If a whistle can be blown into tune don’t you also need to measure volume or can that be done by ear ? When playing a whistle with slightly dodgy tuning the problem I find is that notes are either too loud or too quiet when I manage to blow them in tune.
I think it’s more complex than just changing volume, but I can’t describe how I do it…
Yes, and that’s another area where I find the plateau concept useful. The best-playing whistles I’ve tried all have a consistent optimal breath point along the curve - usually near the right end of the plateau, just below the “chirp point”. This makes it easy to hit the right pitch with a consistent, full volume without guessing, and to “play the chirp” at will by simply pushing the breath slightly.
Is this how real whistle makers do it?
To develop a whistle I use a calculator I developed myself and drill holes the size and place it suggests.
I then play the whistle try it with Flutini and play it and play it and play it and … I find playing more useful - though Flutini can help confirm problems.
My calculator is well enough developed now that things usually work out, makes life easier and there are plenty of other problems to cope with making whistles.
Once I’m happy with hole sizes and positions I can reproduce them without having to hand tune each note (I use a mill with a digital micrometer readout I added to it). I still fine tune some other details of my whistles - to get the sound I’m after, how it responds (octave jumps/breaks) and to tune the second octave.
Tuning is not an absolute thing - unless you’re happy with ET - for example the two ways you might tune the E on a D whistle using just intonation differ by 22 cents (I believe - quoting off the top of my head - I see an edit looming!)
So what does one aim for with the E?
What is the percent method?
Here are a couple of expositions of the percentage method.
Mark Shepard lists the percentages here - Simple Flutes
or if you prefer an amusing video with a novel implementation of the percentage method - Junk Dojo
Hope that helps.
Feadoggie
About the art of blowing a whistle into tune, for those of us that don’t have perfect pitch:
At a gig I noticed the singer warming up by singing along to an Iphone app that has a piano playing a standard vocal warmup sequence.
I thought how nice it would be to have an app that played the scale of D and a D Major arpeggio, then the scale of G and a G Major arpeggio, for us whistlers to play along with to fine-tune our blowing technique.
It could be available in both Equal Temperament and Just Intonation.
In tune:
Just intonation
Equal temperament
Quantz’s system
In tune with its self
In tune with each other
A=440
A=???
What did I miss?
I have two whistles. An Oak and a Dixon Trad. The Oak is unforgiving, you can blow the thing sharp or flat and push the note all over the place. The Dixon Trad (for me) plays “In Tune” no matter what I do. The thing with the Oak is that when you push it sharp to the point of breaking and then blow it flat to the point of fizzling out, the middle is the “In Tune” note. It is kind of a trade off between expressiveness and forgiving? Anyway, you said something about your whistles being sensitive to breath control, it seems it is just the character of your whistle.