Tuning a whistle questions....

Whistle
1

I’m assuming there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.

Whistles are not perfect instruments, they will not play every single note at concert pitch. This means some of the notes on the whistle will be more “in tune” than others. With a good whistle obviously none of the notes should be too far away from where they should be.

I tend to tune my D whistles so the A is perfect according to my electronic tuner. This makes the low D a little sharp and the B a little flat.

Is this the correct way to tune a whistle? Is there a correct way?

Do people adopt different tunings based on the music they want to play?

Many thanks

2

I’m assuming there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.

wrong ways - most definitely,
a right way - I don’t think so

Whistles are not perfect instruments, they will not play every single note at concert pitch. This means some of the notes on the whistle will be more “in tune” than others. With a good whistle obviously none of the notes should be too far away from where they should be.

the trick is - what is ‘too far away’ and where is ‘where they should be’ ?

I tend to tune my D whistles so the A is perfect according to my electronic tuner. This makes the low D a little sharp and the B a little flat.

and a little means?
I think the D should be close to perfect.
The B - in just intonation the B should be flat.
Where is the F# ?

Is this the correct way to tune a whistle?

possibly - not enough info for me to have an opinion

Is there a correct way?

There are correct ways - but not ‘a correct way’

Do people adopt different tunings based on the music they want to play?

I do.

3

If the A is on the nose, the D will be approximately 15 cents sharp, or vice versa (on most of my whistles).

The F# will be closer than the D but still not perfect.

4

How is it if you tune to G?
I find G usually more reliable than A.

5

I’ve read through quite a few of your posts and either you’re a magnet for out of tune whistles, or else you’re doing something wrong. Is there anyone locally that you can ask for whistle advice? Of course, shutting them in car doors won’t help :wink:

6

There must be 15 whistles in my drawer upstairs. Only a couple of them have presented issues with their tuning. I don’t make posts about the ones that don’t cause me problems.

Why would I need someone local? When I have questions that is what I use Chiff and Fipple for.

7

I’ll give that a try Hans, thanks.

I also just figured out that one of my children set my tuners reference pitch to 434hz instead of 440hz, so that may have something to do with the difficulty I have been encountering also :blush:

Anything with buttons seems to be incredibly appealing to kids.

8

Maybe someone else is posting under the same user name…











9

All of those posts refer to 2 whistles, a Clarke’s Meg in C and a Generation in C. I also noticed that Generations in general seemed difficult to play on the second octave, but only my C was sufficiently bad I considered it unplayable.

The Clarkes traditional wasn’t out of tune, just screechy on the second octave. The advice about adjusting the fipple ramp eliminated that problem.

Worst case scenario - I am a whistling ignoramus who keeps mistaking a lack of talent for a faulty whistle. Why should this bother you? You seem to have spent a lot of time sifting my posting history.

10

Ok. I counted at least three references to “duds” in your posts, but I won’t quibble over exact numbers - you know your whistles better than I do. I never said that you are a whistling ignoramus.

I’m not unduly bothered, just a little bit wary of beginners thinking that changing whistles is a good short-cut to getting a good sound and propagating the “myth” (and by “myth” I don’t mean something necessarily false). In my opinion, practice and technique are even more important than the whistle that you play, but you can’t buy those.

You’ve clearly had issues with several whistles with squeaks and dodgy second octaves, whereas I’ve yet to encounter a truely dud whistle. There have been many similar posts recently and I can’t discount people’s experience. As I said before, if it works for you, then that’s great, but please don’t assume that just because you can’t get a decent sound out a whistle then it must be a dud.

11

Bottom line-- play the whistle not the tuner. You can blow any note sharp or flat. What really counts in the long run is how the whistle sounds to the ear, not the tuner. With time and acquaintance with a new whistle, you’ll eventually blow them in pretty good relative pitch if you have a decent ear. If you don’t ,it doesn’t matter :smiley:

12

For the record, I stopped selling tweaked C Sweetones (they’re the same as Megs) after a customer complained about problems with the intonation. I found that the two registers were out of tune with each other beyond the possibility of blowing them up or down to pitch. When I sent around an email to the retailers who sell my whistles to let them know I was discontinuing the tweaked C Sweetones, Thom Larson at The Whistle Shop replied back saying that had also been his experience. (I haven’t encountered the problem with D Sweetones, btw.)

Best wishes,
Jerry

13

I’m not certain what you mean by “concert pitch.” To me, that means a 440 A and doesn’t specify any other note.

There’s no reason you can’t have all the basic notes in one octave perfectly in tune (however you choose to define “in tune.”) If you’re not playing with other instruments, then it doesn’t really matter how you tune, as long as it sounds good. If you’re playing with other instruments, then it’s important to be in tune with them (so it sounds good) and the meter is of little use.

