Chiff and Fipple Forums

Is there a subforum here (or elsewhere) to discuss the design and building of whistles? I have found lots of nice resources online, but not a discussion forum...

The information you seek may be in here somewhere... I'd check out the whistle forum topics and search Making Whistles, Whistle Plans, etc.

I'd say you're welcome to have at it right here. That's what we do when we've something to say about making whistles. The non-making whistle players are sufficiently curious, or at least sufficiently polite, to tolerate the technicalities.

Ok; thanks for the replies. If I get to actually making one and have some questions I'll post here. :-)

The only forum I know of is the Yahoo flutemakers list. It doesn't get much traffic, plus that's mostly transverse flutes, but I've gotten some good answers to my questions there.

clepsydrae wrote:Is there a subforum here (or elsewhere) to discuss the design and building of whistles? I have found lots of nice resources online, but not a discussion forum...

We're in the same city - do we perhaps know each other already? I'm building whistles and would be happy to share some experimental observations with you. I am one of the three hosts of Shawn's session on Wednesday.

MadmanWithaWhistle wrote:We're in the same city - do we perhaps know each other already? I'm building whistles and would be happy to share some experimental observations with you. I am one of the three hosts of Shawn's session on Wednesday.

Thanks! Are you in Seattle? I'm up in Bellingham... it'd probably be premature to talk shop at this point for me... I've been casting around trying to read up on the details a bit, but I'm not about to start working on one. I've been thinking about making a low Bb, i.e. a step under a low C...

clepsydrae wrote:... I've been casting around trying to read up on the details a bit, but I'm not about to start working on one. I've been thinking about making a low Bb, i.e. a step under a low C...

You might check Guido Gonzato's web site where he gives pretty comprehensive directions for making pvc whistles. Much cheaper way to learn that messing up wood or metal...

Best wishes.

Steve

Thank you -- I am hip to that site. I also have Bart Hopkin's excellent Musical Instrument Design which has a small section on fipples and tone holes and the like.

busterbill wrote:The information you seek may be in here somewhere... I'd check out the whistle forum topics and search Making Whistles, Whistle Plans, etc.

Also search on 'flutomat', 'TWCalc', 'TWJCalc' 'Whistle Calculator'. There are several of these application and the names of such may act markers for the discussion threads you want to find.....

DrPhill wrote:Also search on 'flutomat', 'TWCalc', 'TWJCalc' 'Whistle Calculator'. There are several of these application and the names of such may act markers for the discussion threads you want to find.....

I've found most of those tools are outdated or unsupported now. The only two I could get to work reliably are Hans Bracker's web app, and RTTA tuner via the app store.

MadmanWithaWhistle wrote:

DrPhill wrote:Also search on 'flutomat', 'TWCalc', 'TWJCalc' 'Whistle Calculator'. There are several of these application and the names of such may act markers for the discussion threads you want to find.....

I've found most of those tools are outdated or unsupported now. The only two I could get to work reliably are Hans Bracker's web app, and RTTA tuner via the app store.

Hmmm... I wrote TWJCalc. You can download it here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/twjcal ... r/download. I will try to support it, but it is a long time since I wrote it, so I may not remember much. The source code is there too if you want to juggle some Java.

DrPhill wrote:

MadmanWithaWhistle wrote:

DrPhill wrote:Also search on 'flutomat', 'TWCalc', 'TWJCalc' 'Whistle Calculator'. There are several of these application and the names of such may act markers for the discussion threads you want to find.....

I've found most of those tools are outdated or unsupported now. The only two I could get to work reliably are Hans Bracker's web app, and RTTA tuner via the app store.

Hmmm... I wrote TWJCalc. You can download it here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/twjcal ... r/download. I will try to support it, but it is a long time since I wrote it, so I may not remember much. The source code is there too if you want to juggle some Java.

Returns inaccurate results on Windows 10, I'm afraid. I think I sent you an email about it; but that might have been to the fellow from Flutini. I can't recall, but just for discussion purposes I can verify Hans Bracker's tool is pretty good at ballparking the tonehole layout. I used a CNC router to carve the holes, played it, used Hans's built-in cents adjustment to add/subtract by the amount off, and the second tube worked perfect. Not bad for only two tries!

MadmanWithaWhistle wrote:.....Returns inaccurate results on Windows 10, I'm afraid. I think I sent you an email about it; but that might have been to the fellow from Flutini. I can't recall, but just for discussion purposes I can verify Hans Bracker's tool is pretty good at ballparking the tonehole layout. I used a CNC router to carve the holes, played it, used Hans's built-in cents adjustment to add/subtract by the amount off, and the second tube worked perfect. Not bad for only two tries!

Ah well, thats life! Hans and I use the same underlying algorithm (or we did when we were chatting about it back in the day, he may have moved on). I really only ported Daniel Bingamons code to Java, and do not understand the math. I initially wrote the app to visualise what happened to tone hole placement/size as various parameters changed. I made some whistles using it, but only ever viewed it as an aproximation. As for using it to directly specify dimensions to CNC or 3DP, it does not surpriseme that it is lacking. Hans has probably been fiddling with the algorithm in his online version to make it work - since he makes very fine whistles he can match the calculator to reality in a way that I cannot.

FWIW you can specify the code used used to perform the actual calculations if you know what you want in javaScript, but you would need to go deeper into the algorithm than I ever did.

I'll put in a plug for WIDesigner, wind instrument design software. Among other strengths, WIDesigner can deal with notes in both octaves, cross-fingered notes, and tapered bores. See About WIDesigner for more information.