Chiff and Fipple Forums

Hello, I’m looking for affordable high d whistles with some reasonable back pressure. I’m on a nickel generation and have a faedog pro coming. On this specific gen I need to like barely let air out my mouth to get the low notes to sound without flipping and they are prty shaky when they do sound. I’m coming from the bagpipes so blowing dosent translate here lol. Are all whistles like that? where you practically don’t blow the bottom notes, you just sigh them out? So I just need to get used to it? XD thank you so much! Any advice help or recommendations!

A Susato "Kildare" might fit the bill. Or maybe the new "Cobre" from kerrywhistles.com. If you wanna spend a little more, maybe a high D from Colin Goldie (oops, I missed the requirement "affordable" - in that case, a Susato "Oriole" would fit the bill).

Great thanks so much will look into your recommendations!

Grippa22 wrote:Hello, I’m looking for affordable high d whistles with some reasonable back pressure. I’m on a nickel generation and have a faedog pro coming. On this specific gen I need to like barely let air out my mouth to get the low notes to sound without flipping and they are prty shaky when they do sound. I’m coming from the bagpipes so blowing dosent translate here lol. Are all whistles like that? where you practically don’t blow the bottom notes, you just sigh them out? So I just need to get used to it? XD thank you so much! Any advice help or recommendations!

The answer to "Are all whistles like that?" is yes. There is really very little difference between whistles on those notes.

You simply need to get used to it and develop the breath control. Practice is everything and I'm sure you'll get it pretty quickly.

Not true. They're not all like that. Only the traditional whistles like Generations, Feádogs, Oaks, etc. behave like that. There are many, many whistles out there that can take quite a bit more air.

ecadre wrote:

Grippa22 wrote:Hello, I’m looking for affordable high d whistles with some reasonable back pressure. I’m on a nickel generation and have a faedog pro coming. On this specific gen I need to like barely let air out my mouth to get the low notes to sound without flipping and they are prty shaky when they do sound. I’m coming from the bagpipes so blowing dosent translate here lol. Are all whistles like that? where you practically don’t blow the bottom notes, you just sigh them out? So I just need to get used to it? XD thank you so much! Any advice help or recommendations!

The answer to "Are all whistles like that?" is yes. There is really very little difference between whistles on those notes.

You simply need to get used to it and develop the breath control. Practice is everything and I'm sure you'll get it pretty quickly.

I would agree, but we have a dissenting opinion below. Until then, I might add that what's called "back pressure" on a whistle isn't going to have anything physically in common with what I'm guessing a piper would think of as back pressure. A whistle's back pressure refers to a performance feature: how much tone and response you get with how much air. A whistle with high back pressure means it takes little air to get the right sound out of it. The effect is that one's self-restraint creates a false sense of back pressure that you're meeting in kind - but it's not an actual physical resistance pushing back at you.

I met in passing a guy who was wanting to learn to play whistle, and he came direct from saxophone, which meant in his case that he blew the whistle as strongly as he would a sax. Yowch. He was a bit of a nomad - and it was clear that for him, reining it in was going to be a hurdle at first - so although I gave him pointers, I never did learn if he finally figured out how not to make the thing shriek. It's the ones that get away that haunt you.

Sedi wrote:Not true. They're not all like that. Only the traditional whistles like Generations, Feádogs, Oaks, etc. behave like that. There are many, many whistles out there that can take quite a bit more air.

I think a comparison against bagpipes gets lost, though.

Sedi wrote:Not true. They're not all like that. Only the traditional whistles like Generations, Feádogs, Oaks, etc. behave like that. There are many, many whistles out there that can take quite a bit more air.

We can get hung up on the differences between different tin whistles, but in reality they are more alike than different.

For a bagpipe player (Great Highland Bagpipe?), the differences between controlling the low notes on high D whistles will be trivial. To be honest, they're pretty small for any beginner. You need to learn the breath control.

In reality the difference between learning it on the Generation or Feadog mentioned and the Susato Oriole you mentioned is pretty negligible compared to the techniques being learnt.