But no matter how you’re tuning, if you’re playing in D, then A should be pretty close to a perfect 5th. If you’re 15 cents out, then something is wrong. Move the head until you get D and A in tune with each and see how the rest sounds. If you have a perfect 5th, the A will register two cents sharp on the meter.

I notice my Clark Meg, when tuned to itself, is about a quarter step sharp. If I tried to tune the A to 440, it would sound terrible. Tuned to itself it’s just fine, as long as I don’t try to play with others.

14

Unlike strings, wind instruments do not produce an exact frequency when played. Even for a specific musical note, the frequency produced can vary over a non-trivial range depending on the playing conditions. For whistles the frequency increases as the velocity of air leaving the windway increases, until the pitch jumps to the next register.

Thus, a wind instrument can’t be guaranteed to play on-pitch or in tune. The best we can do is make it easy for the player to play in tune. Assuming each note has a minimum and maximum frequency that can be comfortably played, the target pitch should fall between the minimum and maximum, and should be achievable under playing conditions that the player is likely to use in practice. For a whistle, the target pitch of the lowest note is typically slightly below the frequency where the whistle jumps to the next register. For each note, the blowing pressure required to get the note in tune should be similar to that required to get adjacent notes in tune.

15

I couldn’t play a whistle like that, myself. I expect the entire scale to be in tune from Bottom D up to High B. By “in tune” I mean that as I play up the scale the needle on an electronic tuner stays pointing straight up, with the tuner set to 440. If a whistle doesn’t play like that, it’s of no use to me, due to the nature of the gigs I end up doing.

Nearly all of my whistles have been carved by myself to make the scales as in-tune as possible. Of course the starting point has to be a whistle head that gives true octaves.

In adjusting the scale there are two main approaches, I suppose. One is to have your flattest note(s) as the “benchmark” and put tape on the other holes to match. In the case you mention, the B would be the benchmark, and A and even the open end of the whistle wouled have to have tape to bring those notes down to match the B.

I do the other way, that is, to use the sharpest note(s) as the benchmark and carve out the rest to match. In the example you mention that would mean using D as the benchmark and carving out A until it matches, then carving out B to match.

It’s best to start low, from the open end, then the E hole, then the F# hole, and so forth because carving the E hole effects the pitch of the F# hole, etc.

My old trusty Generation C, the best whistle of any pitch I’ve ever played, had a “G” which was sharper than all the other notes. After playing that thing with tape on the G hole for a few years, I bit the bullet and chopped the open end and carved out all the holes, to get the entire gamut exactly in tune with no tape. I’ve never regretted doing it.

16

I am wondering about something. Are you watching a tuner as you play notes?

Trying to get the tuner to reach perfect pitch for each note is backwards thinking. What you need to achieve is good pitch as you would normally blow a note.

Once you have a whistle in good pitch with the way that you would normally blow notes, then play along with a recording or other musicians. If you sound like you’re in tune, then you’re in tune. Another option is to have someone else look at that tuner. Whistles are for ears, not eyes.

17

Good point – if you watch the meter, it’s a bio-feedback device.

If you’re going to use a meter, here’s the best approach: Close your eyes. Play a bit of a tune, and stop on a note. Open your eyes and see where the tuner is.

18

Good mutepointe

19

I just tried that. To my disappointment, the tuner was still on the table where I’d left it.

20

When I’m working out the tuning of a whistle, I check the intonation of each pitch, making adjustments to the tonehole configuration until I’m satisfied that I have it as close as possible, with a smooth continuity of the amount of breath needed to blow each successive note on pitch.

Then, I watch the tuner while I play the whistle normally. I may see that one or more of the pitches is different from what I found when I was checking them one by one, which would be due to differences in breath pressure between playing one note at a time and playing many notes quickly in a tune. I then make further adjustments until the whistle plays on pitch during normal playing, rather than the artificial test of checking pitches one at a time.

When I do this, I also make decisions about how much breath sounds the best for each part of the whistle’s range. I may choose to have it play on pitch with a little more or less breath, if that is what best accesses the “sweet spot” of that particular range of notes.

Differences in breath pressure can change the pitch of a given whistle or note significantly, so there will be individual variations for different players.

Awhile back, I had two accomplished players check the intonation of two whistles with identical tonebodies, using software that mapped the pitches statistically during normal playing.

I observed that the two players had somewhat different intonation configurations, such that you might look at one or the other and think, “These notes here are a bit out of tune,” but looking at all the data, the conclusion was that the tonebodies were as in tune as they could be, and from there it would be up to each player to work out how to approach the way the whistle responds to being played. You could see that one player tended to blow a bit more strongly through a certain part of the range, and this was pushing those pitches a little sharper than the other player.

Playing a whistle is like singing in the sense that you have control of the pitch and can play/sing what sounds right to your ear, assuming the whistle is set up properly. This is so automatic, most people don’t even realize they’re doing it.

Best wishes,
Jerry