nice little whistle. Might be a Walton’s - all black, but no label.

But although said whistle’s now my dedicated go-to soprano D and always in my gig bag, being a flute player by temperament, I seldom play it. When I do, I feel almost kinda sorta like a bandit, playing my ill-gotten gains. :wink:

EDIT: As to low whistles, you want to try them to see how your hands fare, and some have bigger stretches than others. I have small hands, so even the “easiest” ones are an unhappy chore if not an impossibility for me. Flute, no problem for me with your so-called “piper’s grip”.

15

Well, from what I’ve gathered, Dixon flutes, although they are good starters, players tend to “grow out” of them rather quickly and look for something more like a Copley, or higher. But I know that someone will contradict that. :slight_smile:

16

Yes, I will! There’s quite a difference between ‘good starters’ and ‘Much lower [than about $275], and you have a piece of crap.’ And, while that (£32?) flute’s never going to be first choice for someone of Calum’s ability, he’s still got it sounding (probably on very limited acquaintance) better than most will sound on anything!

17

Nevertheless, that flute sounds truly awesome in his hands.

Note also that this is the new Dixon basic polymer: as Calum says in the intro, it’s got a conical bore, so comments criticising the old Dixon cylindrical bore basic polymer (which are, admittedly, numerous), are not necessarily relevant to the new Dixon.

I’d be very interested in seeing some proper reviews of this new dixon flute, as, from the video, it’s looking potentially very good for a instrument of such low price.