Fipple inside tube: blow whistle without any part in mouth?

[David Cooper]

When experimenting with fipples attached to quenas, I also experimented with putting the fipple inside the top of a tube, primarily because I want to make these out of epoxy and don't want the player to suck it (even though I'll be using food safe epoxy). Is such a thing already in use on any whistle, and if so, does it have a name? If it's not a new idea, perhaps it's not used widely due to patents, but it would be a much more hygienic design, and it works fine. One other big advantage would be for people who produce excess saliva and struggle to keep it out of the instrument - this would catch it and not send it through the windway.

[plunk111]

Not sure what you mean… Can you post a diagram or better explanation?

Pat

[David Cooper]

I've drawn a diagram, but find no way to post that here, so that's no use. However, if you picture the following as a side-on view of a tube...

________________________



________________________


...then I can build the fipple into the top of it thus:-

________________________
___________________


________________________

Because leading spaces just disappear, your're going to have to imagine blowing into the tube from the right. The air gets stuck at the left end of it and swirls back, then finds its way into the fipple at the top (back at the right end), then it travels left through the windway and loses most of its turbulance, ending up coming out of the top-left end as a steady stream that can be directed at the wedge.

[Terry McGee]

If you then closed over the RH end, apart from providing a small blow tube through that, you'd essentially have the English Flageolet blowing arrangement. Bainbridge patented that in 1810, so we can be confident that the patent is up! (Nobody seemed to pay much attention to patents back then anyway. They were mostly done as promotional tools in a very crowded market.)

The claimed benefit for the windcap approach was to reduce the amount of moisture entering (and therefore possibly blocking) the windway, especially if some sea sponge was used to line the windcap.

The term fipple confused me in your description. I take the Fipple as the plug in the end of the whistle that forms the Windway above it, not the Windway itself. But hey, I'm a flute maker. We have Stoppers.

With your arrangement, do you put the whole thing in your mouth, or press it up to your lips to blow into it?

[David Cooper]

I must have misunderstood what a fipple is then, but I'm only a flutemaker (and one that doesn't even have stoppers). I like the idea though of making my quenas convertable into whistles for people who have trouble blowing a quena, and that matters as I'm focus on making inexpensive quenillas in C and (high) D for children who will want them primarily because of the connection to a book that I've nearly finished writing, so I want to be sure they can get a note out of them. The way to blow into the whistle attachment would look more like playing a brass instrument, but without all the raspberry blowing. It may be more stable having part of the instrument clamped between your teeth, but flutes work fine without that added support, and this arrangement is more stable than that.

Another thing I'm about to start experimenting with is making the flutes in three sections held together by neodymium magnets with silicone seals so that they can be dismantled and put in a small pocket. This could also allow tuning adjustment by adding in or removing spacers. Hopefully that hasn't been patented yet, but by mentioning it here it should blow a hole in anyone else's attempt to patent it if it hasn't. Another possibility is to replace the middle third with a longer or shorter one to take the instrument up or down a whole semitone - it's those holes in the middle section that go most out of tune when you adjust the spacings, while the lowest four notes are less critical.

[Tunborough]

I must have misunderstood what a fipple is then

Well, what exactly a fipple is is open to debate.

The label "fipple flute" is frequently applied to members of the subgroup but there is no general agreement about the structural detail of the sound-producing mechanism that constitutes the fipple, itself.

You can use the [ code ] tag to turn off the space suppression when building ASCII diagrams. Is this what you had in mind, where FFF is the fipple block?

Code: Select all

    -----------------------------            .-------------------
==>                                         /____________________
==>          FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
==>          FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
    -------------------------------------------------------------

Note the problem: the tube downstream of the window must be thicker than the tube upstream of the window, to make sure the windway points at the splitting edge, not under it. This, for example, won't work:

Code: Select all

    -----------------------------            .-------------------
    ____________________________|           /____________________
==>
==>          FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
==>          FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
    -------------------------------------------------------------

[David Cooper]

Ah - I was looking for something like that for displaying code, but didn't recognise the icon. Let me have another go at a diagram:-

Code: Select all

                    ______________________________           __________________________...
                    |        _____________________ --->     /__________________________...
                    |                             |
                                                  |
               ----------------------->           |
                                                  |
                    |                             |
                    |_____________________________|____________________________________...
                     

So, you blow into the main chamber (long arrow), then the air swirls back and finds its way into the windway at the top, eventually coming out where the small arrow is, and that would be directed at the wedge, obviously hitting it at the best height to produce nice notes. I did my experiments with a tube about an inch and a half long, and that worked fine when held in the right place relative to the wedge.

[Terry McGee]

I wonder if the "capacity" (capacitance?) of the space you are blowing in to might slow the response of the instrument? Which might be an issue when you want to give a brief pulse of pressure to jump up to notes high in the second octave without them becoming too strident. If you sensed that might be happening you could test the theory by bunging something like a cork into the cavity.

And I wonder if filling the cavity with something like sea sponge (as they used inside the windcap of flageolets) might reduce the apparent capacity while absorbing some of the moisture from the breath? (See diagram below. oooo = sea sponge.)

And would a little mouthpiece (also shown below) assist locating the instruments at the lips?

Code: Select all

                    ______________________________           __________________________...
                    |        _____________________ --->     /__________________________...
                ____|         oooooooooooooooooooo|
                              oooooooooooooooooooo|
               ----------------------->           |
                ____          oooooooooooooooooooo|
                    |         oooooooooooooooooooo|
                    |_____________________________|____________________________________...
                     

