Triple Whistle Concept (does this exist?)

Whistle
1

For a while I’ve been trying to think of double whistle concepts that would allow you to play a single melody line but spontaneously add in any harmonization you want wherever you see fit, without having to reposition your hands. I’ve started a couple of threads describing complicated ways of doing this that would be nightmarish to manufacture due to complex keywork and other factors.

But then I thought of a triple whistle design that is so simple that I’m sure I can’t be the first person to have thought of it, and it accomplishes the exact same thing, without any annoying keywork or overengineered nonsense. This design would simply have a center whistle that is fingered just like a normal whistle, with two additional “drone whistles,” each covering half a scale. You would use your two thumbs and two pinkies to control two drone whistles, which you could choose to play (or not play) at any time based on your lip positioning/angle (much like a double recorder). The whole design could be manufactured relatively easily, I would think.

This design would allow for basically any harmonization you wanted - a full scale (with Cnat instead of C#) could be played on the two “drone whistles.” But the main melody whistle - the center whistle, that is - could just be a normal whistle, with the normal range. So you could theoretically play with two independent melody lines, each with full range. Or, more likely, you’d use the drone whistles sparingly for occasional self-accompaniment, much the way violins and concertinas do. Of course, you could also simply use the drone whistles to play a constant drone, but you could change the pitch of the drone whenever you wanted.

This design would also allow you to play several triads by blowing all three whistles at the same time. Specifically, with no half-holing (but with cross-fingered Bb and Cnat), you could play:

  • D major triad
  • E minor triad
  • E diminished triad
  • F# minor triad
  • F# diminished triad
  • G major triad (second inversion)
  • G minor triad (second inversion)
  • A minor triad (second inversion)
  • A major triad (second inversion)
  • B minor triad (first inversion)
  • C major triad (first inversion)
  • C# diminished triad (first inversion)

Here’s roughly what the design layout would look like (actual hole positions could be modified for optimal tuning/ergonomics):

Here’s the finger chart for the right-hand drone whistle:

And here’s the finger chart for the left-hand drone whistle:

What do you guys think? Has this been done before? Is there some reason this wouldn’t work?

The only part that seems iffy would be making Cnat and B both work on the left-hand drone whistle. But even if you couldn’t get Cnat to work, you’d still have a range of D to B on the drone whistles, which would be amazing.

2

I am sure someone has tried. There’s a musician o one of the High Crosses that’s seems to be playing a whistle that’s at least double but possibly triple, I can6 recall exactly bit have photo somewhere.
I also have some recollection of someone playing French traditional music on at least a double whistle but possibly a triple one.

And there’s ofcourse Packie Manus

3

There do exist triple flageolets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwsJx-6rV0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoDbVgn6Vew

About your design, I would have to get the thing in my hands to find out how well I could get on with it.

This design is dead-easy to play, and two whistles could be rigged up the same way by taping closed some of the holes.

(I receive no money from YouTube.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EEDTmIydUs&t=67s

4

Seems that bagpipe people have spent a lot more time and ingenuity with these multiple concepts.

Maybe the closest to yours, but only two fingered pipes, is the Hungarian Duda. It has an ordinary chanter, and parallel to it is a 2nd chanter with just one fingerhole, for the lower-hand little finger.

That chanter, called in English a “counterdrone”, only plays two notes, the tonic note and the dominant note a 4th below. This is in addition to the Bass Drone which only plays one note.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku0nqEZJVS4

Here is demonstrated the Musette de Cour, which has an ordinary chanter (that plays a chromatic scale with keys) plus a second chanter which only plays six notes.

The extra chanter stays silent till you push a key. It has three keys on the front (played by the upper-hand little finger) and three keys on the back (played by the lower-hand thumb).

Jump to 2:50 for the small chanter demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OVYA-DJ_og&list=PLWAAAVgPcSfOsijpeldbxB24eaVwQOzD-&index=2

The Italian Zampogna has two chanters. Here he’s playing the tune with one hand and a simple accompaniment with the other hand.

I’ve seen them play harmonies in parallel 3rds too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-vScFVLLWc

5

As it happens, a few of us (pipers) were talking about the Launeddas yesterday. Mainly in the context of their reed and how it works in (uilleann) drones especially. But it fits the triple concept well. Lovely music too see here or here. And if you throw a bunch together you get this

There was a thing on tg4 some years ago where Mick O Brien visited and played with Launeddas players, he’s big into that sort thing.

