I have the Clarke Classic C whistle, bought secondhand. The one with the wooden plug. It pitches up 20-23%, both according to my Clear Sound tuning app, and my synth. When testing I find this also with others of my tin whistles. To try to keep the right pitch I have to blow weak, and the pitch is very unstable then. That doesn’t seem like a way to play right.
Are there some brands that is known to be high in pitch? Or is this a general challenge when playing whistles, that can be overcomed? I have played for 2-3 years, and feel I should now the basic handling now, and the melodies seems quite well in tune with themselves.
The problem, as I understand it, is that cylindrical whistles play flat in the second octave, relative to the first. The solution adopted by many whistle makers is to tune the first octave a bit sharp, so the second octave is on pitch. In addition, a little extra breath pressure will push the second octave notes up a bit, so the first octave doesn’t have to be tuned overly sharp. But each whistle maker does it a bit differently.
But your Clarke isn’t a cylindrical whistle. The conical bore is meant to overcome this problem, to some extent, so if it’s sharp in the first octave I guess it would be sharp throughout its range. But I’m not sure about that. The only Clarke I have at the moment is a Meg, and I find the tuning on it to be a little wonky anyway.
If it were just the Clarke, then maybe it’s a bad one. But:
When testing I find this also with others of my tin whistles.
That tells me you’re probably blowing all these whistles too hard, believe it or not. But it’s impossible to know without hearing you play.
Are there some brands that is known to be high in pitch?
No, not that I know of. The fixed-tuning whistles I’ve tried (Clarke, Overton, a few others) have been in tune, IIRC. I’ll test my Clarkes again during the day when I won’t wake the neighborhood.
Or is this a general challenge when playing whistles, that can be overcome[d]?
Yes, and yes. It’s pretty common for other wind players to overblow whistles and not even realize they’re doing it. The trick is to “underblow” the whistle into tune while maintaining a good tone and control.
Also, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what your tuning app says, and use your ears instead. It’s easy to accidentally overblow when you’re artifically playing one note into a tuner. Try using a dynamic tuner like the Shaku tuner or Flutini. You might find that your intonation is better than you think it is when you’re actually playing tunes, not just single notes.
«Re: Tin whistle problem
Cheap whistles are rarely flat. Of the hundreds I’ve tested, most are about 20-cents sharp with the tuner on A=440.
One thing that can make the bottom D into a C# is that the bottom end might be de-formed - if it is narowed too much then the bell-note will be flat. You could check to see if there’s anything stuck in it - or if it is dented.
There is another thing to remember with the Clarke tin-whistles - they are extremely conical. This makes the second octave sharp until you learn to back-off on the air pressure.
Also - with ALL pennywhistles, they play flat when they are cold - this can be as much as 30-cents on the tuner. They take (at most) about 1 minute to warm up as you play. Usually a few slow breaths through the beak with the sound-window covered does the trick.
Thank you for good and informative answers ubizmo and MTGuru!
The point about the octaves is important, and I’ve heard it before. It’s a bit sharp in 2nd octave too, but less.
I guess I blow a bit too hard. But I don’t find any natural way to get the pitch in tune. Just a bit less sharp.
With a little embarrassment I post the link to my latest recording. You can hear that the A is flat compared to the other notes. I quite easy even for me to hear I blow a bit hard, at least in the start of each note.
When I try to play it a bit more soft, and concentrate for each note, I see I can get most notes a bit lower. But it doesn’t feel natural. I guess it’s practice.
Is Clarke a lower quality compared to others? I like the classic model, because there is no plastic. Are there others to be recommended, more expensive, but not far up in price?
Cheap whistles are rarely flat. Of the hundreds I’ve tested, most are about 20-cents sharp with the tuner on A=440.
I have no idea what that means. Most “cheap whistles” are tunable, and they are neither sharp nor flat. They are however you set them. Also, Mitch Smith (Mozle) is a fine whistle maker, but we have no idea how he plays or what his personal breath pressure habits are.
This is the only part that is relevant:
There is another thing to remember with the Clarke tin-whistles - they are extremely conical. This makes the second octave sharp until you learn to back-off on the air pressure.
In other words, a conical whistle will be especially sharp in the 2nd octave if you blow too hard. Which takes us back to my comment that you may be blowing too hard.
