Triple Whistle Concept (does this exist?)

[Cyberknight]

@paddler

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 wasn’t a mistake. I figured tuning it so that the bottom hole could be closed for F# would help with stabilization of the whistle (I keep my pinky on the whistle at all times, personally). I figured if the holes were far enough apart, keeping the bottom one closed for F# wouldn’t change much (try playing F# on a whistle with the bottom hole covered, and it’s only a tiny bit flat). But I guess I was wrong about this?

Anyway, if this did create an issue for tuning, I wouldn’t be opposed to a design where F# was played totally open.

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

But it’s also not valid to assume they’d be any different, is it? What reason do you have to think the effect would be different? The open holes together make an effective tube length, and I’d think you could just shorten the tube to exactly whatever length that is. Once you have that tube length for G, I don’t see why the placement of the two tone holes would need to change at all to get A and B in tune. Maybe it would, but what I want to know is why it would and to what degree it would. And I’m also curious how you know it would. I guess it’s just hard to wrap my head around this.

To be clear, I’m mainly talking about getting A and B in tune in one octave here, not about the octave spread thing you discussed later on. What I’m asking is this: at least in the first octave, why exactly would A and B be tuned differently if the whistle was simply shorter vs. if the whistle had open tone holes below it? Do you have a physical explanation for this, or have you simply tested this specific thing out and found it to be the case? If you’ve tested it, fair enough. I’ll shut up about it.

What we are saying isn’t about octave spread.

What I mean by octave spread is exactly what you’re talking about: a given note’s tuning in the second octave vs. its tuning in the first.

Anyway, I appreciate your explanation of the octave spread thing, because that part does seem to make sense. But I still wonder how much of an issue this is. I guess I’ll have to test it out some time.

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.

Well, right. That’s a good point. I suppose we could nix the Cnat idea if getting that to work isn’t possible. If we did that, the only tone hole we’d be missing is the top one, and that one is closed for all notes but C/C#, so it shouldn’t affect any other notes significantly.

[paddler]

@Cyberknight

It wasn’t a mistake. I figured tuning it so that the bottom hole could be closed for F# would help with stabilization of the whistle (I keep my pinky on the whistle at all times, personally). I figured if the holes were far enough apart, keeping the bottom one closed for F# wouldn’t change much (try playing F# on a whistle with the bottom hole covered, and it’s only a tiny bit flat). But I guess I was wrong about this?

I see. Stabilizing using that finger makes sense, but you might have to slightly retune the upper of the two holes. It makes a small difference on some of my whistles, but I don’t think that would be hard to address.

@Cyberknight

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

But it’s also not valid to assume they’d be any different, is it?

What reason do you have to think the effect would be different?

Well, this is the kind of thing that you encounter when designing a flute and you want to explore the options of having a short foot and a long foot. You generally can not just cut off the long foot at a point close to the upper of its two vent holes and get it to work well. You usually also have to mess around with the bore profile itself, by back reaming, to get the notes to all be in tune across both octaves and higher harmonics. Normally, the process is done in the other direction though, where instead of adjusting the bore after the tone holes are already placed and sized, you start with a given bore profile, and then tune the tone hole sizes and locations such that the notes are in tune. It is just the practical experience of doing this kind of thing that leads me to suggest that it would be best to start out assuming that there may be some tweaking of tone hole size and position necessary.

If you are only interested in the lower register that would simplify things a lot, but if you start looking at higher harmonics then you are going to see some significant effects. It is as the frequencies get higher that the difference in behavior between an open tone hole lattice and a terminated bore become very evident, and especially for narrower bores and smaller tone holes. It is why all those cross fingered high notes work on baroque and renaissance flutes.

@Cyberknight

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.

Well, right. That’s a good point. I suppose we could nix the Cnat idea if getting that to work isn’t possible. If we did that, the only tone hole we’d be missing is the top one, and that one is closed for all notes but C/C#, so it shouldn’t affect any other notes significantly.

I think the problem is still there even if you nix Cnat and just try to get G, A, B and C#. The tone hole positioning and sizing on existing whistles (at least the ones I’ve tried) just doesn’t give that combination of notes. You are trying to get four different notes using two tone holes, whereas on the other drone you are using two tone holes to get only three different notes. I think it will be a challenge getting that fourth note to be in tune without driving at least one of the others out of tune, and it seems nigh on impossible to do it without changing the tone holes sizes and locations compared to an existing whistle.

