I don’t think so, Richard. Knowing Mitch as an online friend, I think the experiment is sincere despite the eccentric verbiage. The results are not applicable to the question at hand, but could be useful in other ways. For example, whistles with relatively small pressure-range and pitch-rise curves across their compass, and comparable pressure from note to adjacent note, could be (theoretically) easier for beginners to play in tune, but may be less expressive for more advanced players.
As I read Mitch’s post (something I usually avoid), the “median” he measured was over the sample of 100 whistles, not the pitch between lowest and highest for a given note. It isn’t clear to me what measured pitch he’s comparing to the standard D5 = 587.3 Hz to say that the whistles are “statistically sharp”. If he’s comparing the maximum possible pitch of each note, well of course that’s going to be sharp of the intended playing pitch. How much sharper will depend on how the player chooses to play the whistle.
There’s also the issue of the air properties. Air from a compressor or bellows is likely to be at ambient temperature and humidity, and about 400 ppm CO2. Air we blow through a whistle will be significantly warmer, closer to 100% R.H., and closer to 40,000 or 50,000 ppm CO2.
A model of air properties applied to one particular high D whistle suggests it will play:
- 17 cents sharper at 27 C than at 22 C.
- 11 cents sharper at 100% R.H. than at 0%.
- 16 cents flatter at 40,000 ppm CO2 than at 400 ppm.
To some extent, these effects cancel out, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a compressor playing a whistle 10 cents flatter than I do.
Ah yes I didn’t pay attention to that, which I think is true. It’s why Burkes are so great for studio musicians, especially what are called ‘doublers’ in the industry: the various notes just pop out right at pitch. The 2nd register is especially good that way.
But, compared to, say, an Overton, on a Burke there’s a very narrow window of pressure that the note will sound in. On an Overton there’s a vast amount of room above and below 2nd octave notes… you can back off till 2nd octave notes are whisper-soft and a mile flat and they still stay up there in the 2nd octave. On a Burke they just fall down to the low octave if you back off even a little.
About that post above, the stuff I thought was not intended to be taken seriously was the stuff about Generations and other tunable whistles being ‘statistically sharp’. Pull out the heads, and they’ll all be statistically flat.
About that post above, the stuff I thought was not intended to be taken seriously was the stuff about Generations and other tunable whistles being ‘statistically sharp’. Pull out the heads, and they’ll all be statistically flat.
I think the point is that as delivered Generations are sharp (based on my limited personal experience and what I have read over the years - i.e. not a scientific opinion) , and while they can be tuned with some effort they should not be considered tunable as delivered. I say this because the heads are firmly attached to the bodies and tuning typically involves hot water - http://www.chiffandfipple.com/tweak.html - or a somewhat scary physical process involving an O’Riordan whistle and its owner (who we’ll refer to as JM) in which the O’Riordan whistle body is used as a sliding hammer to free the head of the Gen. And so I further believe (with little evidence) that most Gens out there are not tunable, that is a normal human could not grab the head with one hand and the body with other and tune the thing and that many owners of said whistles are often unaware that their whistle could be tuned and would probably somewhat horrified to watch someone doing it for them (personal experience, not my whistle, but my ears were grateful for the rest of workshop week).
Also worth noting that in the amazing playing of Mary Bergin linked to previously she is playing an Eb Gen whistle and it sounds quite sharp to my ears, to a couple of tuner apps and if I run RTTATuner (iOS app) it suggests the playing is about 30 cents sharp of A440. Guess Alec Finn didn’t just blindly tune his instrument to some electronic gizmo calibrated to A440
And… following a link on the Mary Bergin youtube page I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcZCM2EtGuA - also an Eb Gen and a bit sharper, more than 30 cents sharp.
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.
I will only address Generation whistles - due to more experience with them
Going backwards
- seats and mirrors have reasonably obvious adjust mechanisms, are expected to have such adjustments, the car comes with a manual that outlines how the adjustment is done, and the adjustment is not physically locked in place requiring knowledge from an expert or an internet search to learn that it is possible and how to do it without (hopefully) harming the seat or mirror.