And here’s the image I mentioned above. So no, the concept is not a new one.


6

There’s a triple pipe in my icon, too. I would assume without question that they’re reed pipes were it not for what appears to be a triple case next to them. There’s a lot of iconographic evidence of such things with flutes and recorders, which don’t have delicate ends, but none that I know of for reed instruments — notwithstanding the obvious possibility of removing the fragile part before sliding the pipe into the protective tube.

7

I think the design idea could create a lot of nice effects for playing more creatively in some situations. I’d like to see one built. I presume in any key, two of the whistles, center and right hand lower pitch drone, are essentially the same whistle to start with, so the remaining issue is how to create the higher pitch drone on the left. Just chop a whistle from the same key? Or as a playing option, how about the two long whistles are for instance in the key of G and the left whistle drone is in the key of C? That way the left whistle could be set up to either be a drone or a full 6-hole whistle.

The remaining question is what method is used to hold the three whistles together, but that wouldn’t be difficult.

8

It would be a cool idea to have the left-hand whistle double as a full whistle on its own right that could be played optionally with both hands. I see two potential problems with this, however. First, if you did make the left whistle into a full-fledged C whistle, it would have a bizarre and impractical finger system. I don’t know how you’d do this unless you added four holes to it for the right hand, so it could play four tones down from G and hit the low C. But this would potentially be a very difficult-to-play whistle, cuz you’d be playing with just a thumb and pinky with the left hand and all four fingers of your right hand. Such a counterintuitive finger system would be so complicated that I doubt I’d even bother to learn how to play it. I’d rather just pull out a C whistle.

Second, the finger stretch would be difficult. You’d have to stretch your right hand over two tubes just to cover the bottom holes of the C whistle. I’m not sure how practical this would be.

So yeah, if you ask me, the best option for the left-hand whistle would be to just take a D whistle without holes drilled in it, chop off the bottom so its fundamental tone is a G, and then add two holes for the thumb and pinky.

9

My problem with the instruments you mention here is that none of them meet the exact parameters of what I’m looking for (which, by extension, is what I imagine most tin whistle players looking to play a polyphonic instrument would want). I want something that (1) doesn’t have lots of keywork, (2) can easily self-accompany any time you want, (3) can easily NOT self-accompany if you DON’T want to, (4) can easily go back and forth between accompanying and playing solo during a tune, without repositioning the fingers, and (5) uses normal 6-hole tin whistle fingerings for at least the main melody.

The triple flageolet is a very cool instrument, and I’d love to have one, but it has a ton of keywork, and it also uses a weird fingering system for the main melody that isn’t like a 6-hole whistle (I believe). So even if I could convince someone to manufacture a modern one, which is unlikely, I doubt I’d have the patience to learn how to play it.

The cornish double pipes are incredibly awesome, and I mean no disrespect towards them. But the disadvantage of the approach they use is that there’s no good way of switching seamlessly between harmonizing and playing solo, mid-tune - that is, if I’m understanding how they work correctly. This is an important parameter for me, because I’d love to use the drone whistles for occasional double-stop-esque harmonization, and you can’t do that if you’re forced to harmonize all the time, whether you like it or not.

The Musette de Cour certainly seems like the most similar to what I’m envisioning, because it seems to use normal fingerings for the main melody but allows for optional spontaneous harmonization. But its system also uses keywork, which I’m trying to avoid due to tin whistle makers’ understandable reluctance to put keys on whistles.

So all in all, the only system I’ve seen that meets all 5 of my parameters mentioned above is the system I’m proposing (which, again, I’m sure I didn’t invent). And since it seems like manufacturing it would be as easy or easier than simply making 3 whistles and attaching them together, I’d really love to see someone try it!

10

Oh, and one additional benefit of this design: Ever wished you could get a bit more volume out of the lower range of your whistle every now and then? Ever wish you could, say, play a low D at the end of a tune with double the normal volume? Well, now you can! Just play two low Ds at once using the middle and right whistles together. :wink:

11

Did you listen to the Launeddas at all? As triple pipes go that clip of Frederica Lecca I posted above is simply breathtaking.

But this is what you really want isn’t it :smiley: ?

12

I did now! That is amazing! :slight_smile:

But this is what you really want isn’t it > :smiley: > ?

