Looking for New Whistle

[pancelticpiper]

Please excuse the newbie question, but I had assumed that whistles were tuned to Just Intonation as I understood that ITM was based around that tuning.
Are some whistles tuned to an ET scale then?

Several of my Low Whistles, for example an MK, a Goldie, a Burke, and who knows what else, came perfectly tuned to ET.

On my Goldie I can play from Bottom D up to B in the 2nd octave and the needle doesn't move, straight up the whole time.

Seems that on Generation D's the F# is usually flat, which is where you want it for JI. I've carved out the holes on most/all of my Generations to give a strict ET scale.

You can move the pitch of notes around quite a bit on whistles with your blowing, so anybody with a good ear can play an ET whistle JI if he chooses, or visa versa.

And playing "in tune" is situational. Playing along with an uilleann piper and you'll probably want to be JI. Playing along with fretted strings and you'll want to be ET.

The differences are small, and as I've said the difference between an ET whistle and a JI whistle is two pieces of tape (one for Hole 2, one for Hole 5). That's because the JI scale of D Major needs B and F# to be 15 cents flat of their ET positions. Cover the top 1/4 of the hole (more or less) and Bob's your Uncle.

The other notes are nearly the same, well within the variation imparted by blowing slightly differently.

Seems to me that the difference between JI and ET is more a matter of theory than practice. (A professional tuba player told me that 30 years ago but I didn't believe him at the time).

For the theory part, here's a D Major scale in JI with the differences from ET

D 0
E +4
F# -14
G -2
A +2
B -16
C# -10

So what if your whistle is tuned that way but you're playing a tune in B minor? Certainly you don't want the tonic to be 16 cents flat? That's why ET was invented.

[Tunborough]

... as long as it's in tune with itself ...

Is that a straightforward concept for a whistle ?

For me it is... needle straight up.

You can move the pitch of notes around quite a bit on whistles with your blowing

I've a high D whistle here on which I can blow XOOOOO (B) anywhere from A# needle-straight-up to 10 cents flat of C-nat, and XXOOOO (A) anywhere from G# needle-straight-up to 50 cents flat of A#. This is pretty typical of all the whistles I've tried it on.

Saying the needle is straight up the whole time doesn't mean much without the qualifier from david_h: "with a regular change in volume from note to note within each octave," and I would add, with a regular increase in air flow from note to note all the way up. I contend that your "regular change" might not be the same as someone else's.

[tin tin]

Interesting discussion, and I have to say I'm in the same camp as Peter and Richard...after quite a few detours and quests for 'the one' over the years. In the end, here I am heading over to the local session every week with a standard Feadog D, the one they had at the store, not a rare special one sprinkled with fairy dust (didn't even get to try it before buying it), and it does exactly what what a whistle should (and the intonation is spot on, too). That's not to say it's not fun to try a bunch of different whistles and that there aren't some nice ones out there at various prices, but after all that, I'm back playing the same brand of whistle as the first one that was given to me almost 20 years ago.

[Tunborough]

Seems to me that the difference between JI and ET is more a matter of theory than practice. (A professional tuba player told me that 30 years ago but I didn't believe him at the time).

I agree with you there. When young students of classical violin are taught intonation, the training amounts to JI, not ET.

[pancelticpiper]

I contend that your "regular change" might not be the same as someone else's.

For sure everyone blows a whistle differently.

The more you play a particular whistle the more you learn (consciously or no) how each note needs to be blown to be in tune.

Still, there's a more or less standard or normal progression on most whistles over the gamut from the bellnote to the higher notes in the 2nd octave which can be observed when playing hundreds of whistles from dozens of makers. I'm often in situations where I have to frequently switch whistles at gigs and I find it easier if all my whistles fall within normal parameters, so I don't have to tailor my blowing to fix the idiosyncrasies of each whistle.

For sure I've been at gigs where there are "reed men" (sax/clarinet/flute guys) who also have a bag of bamboo flutes and funky cheap whistles and what not, where these guys, having Perfect Pitch, can pick up anything and blow it exactly in tune. Sometimes after such gigs, if I try their whistles, I'm amazed at how poor they are, for example super-flat 2nd octaves and bad scales. Such stuff isn't even noticed by these guys. They hear the precise pitch in their mind and it comes out of the horn regardless.

I've told the story of my old college professor who was an expert player of various Baroque and Renaissance woodwinds. He told us how he decided to make his own flute, but he was flummoxed as to where to put the fingerholes, because wherever he placed them he got the same scale.

The opposite, I suppose, is somebody who plays one certain whistle all the time which happens to have a faulty scale and they've developed over time a certain way of blowing it that overcomes the problems. Such a person might pick up a nicely in-tune instrument and blow it out of tune, from habit.