Does anyone think that labeling a whistle in its companion key ie D/G G/C C/F and so on would be a good idea?.Other instruments such as harmonicas and melodeons do this after all, so why do whistles not I wonder. Peace , Mike
mike.r,
I don’t think labeling whistles as such would add anything. Indeed, I think it would only confuse people.
I think you may be under a misimpression regarding melodeons. A D/G melodeon is, by definition, a two-row box, with separate rows in the keys of D and G. Now, if you were to devise a two-row whistle, I’m sure people would take up your nomenclature!
As far as I know, “melodeon” to an Irish musician always means a one-row button accordion, which is always designated by a single key. Confusingly, the English call all button accordions “melodeons,” even if they have two or three rows.
–C#/D
Csharpd,
thanks for that although I cant see that it would be confusing for whistle players,especially beginers.A soprano D whistle we all know does a far better job playing in G than a sop G and I seem to recall a rumour some time ago of plans for the discontinuation of sop Gen G,s which for some are physicaly impossible to play.Mouth harp players call this 1st and 2nd position playing and anyone who plays Lee Oskar harps knows how helpful it is to have this kind of labelling to select the correct 2nd position harp for blues playing.Quite often I,ve seen posts from folks on this forum in the dark as to what key an F or Bb whistle produces in 2nd position and a lot of folks are simply unaware that a low G whistle is a perfectly good soprano C whistle as well.There,s a lot of discussion here on the importance of good cross fingered C nat positioning on a D whistle and makers who get this right may find that a D/G label may even set them apart from those who dont. Peace, Mike 
-A nicely done (and color coded!) table of whistle primary, secondary and minor keys and note fingerings for each can be found at this link on Thom Larson’s Whistle Shop site. -Its quite helpful when juggling whistle keys. This link is for the “printer friendly” version.
http://www.thewhistleshop.com/misc/fingeringchart.jpg
…and a happy shriek ensued!
[ This Message was edited by: brianormond on 2002-09-05 01:46 ]
[ This Message was edited by: brianormond on 2002-09-05 01:48 ]
[ This Message was edited by: brianormond on 2002-09-05 01:55 ]
No. But thanks for asking.
No problem.