If you had to choose say 4 whistles that would give you the widest range of playable keys what would you choose? Obviously a D but what else? I have been looking at buying a set of either brass generations or nickel generations( or both ) but am wondering if the bulk of the whistles in the set would ever get used. And I am also wanting to find a good toned inexpensive Low D ( do they exist?)
Price on the Generation set is not a real issue. It is more of an issue of will these whistles get played or just collect dust like my flute
It’s really hard to answer a question like that without knowing how and/or where you intend to play them. I mean, my Eb and Bb whistles get played quite a lot, but only at home, never in public.
If you want to know what you need for an Irish session, the answer is a D whistle, and C and A are handy, but probably 97% of the tunes can be played on a D whistle.
I have a set of brass Gens and a set of nickel Gens. They all get played from time to time. The F and G not as often as the others. Of course if the neighbors dog is bothering me I play one of the Gs in the second octave.
Can’t help with the set question but for a good low D for not that much go to http://www.merlin-music.com I know it is a good whistle I own one and it is compareable to my Dixon High whistle and you guys know how much I love Dixons.
It also depends on what you mean by the widest range of keys; whether it’s the most keys or the widest range. Something like Bflat, C, D, and E would get you the keys of Eflat, Bflat, F, C, G, D, A, and E. If you want a greater range of pitches, you could substitute a low-E for the E, or a low-F and an Eflat for the Bflat and C, various things like that.
If I had to pick four keys for myself it would probably be low-G, Bflat, D, and E.
) but am wondering if the bulk of the whistles in the set would ever get used. And I am also wanting to find a good toned inexpensive Low D ( do they exist?)