Done. My Clarke D is pretty much spot-on in tune at A440. My Clarke C is a bit sharp, but I wouldn’t rely on that result. I’ve “doctored” that whistle over the years, and I think I once sat on it.
If you really think your Clarke is too sharp, try putting a glob of poster putty on either side of the fipple window, forming little “walls” right next to the outside edges of the window. That will bring the pitch down a bit, depending on the size and position of the globs.
And when you say “a bit sharp” it’s not like 25%? Thanks a lot, for good help, MTGuru. I will remember the poster putty tip. I tried with my finger, and it worked.
Again, the number you get from a tuner is pretty meaningless in a case like this. With my C whistle, I can underblow it exactly in tune, or I can deliberately overblow it 50 cents sharp or more.
So when I say “a bit sharp”, I mean simply that when I use my default breath pressure, without thinking about it, the pitch of the whistle is somewhere between those two extremes. The exact number is irrelevant because it’s my ear and breath that control the result, not the whistle.
About Clarkes I don’t know. I have an old one that plays great but I’ve never thought of it as an ensemble/orchestral instrument and I can’t remember ever trying to play it with others, or checking its tuning on an electronic tuner.
Most whistles can be tuned by sliding the head up and down, so there’s no issue of the whistle, overall, being too sharp.
Now with Generation whistles it’s true that they usually shove the head all the way down at the factory and glue it there. Nobody would try to play their Generation like that! It being common knowledge (I think) that you have to break the glue-seal and move the head up to where the whistle plays in tune. I don’t know if all the Generation-like whistles by other firms do the same.
Generations do tend to have a flattish 2nd octave, meaning that to play the octaves in tune you have to underblow the 1st octave a bit and overblow the 2nd octave a bit. This hasn’t troubled people much over the years, and you can hear a large number of people like Mary Bergin playing Generation whistles perfectly in tune.
And Generations vary from whistle to whistle in this regard, and if you play through a pile of them you can usually find one that has the octaves more true.
About the scale, Generations often have a flat F# (or whatever the 3rd is of the particular key the whistle is made in) and that hole needs to be filed out a bit. The scales of Generations varies from key to key and whistle to whistle and all of my Generations have had certain holes carved, and in some cases the bottom chopped a bit (when the bellnote is flat of everything else). My trusty old C Generation had the 4th (what would be G on a D whistle) rather sharper than everything else, and after playing it for years with tape on that hole I bit the bullet and carved out all the other holes to match and chopped the bottom to match. I’ve never regretted it, because that C is perfectly in tune and a fantastic player, the veteran of decades of gigs.
I’m talking about Generations because I’m assuming you’re meaning whistles like those. Obviously higher-end whistles like Burkes and Sindts etc come perfectly in tune from the maker.
Well a sharp 4th (what would be a G on a D whistle) isn’t in tune with either, and that was the problem with that Generation C.
“Playing in tune” is situational. So, Mary Bergin is playing there along with a fretted instrument, which plays in Equal Temperament.
Her 3rds (say, F# if she’s playing a tune in D, or B if she’s playing a tune in G) will be in tune with her accompaniment if they’re at their ET places (either because the whistle is made that way, or she blows the whistle that way… with high whistles you can blow notes all over the place) and they won’t be in tune with her accompaniment if they’re at their Just Intonation places.
(I’m assuming that you mean Just Intonation when you say ‘just temperament’ which is an oxymoron.)
For the sorts of playing I do (with a guitar, and doing ‘legit’ gigs) I have to have everything ET. Were I ever to need JI I’d just throw a bit of tape on my F# and B… but in 35 years of playing I’ve never needed to do that.
Thank you pancelticpiper for a good an long answer. Sorry for my late response. I actually have two Generation whistles, but I’m not very found of them, and I find it hard to shift between the octaves.
I’m quite close to buy a higher-end whistle, it’s closing in for the right time for such now. I will look around on youtube and find a sound I like. But maybe I’ll buy a sweetheart rosewood low d first. http://www.sweetheartflute.com
I have the numbers if you wish to do your own analysis.
I tested 100. I took readings from the time a note was measurable to the time the note broke into chaos before entering the next register and recorded the median required to get to the next note without breaking into chaos.