:laughing:

I always thought it’d be cool to play low D whistle with regulators. Maybe if you had the regs set up properly, you could play them while both hands were playing the whistle. That’d be cool!

13

That’s something they can do, switch from melody-over-drone to the two chanters playing in harmony at any time.

The downside is that the harmonies are limited to the 5 notes playable on the chanter than isn’t playing the melody note.

The lower-hand chanter plays low G, low A, B, C#, and D.

The upper-hand chanter plays low A, E, F#, high G, and high A.

You can play any combination of the two sets of notes.

The cool thing is that you can play it exactly like an ordinary single Scottish chanter and due to the partially-closed Highland fingering one chanter or the other is always playing Low A, creating a “virtual drone”.

14

Barnaby Brown, originally a flutist, got really into the early history of Ceol Mor, which survives as a living tradition only on the Scottish Highland pipes, but was obviously adapted to the pipes by the early pipers from the ancient art music of the Irish harping tradition.

He plays Ceol Mor on a reproduction 18th century bagpipe (a very detailed copy of an original) and also plays Ceol Mor on the Launeddas.

He believes that the Launeddas is a folk survival of the ancient Greek Aulos (generally mistranslated as “flute”) which was a double oboe, a pair of double-reed instruments mouth-blown using circular breathing.

He also believes that the Pictish triple pipe was related to both the Launeddas and the Aulos.

Here’s him doing a piece of Ceol Mor on Launeddas. There are other videos of him playing Highland pipes, and also a reconstructed Aulos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6_hKK06hSs

15

This is fascinating! So the instrument Marsyas played in his contest with Apollo was actually a double oboe, not a double whistle. Never knew that! I feel lied to. :laughing:

The downside is that the harmonies are limited to the 5 notes playable on the chanter than isn’t playing the melody note.

That, and the fact that you can’t play without either harmonizing or using a drone. If you wish to play with neither, you’re out of luck. Also, your only real option for a drone is low A. The design I’m proposing could play only a single melody line if you wanted to, and it would also allow you to play a drone on any note other than C#.

So far, the closest thing I’ve found to what I’m proposing is various double and triple Native American flutes, such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRllpVpvgIY&ab_channel=miguelmedina or this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7huMMiQQwY&ab_channel=miguelmedina. But these are still far less flexible than what I’m proposing.

16

Some practical issues may come up when you look closer at the acoustics. For the sake of argument, I used a Feadog Mk 1 as the foundation, and assumed Feadog heads on the two drones. For each drone, you probably want the thumb hole at or above the first-finger hole on the foundation, and the pinkie hole below the third-finger hole.

On the longer, right-hand drone, the F# thumb hole works out ok, but to avoid a flat E, the pinkie hole has to be around 9 mm, which is a bit big to cover with your average pinkie.

On the shorter, left-hand drone, the two holes are so far apart that you won’t see much difference in tuning between OX and OO, so you can’t get both B and C-nat.

And that’s just playing them the drones on their own. In practice, you are sticking two or three mouthpieces in one mouth. First you have to find room for them. Then you’ll find that when you play low notes on the middle whistle you blow lighter than when you’re playing high notes, so the drones (which are driven by the same mouth pressure) will be flat when you play low melody notes and sharp when you play high notes. And don’t even think about going to the second octave on the middle whistle.

17

Why is that? It’s perfectly ergonomic to have your thumbs a bit lower, even quite a bit below the first tone hole on each hand. I used to own a sopilka where this kind of grip was required, in fact, because of the extra holes. But anyway, try it out. It’s not particularly uncomfortable to have your thumbs a bit lower down.

The grip may take some getting used to, but that is the case for any new instrument. When I started low whistle I could barely cover the holes. :stuck_out_tongue:

On the longer, right-hand drone, the F# thumb hole works out ok, but to avoid a flat E, the pinkie hole has to be around 9 mm, which is a bit big to cover with your average pinkie.

An easy way to remedy this would be to push that entire whistle forward slightly, perhaps further than my diagram shows. The mouthpiece could be lengthened slightly to make it easier to reach that whistle with your lips, if reaching it became an issue. That way, the E pinky hole could be further up the body and wouldn’t have to be as big.

F# could also be a bit further back than I have shown on the diagram, though it would have to be made slightly smaller to compensate.

On the shorter, left-hand drone, the two holes are so far apart that you won’t see much difference in tuning between OX and OO, so you can’t get both B and C-nat.