We harpsichord makers used to poke fun at the big modern companies for over-framing their instruments, sacrificing volume, tone and crispness for hopefully improved tuning stability. "Go on like that and you'll invent the piano", we jibed. Go on like I'm suggesting above and you might invent the flageolet!

[David Cooper]

I wonder if the "capacity" (capacitance?) of the space you are blowing in to might slow the response of the instrument? Which might be an issue when you want to give a brief pulse of pressure to jump up to notes high in the second octave without them becoming too strident. If you sensed that might be happening you could test the theory by bunging something like a cork into the cavity.

That's a very good point. It isn't important to have a long cavity - the length in the diagram is dictated by the length of the windway, but it can be almost entirely filled, either by having a hard barrier or a sponge for people who produce a lot of slobber.

And would a little mouthpiece (also shown below) assist locating the instruments at the lips?

I'd want to avoid that as I'm using epoxy to make the instruments, and even though it's a food-safe type (the brand is Craft Resin), it's best if people don't stick any of it into themselves. (I've designed out the rounded far end for the same reason.) The lips will push slightly into the opening well enough just like with a brass instrument.

Go on like I'm suggesting above and you might invent the flageolet!

Well, it would be good to bring history to life with this. The main aim isn't to create the perfect whistle though as it's more about easing the transition to a flute. It's also about a bit of bling: I'm now embedding holographic film in the epoxy.

[RoberTunes]

This is a very interesting topic, and I see that some whistle makers/designers have attempted a few things and found some obvious big "simply won't work" ideas or some variations that might help.

After playing some cheapy whistles, including the previously popular Clarke Original with the Jet Propulsion Laboratories wind tunnel as a windway, and a few other brands of cheaper whistles,
then experiencing much better whistles, I've wondered if
1) some variation around the windway could make the use of air MUCH more efficient, and one idea was to make 100% or most of the air
go into the tube as part of what produces sound and a vibrating air column. That would increase volume and probably the range of expressiveness and tone colour. I
know that by putting all the air into the tube the question arises of "how does the blade split the airstream to induce a vibrating air column?". Whistles do have the open-ended
tube bottom, so there is a passage available for air to exit, but the problem remains of how to induce sound. Perhaps it's possible, perhaps not. The introduction of an additional vibrating object might be necessary,
like a reed or something, which might then produce a clarinet-like object instead of a whistle?
2) another idea was to drop the position of the blade a little lower into the tube, perhaps 10% to 25% down towards the centre of the bore, but leaving lots of room for the air to
enter and flow. Obviously the instrument needs to be highly responsive, but I've NEVER seen a blade in any position except at the top of the bore, basically cut into the existing wall of the tube. Is that something
that has no options? Maybe this idea could be combined with the next idea >>>
3) another idea was to move the position of either the windway or angle of the air leaving the windway and it's approach to the blade, either aiming a little up or down into the tube, to help
make as much air flow as possible turn into vibrating air column, volume and expressive control options. I know from playing both silver concert flutes and many wooden flutes, First Nations flutes, whistles and even taking
a shot at playing the somewhat difficult shakuhachi, that the angle of air approaching the blade, with the blade still cut into the wall of the instrument as usual, can make a difference in responsiveness.

I've got to think that the cheap whistles are missing the boat on some of these ideas, their marketplace standardization will prevent any experimentation, corporate watercooler smugness being what it is.
Experimentation would probably find some variations that improved the whistle response. Taking a wild guess,
I'd suspect that minor variations of the blade and air flow could still be improved, or let's say, "adjusted" while still keeping it a "whistle", and a better-playing whistle, or perhaps just for adding to your
WOAD supply of instruments for something different, a little extra spice available?

[paddler]

Your idea seems to me to be almost exactly how Native American flutes work, with their "slow air chamber" that is separated from the "sound chamber" by a "plug" with a "flue" or windway above it.

There are some pictures here:

https://www.flutopedia.com/anatomy.htm

[David Cooper]

Your idea seems to me to be almost exactly how Native American flutes work, with their "slow air chamber" that is separated from the "sound chamber" by a "plug" with a "flue" or windway above it.

There are some pictures here:

https://www.flutopedia.com/anatomy.htm

Thanks for pointing me to what is a very interesting page: it shows me the kinds of things I should experiment with to get the best out of those variables, such as the shape of the ramp leading to the windway which affects the turbulance inside the windway. The biggest difference is that the windway in those flutes starts beyond the slow air chamber, while I have the windway entrance at the front end of the slow air chamber and also intend to eliminate most of the slow air chamber by filling it, but I'll still need to minimise turbulance in the windway, so shaping the blockage the right way may make a difference, although lengthening the windway may reduce the turbulance there. The space in a whistle player's mouth is also a kind of slow air chamber, and the turbulance must be affected by how far you stick the pointy end into your mouth (the part I thought was called a fipple) or the angle of the instrument - I've just tried turning the whistle to point it sideways so that the air has to make a 90° turn on the way into the windway and it doesn't appear to spoil the tone quality, so any gains from trying to control turbulence on the way into the windway are likely marginal.

It's particularly interesting to see the inverted wedge. When you look at the video of the recorder wedge with the air from the windway mostly being directed out of the recorder there, the NA flute must do the opposite, sending most of the moist air into the tube instead of out of it.

I also notice that the part referred to as a fipple in the Native American flute is the wedge, which would mean that all flutes have a fipple when that interpretation of the word is used. The variation in meaning of all these technical names is very confusing.