- imagine your mirror came glued in one position and the advice is to either hit it with a rubber mallet on the top left corner or to pour hot but not boiling water over it and then push into position - but please don’t burn yourself!
- as to measurements it is perfectly valid to measure something as delivered even if it is adjustable. Mirrors and seats are a bad example - there is no reasonable one correct setting or even a good starting point. If you are measuring a Burke you should adjust before measuring, if your are measuring a one piece whistle you obviously can only test as supplied, if you are measuring a Generation whose head requires extraordinary effort to move I think you should treat as a one piece whistle and measure as supplied and then perhaps release the head and remeasure - but you now have (IMO) a tweaked whistle.
As I pushed the submit I realized I could of just said:
Any whistle with a movable head is tunable
In the case of a Gen I don’t think that as delivered the head is movable - everything else follows from this
As to the others I do not have enough knowledge to comment
At least an Eb can sound like this
A GenD is a different beast - and I don’t think its the luck of draw with the head, I have a couple of D bodies, an Eb body and the heads that came with them - a broken Eb head prompted mixing and matching, I consistently preferred the Eb whistle, sweeter sound and different tuning relative to itself and perhaps a bit more responsive.
I don’t remember checking the tunings carefully (measuring or prolonged playing with others) and it probably should be mentioned that these were older style Gens - I don’t believe the tubes have changed, please correct me if i’m wrong about this
I get the point about Generations coming with the heads glued on, but for many years, a half-century at least, Irish musicians have bought them and unglued them and adjusted them and played them in tune.
If a newbie whistleplayer is defeated by the factory glue on a Generation, heaven help them if they take up the pipes! The expectation that an instrument should be on pitch as it comes out of the box would be regarded as ridiculous by pipers (or indeed by string players). From my very beginning as a whistleplayer I accepted the fact that to make the Generations and Clarkes (the only whistles available in the 1970s) playable I would have to unglue and pack the heads, and carve the toneholes, of the Generations and alter the windways of the Clarkes.
Yes one would think that at the Generation factory they would figure out where the heads needed to be for Concert Pitch and glue them there, or better yet not glue them at all. It’s not rocket science.
About Mary Bergin, I would think that when she’s playing solo she has her whistles adjusted to their maximum ‘sweet spot’ but that she would, as a matter of course, adjust them to be in tune with any group she were to play with. I used to hear this all the time, back in the 70s and 80s, with Irish fluteplayers. Any Irish guy who I would hand my flute to would immediately push the headjoint all the way in and rotate the foot so that those pesky keys were out of the way. They wanted the increased brightness and ease of play from the shorter scale length, and didn’t care much about their pitch.
About Generation Eb’s playing better than D’s, many years ago an old-timer pointed out that Generation D’s were the only Generations to not have specialized dedicated heads and tubing, but in fact were simply stretched Eb’s. His opinion was that the D’s weren’t in the original Generation stable and were back-engineered when a demand for D whistles emerged, and that the D’s were the poorest of all the Generation sizes. As I recall his opinion was that Generations originally were offered in soprano/alto pairs Bb/Eb and C/F. I have no idea if this theory is true.
If Generations have a ‘sweet spot’ that is sharp of A440, isn’t that the same as saying they are designed to play sharp?
Rather than a ‘sweet spot’, I think something else is happening …
An instrument that is a hair sharp of everybody else is going to sound “brighter” and cut through better. If you’re manufacturing a musical instrument, it stands to reason that you want it to stand out. If tuning it sharp is what it takes, well, … that’s what it takes.
ummmm… I’d say yes
Rather than a ‘sweet spot’, I think something else is happening …
[quote=“pancelticpiper”]
They wanted the increased brightness
[/quote]An instrument that is a hair sharp of everybody else is going to sound “brighter” and cut through better. If you’re manufacturing a musical instrument, it stands to reason that you want it to stand out. If tuning it sharp is what it takes, well, … that’s what it takes.
30cents or so is not a hair sharp its closer to ‘WT… key are they playing in?’
Hmmm. Point taken.