Blowing machine

[Mr.Gumby]

The old Clarkes were in C, and it seems that they only branched out into D not that long ago. Do we know when?

If you look at Dannatt's book and old catalogues, there are plenty of indications Clarkes were avalalable in multiple keys at different points in time. I have an old Clarke D myself snd several 'Clarke type' ones in other keys, E was not uncommon, for example .

Pitch standards in Ireland were variable enough, depending on instruments available. The old concertina players landed in C, often, for example.

[Terry McGee]

Ah, interesting. I'm pretty sure I never saw them out here in Australia, although the C Clarkes were common enough. Certainly never saw an E in any whistle! I wonder who would want one of those?

Generation was the ubiquitous whistle of my younger days, displayed on their cards in music shops everywhere. Some older players had Hohners, but I don't ever remember seeing them on sale.

Any other keys that people can remember from earlier times? And any idea who used them?

[Mr.Gumby]

Some older players had Hohners, but I don't ever remember seeing them on sale.

The Hohners were a thing of the 1970s, weren't they? I wouldn't associate them with 'older players' anyway. I bought one in Walton's in Dublin in 1979. They had a full range of them. Never thought of it as a particularly playable instrument. Mine was a low G, as low as I ever went. I never had any interest in low whistles. That Hohner stood in a vase unused, until I gave it away by the later nineties.

Certainly never saw an E in any whistle!

Pitch standards can be an issue, a lot of old whistles but not all, are a semi-tone off the pitch indicated on them. Perhaps in some time and place the Es were meant to be Fs?

Other than that, I imagine E is a good whistle key in an environment where fiddlers (or others) like to play in A a lot.

[Terry McGee]

Ah, you may well be right about the Hohners. I might be thinking of earlier whistles that resemble them? The whistles I remember were all-metal (silvery in colour, but I don't know what metal), cylindrical with a formed metal head, lower than D (maybe around Bb?), and sometimes were accused of having lead as the floor of the windway. I thought they might be German made, but that could be wrong. I never owned one, nor did anyone around Canberra to my knowledge. They seemed to be more associated with Sydney and Melbourne musicians, usually considerably older than me.

[Mr.Gumby]

I might be thinking of earlier whistles that resemble them?

Most likely, dozens of different brands of that type were around, including Generation.

[Moof]

You might find some of them here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tinwhistle/com ... um_room_1/

https://www.reddit.com/r/tinwhistle/com ... um_room_2/

[Terry McGee]

Wow, that is a great resource, Moof. Note to others, make sure to scroll down in each link, the best bits are further down!

The Hohner whistles most resemble those in my memories. Intriguing to see some early flute makers names in there:
- Potter, a low whistle version of their typical boxwood flute as per their 1785 patent, http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/PottersGerm ... Patent.htm
- Barnett Samuel (B&S) Dulcet, with their usual logo, the musical triangle with beater.
- Wallis. We've seen his name before, associated with the wooden English Flageolet, but here associated with metal whistles.

Note on the Potter (near the bottom of Room 1), it looks like you blow into the ivory button on the side of the head, not through the end. So it looks like you are playing the flute!

This all reminds me that we need further exploration into the history of the whistle. Perhaps we could knock that off in the afternoon of the morning where we crack the acoustics?

[Terry McGee]

Some eons back, I wondered in these columns what would happen if you made a "slightly tapered" whistle by joining a few pieces of telescopic brass tubing together. Pretty much the same as the brass instrument in this image, but with a more typically modern head:



So, finally got around to trying it. And can report it seems to work OK, but I'm not immediately seeing any dramatic benefits acoustically. It still sounds pretty bright, like a cylindrical whistle, rather than a tapered wooden whistle. Might be a little less shrill and a bit more easily controlled in the upper second octave area, but not impressively so. I'll play with it a bit more to see if I can come to any firmer conclusions.

Perhaps its clearest potential benefit is stealth. Pulled apart and stuffed in a pocket, nobody could suspect me of being The Phantom Busker.

"I think he went that way, Officer. I hope you catch the brigand..."

[Moof]

I'd love a telescoping whistle. I have a plastic three-part low D, but even with slide grease or silicone spray, it's quite hard to get the pieces to separate. It's useful for trips away because it'll go in a small bag, but I couldn't just whip it out quickly and start playing, I need Marigolds to get enough grip.

A three-part high whistle where you could rotate the barrel to slightly offset one group of tone holes would be great, as they're so small and fiddly that my fingers seem to get in the way of one other. Basically I don't practise enough (the upper notes on a high D give me cross-eyed headache), but some of the jigs and hornpipes just don't fly on low whistle. A telescoping brass Bb would an excellent thing for solo playing.

[Tunborough]

I don't think a telescoping body made of thin-wall brass tubing would introduce enough of a taper to make a whole lot of difference in the tuning. You might get a bit more of an impact if you made a section at the head end out of narrower tubing, with the rest of the body cylindrical. But that wouldn't give you much scope for telescoping.

A telescoping body with thicker-walled sections would have more of an impact on the tuning. Not sure how the narrowing steps would affect the sound.

I once heard from a fellow who was making didgeridoos from nesting sections of PVC tubing.

[Terry McGee]

I'd love a telescoping whistle. I have a plastic three-part low D, but even with slide grease or silicone spray, it's quite hard to get the pieces to separate. It's useful for trips away because it'll go in a small bag, but I couldn't just whip it out quickly and start playing, I need Marigolds to get enough grip.

A three-part high whistle where you could rotate the barrel to slightly offset one group of tone holes would be great, as they're so small and fiddly that my fingers seem to get in the way of one other. Basically I don't practise enough (the upper notes on a high D give me cross-eyed headache), but some of the jigs and hornpipes just don't fly on low whistle. A telescoping brass Bb would an excellent thing for solo playing.

The danger with a telescoping whistle would be ensuring you could get it apart again. Just tried fully telescoping mine, and had to resort to pushing a pencil up inside to push the smaller tubes back out. But you could probably work out ways of getting around that. Telescoping them will also scuff up the outside finish a bit over time, but hey, who wants to look like a newbie whistle player? Scuffed brass is traditional!

[Terry McGee]

I don't think a telescoping body made of thin-wall brass tubing would introduce enough of a taper to make a whole lot of difference in the tuning.

That was part of the experiment. Interestingly, a trendline down the graph of the stepped bore is slightly steeper than some of the Mild tapered bores people have reported (eg on Carbony). But nothing like the Bold tapers such as Clarkes.

You might get a bit more of an impact if you made a section at the head end out of narrower tubing, with the rest of the body cylindrical. But that wouldn't give you much scope for telescoping.

My experience so far of that approach is that it tends to make the whistle sound brighter, which is not the direction I want to go.

A telescoping body with thicker-walled sections would have more of an impact on the tuning. Not sure how the narrowing steps would affect the sound.

Yeah, I can feel that experiment shadowing me around the workshop....

I once heard from a fellow who was making didgeridoos from nesting sections of PVC tubing.

Yeah, we had a spate of that some years back too. It was pretty impressive - one chap had used thickwalled white plastic Pressure tubing in nesting sections. In dark marker pen, he'd marked along the white tube the location of the notes he was likely to need. So when we switched from say Am to G to D in a set, he switched his drone note to suit. It was great as a novelty, but became a bit wearing after a while! The usual tweets, toots, scrapes, twangs, bongs, plus Blaaaahhhht.....

[Terry McGee]

Oops, silly me! (I sometimes wonder if Napoleon might have coined that phrase after ordering his troops to mark on Moscow?)

Just noticed that I had used three pieces of tubing:
- 13.5mm bore from head to above first hole
- 12.7mm bore through the left hand stopping between the hands
- 11.9mm bore for the right hand and rest
whereas I had had in mind to have a fourth piece of 11.1mm tubing from the last hole to the end.

So I went down, cut about 25mm off and poked it up there, but found it flattened the low D too much. Aha, I thought (I'm doing better than Napoleon already!), is it like on the flute, where we typically end up with a slight flare? So I cut off about 10mm, and poked it up to just below the bottom of the last hole. So now it looks like:
- 13.5mm bore from head to above first hole
- 12.7mm bore through the left hand stopping between the hands
- 11.9mm bore for the right hand
- 11.1mm bore from the last hole for about 10mm, then back to
- 11.9mm to the end.

Tuning improved, and the bottom D sounded more authoritative.

Had a quick play around with retuning the LH and RH notes as groups, moving their tubes in relation with the rest of the whistle. Suddenly reminded of Boehm's enigmatic comment about making a flute with "movable holes" when working out his Schema for hole placement. So, I think the stepped bore approach is capable of telling us something.

I also noticed that I'd left the finger holes a bit rough, so gave the whistle a quick run on the buffing wheel. That seemed to calm down some of the sizzle. The whistle now sounds a little smoother than it's big brother, the Highly Tweaked Soodlums Mellow D, which has the 13.5mm bore all the way.

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh, speaking of stealth, I'm reminded of this:

Regarding a sign in a show window reading, “Flute for sale. Easily concealed”:

“Why, although this seems at first sight so strange, does it also seem so appropriate? It is because the flute is terrible, mysterious and primitive… the marvellous thin pipings of the flute are a link with older things - with a fearful ecstasy of melody in the first dawn. . . Of all musicians, flautists are most obviously the ones who know something we don’t know… The goat eyed, the devious flute player moves softly among us, none can see the flute he carries. He walks past unsuspecting doormen, into public assemblies, into restaurants and parties - into churches, even. He nods and smiles, he talks to other people, to us. He does not reveal that he is a flute-player. For there have been rumours - a pubful of people in Croydon discovered in a trance, from which they have never emerged, a bus that simply disappeared across fields, a whispered story of platelayers found sobbing in a tunnel, of thin high music disappearing into a cave, of men discovered with a look in their eyes like that of Mole in The Wind in the Willows, after he saw Pan…”

--Paul Jennings, “Flautists Flaunt Afflatus”

Afflatus, noun, FORMAL. A divine creative impulse or inspiration. Hmmm, now we know what's driving us, perhaps we could look for a cure?

[stringbed]

I stumbled across this the other day:

https://tinyurl.com/bdew69aw

I haven't seen one with a mouthpiece quite like that before. The body does appear to have a slightly conical bore, but I don't know what the 3 stamped on it means. It looks as if the damaged joint might leak a lot of air, so it's an interesting but probably not functional whistle.

This whistle is now in my hands. A transient seal was easily placed on on the leak and it is fully functional. I’ll be starting a separate discussion about it in the next day or two.