I think the thumb hole could be pushed forward significantly further than I have pictured here, without creating any playing difficulties. 10-hole fifes sometimes have a Bb hole for the left thumb that is pretty far forward - past the second finger hole on the left hand - and lots of people play those things just fine. Pushing it forward would lessen the spacing between the two holes and possibly make Cnat playable.

And if I’m wrong and you couldn’t make Cnat work, then fine, we’d have to live without the Cnat. You’d still have 6 possible drone notes, which is good in my book. Maybe advanced models could have a key for Cnat. :stuck_out_tongue:

And that’s just playing them the drones on their own. In practice, you are sticking two or three mouthpieces in one mouth.

Yes, and that’s exactly what double recorder players, double penny whistle players, and double/triple Native American flute players do all the time. And they make lovely music! So what’s the problem?

Sure, having all three in your mouth at once might be a bit difficult, but how often are you going to want to play three notes at once anyway? I’d think that’d be fairly rare.

If you’re worried about fit, the mouthpieces can be made smaller and/or closer together than I have pictured in my diagram. If you wanted to, you could make them as close as the holes on a harmonica. But I don’t really think fit is an issue, because I can tape three of my whistles together and pretty easily play the middle one with either of the other two I choose. All the same, maybe making the mouthpieces smaller and/or angling some of them would be helpful for making the instrument more playable.

Then you’ll find that when you play low notes on the middle whistle you blow lighter than when you’re playing high notes, so the drones (which are driven by the same mouth pressure) will be flat when you play low melody notes and sharp when you play high notes.

Double recorder players (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvL4-EBDygs&ab_channel=SarahJeffery%2FTeamRecorder) face this same dilemma all the time. First, while this is an issue, I don’t think it’s as big an issue as you’re making it out to be, because many well-made whistles require almost even breath pressure across the first octave, and mostly even breath pressure across the second. Double recorders seem to be designed this way on purpose, to keep tuning as accurate as possible. Second, if you’re playing two notes that require different breath pressure, you can aim for a sort of average between the two, and both of them will be roughly (though not perfectly) in tune - good enough that few people would notice anything is off. And third, if you really need drastically different breath pressure between two whistles, you can angle them such that one gets more air than the other. This is exactly what double recorder players do to play one whistle in the second octave while the other is in the first.

And don’t even think about going to the second octave on the middle whistle.

Why ever not? Nothing is stopping you from switching octaves in the middle whistle while playing it solo, and if you’re harmonizing, you can simply switch octaves in both whistles - the middle one and whichever one you’re using to harmonize - by applying more breath pressure to both of them at once. This is precisely what people who play existing double penny whistle designs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-5aichvTk&ab_channel=Folkfriends) do as a matter of habit. And it works great. With the triple whistle, it’d be no different. You’d have a drone that switched octaves whenever the melody switches octaves. Nothing wrong with that.

And if you did want to switch octaves in just the middle whistle while maintaining a lower-octave drone - which would be totally optional - you could use the aforementioned double recorder technique. :slight_smile:

18

Tunborough’s comments are about acoustics, not ergonomics. Specifically, I think the problem he is getting at has to do with venting. The concern is that on a conventional whistle the first open tone hole does not provide all of the venting needed for the note to be in tune. Subsequent open tone holes lower down the bore also provide venting, and hence sharpen the note. When you have a drone whistle with a single tone hole, the location of that tone hole needs to be higher on the bore than it would be on a standard whistle to compensate for the fact that there are not additional open tone holes below it.

Moving the tone hole up the bore to sharpen the note to the frequency it should be at to match the same note on a standard whistle is only part of the problem though. If you want the drone note to be playable in the second register too, you need to take into account that the second register note is more affected by the venting of subsequent lower open tone holes than the first register note is. So you actually need to decide both the location and size of the tone hole in a way that balances the tuning of first and second register drone notes. Finding this balance is somewhat harder than it is on a conventional whistle because it tends to push you towards much larger tone hole sizes to get the second register drone note sharp enough without over sharpening the first. This kind of follows on from the principle that you sharped a first register note more by moving the tone hole up the bore, whereas you can sharpen a second register note more by enlarging the tone hole. Additional open tone holes below the first open one provide venting which is effectively like having a larger tone hole size.