I still disagree. An Oriole and a Feádog are on opposing ends of the spectrum. Especially for a beginner the differences are huge.

Comparing whistles to saxophones is not really helping a beginner looking for a whistle that is a bit easier to control. If whistles are "more alike than different", all that talk about "hard blowing" or "soft blowing" Goldies for instance, would be useless. And it's trivial to say that the differences between saxophones and whistles are bigger than between different whistles.

I'll say the transition from wind instruments like saxophone makes it harder to deal with whistles that are very easy to be overblown. I find Generations like this, as well as my Killarney. It's like balancing on a blade. Whereas whistles with higher backpressure allow you to push into notes more without the sound falling apart. Goldies and Thunderbirds allow this and others from Phil Hardy. While learning breath control is essential to playing a whistle well, it is very difficult, and learning on a whistle with an incredibly narrow band of acceptable air volume makes it even harder. And since the OP said "reasonable" whistles I'm guessing that means price. Goldie whistles are not cheap, Thunderbirds are a little less, Optimas even less. For high D I think the Optima Cobre might fit the bill. I haven't played it but can say my high whistles from Phil are very forgiving to being blown hard when you really want to blast.

-Peter

Really appreciate everyone’s thoughts, im starting to get a much better picture of what it’s all about. Sounds like even if there are whistles that can more easily control the bottom notes that “in general” learning the breath control is going to be very important to commit to for this instrument. So I will work hard on that, actually while waiting on other whistles it’s getting easier already. And I will try several whistles and see which works best. Feeling optimistic about the tony Dixon dx004. All whistles from amazon so I can send some back after I try.

Sedi wrote:Comparing whistles to saxophones is not really helping a beginner looking for a whistle that is a bit easier to control.

That was by way of making analogy with the blowing pressure of a GHB - Grippa22's instrument - and a GHB player might fall into a similar fuddle. In this case, however, Grippa22 seems to have already figured things out.

Sedi wrote:And it's trivial to say that the differences between saxophones and whistles are bigger than between different whistles.

Is it? When we're discussing the transition from GHB to whistle, isn't any whistle, whatever it is, going to take significantly less air pressure than a GHB or any other reed? That being the case, it's just as valid to say that citing whistle differences is going to be the trivial thing; Grippa22 is clearly struck by finding whistles to be a very new and unexpectedly different blowing experience from the GHB, and I daresay he would find even hard-blowing whistles to take surprisingly much less air pressure to play than a GHB. Since Grippa22 has asked for assurances that he's not imagining things and that his findings about sounding whistles are indeed the case, some of us suggest that while diving into whistle differences has its own merits and might be helpful in making long-term choices, it is not essential to the OP's main question, in which a GHB player is confronted with the overall nature of a completely different instrument.

Of course Grippa22 will want to investigate whistle differences and make choices in the course of getting used to whistles in general. As to recommending whistles with backpressure, I'll leave that to you guys.

I'm very aware of the differences between reed instruments and whistles. I have played saxophone and I do still own a Chalumeau (kind of a primitive clarinet). Still -- anybody who will not notice a huge difference between a Kerry Thunderbird and a Generation whistle might have a problem with comparing ANY instruments at all. So what ecadre wrote was not really helping anybody. So when used to a hard-blowing instrument -- a Generation or Feadóg is certainly not the best starter whistle. And IMO there really should be no difference of opinion about that. It's simply a fact that those trad style whistles need a higher amount of breath control than some others and therefore other brands are more suited if you lack that breath control in the beginning. An Oriole would be a much better choice. It is actually one of the hardest blowing high D whistles I own. The new Kerry "Busker" whistle would probably also be a good choice but maybe too expensive. Sure, after having developed said breath control a Generation or Feadóg has advantages. But why make it hard on yourself when there are so many whistles out there that are easier to control at the beginning when coming from a hard-blowing instrument?

Sedi wrote:But why make it hard on yourself when there are so many whistles out there that are easier to control at the beginning when coming from a hard-blowing instrument?

Can't disagree with that at all. And that's what you guys are here for: pertinent recommendations.