[Cyberknight]

@paddler

@Cyberknight

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

But it’s also not valid to assume they’d be any different, is it?

What reason do you have to think the effect would be different?

Well, this is the kind of thing that you encounter when designing a flute and you want to explore the options of having a short foot and a long foot. You generally can not just cut off the long foot at a point close to the upper of its two vent holes and get it to work well. You usually also have to mess around with the bore profile itself, by back reaming, to get the notes to all be in tune across both octaves and higher harmonics. Normally, the process is done in the other direction though, where instead of adjusting the bore after the tone holes are already placed and sized, you start with a given bore profile, and then tune the tone hole sizes and locations such that the notes are in tune. It is just the practical experience of doing this kind of thing that leads me to suggest that it would be best to start out assuming that there may be some tweaking of tone hole size and position necessary.

If you are only interested in the lower register that would simplify things a lot, but if you start looking at higher harmonics then you are going to see some significant effects. It is as the frequencies get higher that the difference in behavior between an open tone hole lattice and a terminated bore become very evident, and especially for narrower bores and smaller tone holes. It is why all those cross fingered high notes work on baroque and renaissance flutes.

Thanks for the explanation. Just to get this straight: you’re saying that if you have a flute that plays perfectly in tune with a long foot joint, and you chop off the two final holes and replace them with a short foot joint that is perfectly sized so that bottom D is in tune, the tuning of other notes (say, E and F#) will then be messed up, particularly in the second octave?

If so, that’s just… Flute acoustics sure are wild.

Of course, just because this happens on flute doesn’t necessarily mean it would happen on whistle, wouldn’t you agree? Whistle has very thin walls and usually has a parallel bore, and my understanding is that weird things that happen on flute sometimes don’t happen on whistle for this reason.

I guess we’d just need to test this to be sure.

I think the problem is still there even if you nix Cnat and just try to get G, A, B and C#. The tone hole positioning and sizing on existing whistles (at least the ones I’ve tried) just doesn’t give that combination of notes. You are trying to get four different notes using two tone holes, whereas on the other drone you are using two tone holes to get only three different notes. I think it will be a challenge getting that fourth note to be in tune without driving at least one of the others out of tune, and it seems nigh on impossible to do it without changing the tone holes sizes and locations compared to an existing whistle.

When I said we could nix the Cnat, I didn’t mean replacing it with a C#. I meant we could do away with playing any kind of C whatsoever. So the whistle on the left would only play G, A, or B. That would eliminate the problem you’re talking about completely.

The left-hand whistle would basically be a normal whistle, but with (1) the top hole plugged completely, (2) the second hole changed to a thumb hole, and (3) the third hole changed to a pinky hole. Other than that, it could be the same. You see what I’m saying?

The whole whistle would have to be pushed forward for the pinky to cover that “third hole” (which would now be the second hole, since we plugged the top hole). The only difficulty might be getting the thumb to cover the hole that opens to play B. The thumb would be pretty far forward. But I still think it would be possible to cover without too much discomfort.

[paddler]

@Cyberknight

Thanks for the explanation. Just to get this straight: you’re saying that if you have a flute that plays perfectly in tune with a long foot joint, and you chop off the two final holes and replace them with a short foot joint that is perfectly sized so that bottom D is in tune, the tuning of other notes (say, E and F#) will then be messed up, particularly in the second octave?

If so, that’s just… Flute acoustics sure are wild.

Of course, just because this happens on flute doesn’t necessarily mean it would happen on whistle, wouldn’t you agree? Whistle has very thin walls and usually has a parallel bore, and my understanding is that weird things that happen on flute sometimes don’t happen on whistle for this reason.

I guess we’d just need to test this to be sure.

Perhaps the most succinct way of stating this is simply that two alternative solutions, such as (a) a cut off tube, and (b) a longer tube with a pattern of open tone holes, can be designed to produce the exact same note in the lowest register, and in general they will not have the same behavior (i.e., produce the exact same notes) for higher harmonics, the first of which is the second register. The reasons for this are very well understood and are covered in material that explains the physics that underlies acoustics, and they apply equally well to flutes and whistles.

There are some design choices that you can make as a flute or whistle maker that make the longer tube with a pattern of open tone holes behave more like the shorter cut-off tube. These include ensuring that the tone holes are sufficiently large compared to the bore diameter to effectively terminate the tube at the first open tone hole, which is one of the strategies Boehm took when designing the modern silver flute, but the simple system flutes and whistles we all play generally do not adhere to these constraints, so it does tend to be the common case that you have to test these kinds of things in practice.

I’m not trying to be difficult or to pick an argument with these comments, and I think there is some potential in the idea you propose. I’m just trying to contribute some insights into the kinds of details that would need to be worked out in order to make it actually work well in practice. I took that to the be the spirit and content of Tonborough’s post too.

And along this line of thought, I also think this idea will work a lot better in practice if the notes (drone and melody) are tuned to just intonation. Or to put it another way, if you plan on using this triple whistle such that you are playing against a drone, or drones, it will sound a heck of a lot better if the intervals to the drones are in tune. To get this to work well you’ll probably have to make some choices about which chords are more important, and which keys and modes you want this to play in primarily. There are very compelling reasons why bagpipes end up being tuned to JI.

[Cyberknight]

@paddler

@Cyberknight

Thanks for the explanation. Just to get this straight: you’re saying that if you have a flute that plays perfectly in tune with a long foot joint, and you chop off the two final holes and replace them with a short foot joint that is perfectly sized so that bottom D is in tune, the tuning of other notes (say, E and F#) will then be messed up, particularly in the second octave?

If so, that’s just… Flute acoustics sure are wild.

Of course, just because this happens on flute doesn’t necessarily mean it would happen on whistle, wouldn’t you agree? Whistle has very thin walls and usually has a parallel bore, and my understanding is that weird things that happen on flute sometimes don’t happen on whistle for this reason.

I guess we’d just need to test this to be sure.

Perhaps the most succinct way of stating this is simply that two alternative solutions, such as (a) a cut off tube, and (b) a longer tube with a pattern of open tone holes, can be designed to produce the exact same note in the lowest register, and in general they will not have the same behavior (i.e., produce the exact same notes) for higher harmonics, the first of which is the second register. The reasons for this are very well understood and are covered in material that explains the physics that underlies acoustics, and they apply equally well to flutes and whistles.

There are some design choices that you can make as a flute or whistle maker that make the longer tube with a pattern of open tone holes behave more like the shorter cut-off tube. These include ensuring that the tone holes are sufficiently large compared to the bore diameter to effectively terminate the tube at the first open tone hole, which is one of the strategies Boehm took when designing the modern silver flute, but the simple system flutes and whistles we all play generally do not adhere to these constraints, so it does tend to be the common case that you have to test these kinds of things in practice.

I’m not trying to be difficult or to pick an argument with these comments, and I think there is some potential in the idea you propose. I’m just trying to contribute some insights into the kinds of details that would need to be worked out in order to make it actually work well in practice. I took that to the be the spirit and content of Tonborough’s post too.

And along this line of thought, I also think this idea will work a lot better in practice if the notes (drone and melody) are tuned to just intonation. Or to put it another way, if you plan on using this triple whistle such that you are playing against a drone, or drones, it will sound a heck of a lot better if the intervals to the drones are in tune. To get this to work well you’ll probably have to make some choices about which chords are more important, and which keys and modes you want this to play in primarily. There are very compelling reasons why bagpipes end up being tuned to JI.

I didn’t take your comments as you being difficult, paddler! And I greatly appreciate your pointing these things out.

If I ever have the tools to actually make whistles, I’ll probably try this someday.

[Steve_Bliven]

The late, lamented, Bill Ochs used to do a parlour trick with two whistles taped together and some holes on one taped. He’d play self-duets that he labelled, “Stupid whistle tricks”.

I seem to recall Cathal McConnell doing something similar. [Yes, I did. Here he is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvRT1Ab_g8w]

There are Central American clay whistles with dual, playable bores and Julian Goodacre makes a couple of versions of dual chanter English bagpipes.

So, there are several somewhat similar approaches around.

Best wishes.

Steve