I don’t think anyone is saying it can’t be done, just that it is non trivial. I think Tunborough was trying to give you some clues about where the locations of the tone holes needed to be for first register tuning, based on the control case he looked at.

Apologies if I misrepresented your point Tunborough!

19

I get what you’re saying, but I don’t see how it has any relation to the design I’m proposing. For the right hand drone whistle, this wouldn’t be an issue at all, because the two tone holes would be at the very end of the tube, right where a bottom D and E hole would be on a normal D whistle. So these notes should play exactly as they would on a normal whistle - tuning may be slightly different, because there wouldn’t any closed tone holes above them as there would be on a normal whistle, but that would be the only difference.

And I don’t see how what you’re saying would affect the left hand drone whistle either. Sure, there aren’t any tone holes below the G. But there don’t need to be, because the tube is shorter. If you make the tube the exact right length so that G is in tune, I don’t see why A and B wouldn’t also be in tune.

So I don’t see why we’d need to move any holes up the bore at all. Both whistles should be able to have the tone holes in the exact place they would be on a standard whistle. But since both are pushed forward slightly from the center whistle, the holes would naturally fall a bit further forward. This would, I think, allow your pinkies and thumbs to cover them comfortably. If your thumbs couldn’t handle it, the spacing might need to be tweaked a bit for the thumb holes, which could lead to some of the issues you discussed. But I don’t even think this would be necessary, as I explained in my last post.

If you want the drone note to be playable in the second register too, you need to take into account that the second register note is more affected by the venting of subsequent lower open tone holes than the first register note is

How much is it affected by this, though? It doesn’t seem to be affected very much. If it were, we’d expect very different octave differentials between different notes on the whistle (since some have more holes below them than others), but we only see minor differences, as pancelticpiper noted on a different thread.

There also just doesn’t seem to be a strong correlation between the number of vented holes a note has and its octave spread. For instance, G tends to have more octave spread than either A or F#, in my experience, despite the fact that F# has fewer vented holes than it, and A has more vented holes than it. If there were a strong correlation between octave spread and number of vented holes below the top open hole, we wouldn’t expect to see this. We’d expect to see a more-or-less linear correlation (positive or negative) between how high the note is in the octave and how much octave spread it has - but we don’t, as far as I can tell.

But anyway, I again don’t see how this would be an issue in the first place, at least for the right hand drone, since D and E never have a bunch of vented holes below them anyway.

And if this were a problem for the left-hand whistle, we could simply lengthen the tube of the left-hand whistle and add a bunch of holes there that you’d never play. Then the octave spread would unquestionably be identical to that of an ordinary whistle playing G, A, and B.

If that somehow wouldn’t work (and I don’t see how it wouldn’t), we could use undercutting to micro-adjust the octave spread on individual notes.

20

:really:

This part may be true, although your fingering chart does show one of those holes closed for F#, but I’m assuming that was just a mistake.

It’s not valid to assume that the acoustic effect of a terminated (shorter) tube is the same as the effect of a longer tube with an open tone hole lattice, especially across a range of frequencies. The tone holes won’t be in the same place, and you’ll have to figure out where to put them and what size to make them.

If you get to actually build instruments, or even model them computationally, you’ll find that the tone hole locations and sizes will have to be worked out afresh, especially if you want it to play in tune in both registers.

What we are saying isn’t about octave spread. Existing whistle designs already figured out the appropriate location and size of their tone holes to take into account the open tone hole lattice for each note in order to keep both registers in tune. If you don’t have precisely the same open tone hole lattice (which you don’t!) then you need to work out the appropriate location and size for the tone holes in your new design to keep both registers in tune. If you simply copy the location and size of tone holes of an existing whistle and then change the open tone hole lattice below, by either shortening the bore, or changing the number, size or location of the lower open tone holes, then the tuning will change. You don’t have to take my word for it. You could simply build some prototypes, or do some modeling, or study some acoustics, or maybe even cut an existing sacrificial whistle off at a tone hole and see what effect it has on the tuning of the higher notes.

Right, that would be a more valid strategy if you want to try to just blindly use the same tone hole locations and sizes, but you are still basically a tone hole short if you want to use two fingers (i.e., a thumb and pinky) to do the same work that three fingers normally do in playing G, A, B and Cnat.

Getting your new two tone hole lattice to provide the same functionality as the existing top three tone hole lattice, is going to be an interesting challenge for you, especially if you don’t want to change the location or size of the existing tone holes. :really: