Brian Lee wrote:My experience has shown that in general, the thicker walled whistles, ie: wodden bodies (like O'Riordans, Rose and Greenwods) tend to voice the oxxooo quite well for Cnat. Thinner walled versions: Gens, Oaks, even an old Burke I used to play quite a bit tended to like the oxxxox version a bit more. Pat O. mentions in his owners manuals that the taller chimney height makes for more effective (and expressive) cross-fingerings. It does seem that there may be some truth to this. But I'd deffer to the experts to be sure.
Loren? How bout it ol' bean?
Yes, thicker walls (more chimney height to work with) helps, primarily because one can use undercutting of the tone holes to help adjust tuning, which helps with regards to having more options for tonehole placement, and sizing, which in turn can lead to better overall intonation of the scale through multiple octaves/registers.
With thin walled tube, you can't undercut toneholes at all, so you're much more limited in terms of where you can put the holes, and what sizes you can make them, leading to more compromises in tuning scale and the volume from note to note.
For those who say "my whistle X, Y and or Z's are all perfectly in tune" I'm going to have to disagree, and I suspect you haven't put them to a tuner. Regardless of what temperament a maker has chosen, few, if any whistles will have a perfect scale, I've not met one yet. My Abell is the closest, and I suspect it would sound "dead on" to many folks, but put to a tuner, it's scale compromises become evident.
One of the problems I think we see here on the message board, is that some whistles were truly meant to have certain notes sound much flatter than many of us are used to hearing. In other cases, a maker chooses a different cross fingering, and in still other cases, the whistles simply aren't designed or tuned by the maker as well as they could be. It's often difficult to sort that out, however in the end, one has to find an instrument one is happy with so, in getting back to the original question:
If one wants a truly "in tune" Cnat with volume equal to the other notes of the scale on their D whistle, then one is going to have to have either a dedicated additional thumb hole or keyed hole for that note. That is, unless one finds a whistle with a perfectly in tune cross fingered Cnat, that has other notes out of tune
Final options: Learn to live with it, or learn to half hole, or embrace the philosophy that the note is supposed to sound that way for particular types of music, and then play only that music
That said, of all the whistles I've actually put the test, the Abell has the most accurate scale, including the cross fingered Cnat, if we're talking equal temperament. This is hardly surprising, considering the maker's day job.
Loren