I like chaos - I record where it begins .. that’s the “point of accumulation” for anyone with the theory under their belt.
On top of that I imported examples of every known maker as at 2006 - and tested them .. that’s while ago - there have been a few more makers doing pretty much the same stuff since then.
But, suffice to say - I measured the lot of them within 0.005 millimetres on every dimension without ultra-sounding the internal bores or windways. However, I do have such scans of historical flageolets and tabor-pipes.
The Generation whistle is statistically sharp on an average of 15 per-cent of a tone (over 100 samples - from low 0.5 to high 89.6 - on the most out-of-tune notes).
That does not depend on anyone’s breath-habit - the measure was done from a compressor-tank through a pressure measured hose - not my mouth.
The Feadog is almost exactly as sharp, except that they have stopped gluing the head on - which makes it marginally tunable.
I have tested no commercial toys called whistles that are not sharp on first play - and as they warm-up they become sharper.
I would be glad if any one here does the empirical testing to let me know if anything has changed in the world of commoditized musical toys since 2006.
But fear not - your considered ignorance is entertaining none the less - lets not spoil it with any truth huh?
Anyone here with a good joke?
Here;'s good one:
What happens to the tuning if you change the diameter of the tube?
What happens to it when you change it locally at increments of 1mm through the whole bore?
What happens when the slope of the "perturbation changes between square and sinusoidal profiles?
There’s a funny thing - let me know what you find - I have some data, but I haven’t gotten the whole spectrum of profiles done yet .. it makes a pretty graph .. happy to share with anyone who has genuine data.
But it’s a kinda funny thing to do - probably better to just larf.
Her’s another funny one:
Who here can tell me the undercut slope as driven by the tuning-slide gap?
Wow - that one makes me larf like mad - it can be gotten! .. but the origin and angle of the circle is very hard to fix .. it might not be a point-origin .. it might be a vector .. LOL!!! that makes me larf.
This world is such a funny place - I would not leave it if you paid me.
It’s an interesting experiment, and you’re not the first. But it doesn’t say much about the OP topic, for a number of reasons.
o “Cheap whistles” is not an analytic category, so averaging data over a set of whistles selected by price is meaningless. Measuring one particular whistle model, like the OP’s Clarke C, might be meaningful.
o Any whistle with a movable head is tunable, and that includes Generation, Feadóg, Waltons, Clare, Sweetone/Meg, Dixon Trad, Oak. And measuring without first tuning them to a consistent pitch standard is meaningless. If the methodology is to test them as delivered, then all that’s being measured is the maker’s assembly procedure in placing the heads on the tubes. And finding that the factory default is inconsistent or wrong (e.g. consistently sharp) is a trivial result. Like concluding that automobiles are defective because the seats and mirrors need to be adjusted before driving them.
The pressure/pitch slope is an empirical measure that’s meaningful only if the whistle is tuned. Otherwise you can produce median numbers that are as sharp or flat as you want them to be within the physical limits of the head placement on the tube.
o Using the average or median of the pressure/pitch curve (either axis) as the measure of the “actual” pitch of a note is something only a non-player would do. In practice, the sweet spot along the curve is entirely up to the player’s breath habit and his/her preferences for how the whistle sounds and responds. Tune low and play near the upper chaos boundary. Or tune high and play near the lower inception boundary. Or somewhere in between. And the sweet spot is a dynamic adjustment from note to note.
Blow like an air pump with a manometer attached - because you’re an air pump with a manometer attached - and you’re demonstrating a mechanical analogue of no real whistle performance ever.
Again:
This is a general, recurring issue. We’ve all seen/heard playing demos by makers of their own whistles. Whether the maker is a fine player or a more rudimentary whistler, you get a sense of the performance technique, for better or worse, that informs the design decisions behind the instrument. Not to say that a poor player (or even non-player) can’t end up creating a great whistle; there are examples of that, too. But in the absence of examples of your playing on your website or around the interwebs, most of us here will not know which you are. And a clip would be both interesting for your fans and customers, and perhaps inform your comments more effectively than the description of a methodologically ambiguous experiment. Especially if you can demo the impossibility of playing one of the cheap whistles at pitch.
