vonallentx wrote:
I'm new to whistles and Trad music. It seems to me that whistles are tuned strangely. I don't understand the tuning.
I don't quite understand this.
I've been playing whistles over 40 years, and I currently have vintage Feadogs and Generations and newer Burkes, Goldies, and Albas, and I've owned whistles by many other makers, and they all play in Equal Temperament, or very close.
The differences between Just Intonation (JI) and Equal Temperament (ET) are subtle and within the range of pitch you can get by adjusting your blowing a tad.
The thing is, when you talk of JI you have to begin with what key you're talking about.
So let's say we're talking D. Well then the 3rd (F#) and the 6th (B) should be around 15 cents flat. If you have at ET whistle all you have to do is put a bit of tape on the upper edge of Hole 2 and Hole 5 and your ET whistle is now magically a JI whistle.
People forget that "playing in tune" is relative. If you're playing with an uilleann piper, well, if the chanter is "in tune" then it will be JI and if you play your ET F# and B against the JI F# and B of the chanter you'll be out of tune a tad.
But if you're playing with a guitarist, a banjo player, a pianist, or many other instruments you'll be in tune with them if you're in ET.
The fact is that you can hear an uilleann piper whose chanter is in tune to his drones, "in tune" the way a piper wants it, which is JI, and have that piper playing along with ET instruments such as fretted and keyboard instruments and it sounds just fine.
In like manner an a cappella choir, a brass ensemble, a string ensemble will all be adjusting their 3rds to their JI position to play "in tune" as an ensemble- the sharp ET 3rds would stand out as being "out of tune".
vonallentx wrote: If anyone has a suggestion for a High D that's tuned in ET, I'd appreciate it.
All of them? Pretty much?
True I've had some Generation D's where the F# was a mile flat, and I carved it out. A number of my Generations and Feadogs have been carved to some extent, though as a rule not transform a JI whistle into an ET whistle, but fix various irregularities of the scale.
I did receive one whistle which was purposely tuned JI, from Ronaldo Reyburn.
BTW being tuned JI isn't the only thing you'll want for playing in tune with an uilleann chanter, another is having high B sharper than low B. Burke whistles tend to have this quirk built in. As for having E in the 2nd octave flatter than E in the low octave, some whistles have that quirk too. (It all depends on the piper... some are very good at masking these tuning quirks, some not so much.)