Chiff and Fipple Forums

Hello everyone,

Hope you guys are coping well with COVID and you are still sane. I just don't think much about it anymore.

Back to whistling ... I noticed that there is a technique for a curvy stop towards the end of a musical phrase. Players like Eric Rigler does that a lot with his Irish Pipe. But, I have seen him and others do it successfully with an Irish Whistle as well.

Here is how it sounds like: When the whistler approaches the end of musical phrase, just before he takes a breath, the volume of sound coming out of the whistle drops like a curve before the momentary silence when he breathes.
How do you do that curved drop in volume instead of an abrupt silence?

Here's an example
https://youtu.be/eQbM2gc07rU?t=19

Noticed Joannie Madden curved the end of the phrase before she breathed.

Hi there,

For me, it's simply a drop in air pressure, from the pressure required to play the specific note preceding the drop. The gradual but rapid drop in pressure will make the note flatter, resulting in the "curved" effect you describe. Try it up the scale, beginning on the lowest note of your whistle. Not sure what you mean with people doing it on the pipes, as pipes are more "on or off" (you either stop squeezing the bag or stop the chanter, meaning no air comes through).

Cheers,
K

Krasnojarsk wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:21 pm Hi there,

For me, it's simply a drop in air pressure, from the pressure required to play the specific note preceding the drop. The gradual but rapid drop in pressure will make the note flatter, resulting in the "curved" effect you describe. Try it up the scale, beginning on the lowest note of your whistle. Not sure what you mean with people doing it on the pipes, as pipes are more "on or off" (you either stop squeezing the bag or stop the chanter, meaning no air comes through).

Cheers,
K

So, it's controlling the pressure? How do you round off the pressure to give it a more gradual drop?
Here's another example:
https://youtu.be/ICjNEwMh8Yw?list=RDICjNEwMh8Yw&t=47

I'm sure someone will come along with some better pedagogy, but yes, it's about pressure. If you think about it, if you blow too strongly into your whistle, it will rise in pitch. If you blow weakly, the note you're trying to play will be flat. For this effect, you want to achieve a gradual flattening of the pitch (imagine the sound of something falling from the sky in a cartoon), and you will have to practice blowing a steady note, and begin to flatten it at will when you want to achieve the effect.

I just tried it on a few whistles now, and you have to make sure you can play the note in a stable manner before you drop it off. In that video, it looks like he accompanies this with a retraction of the lower lip. When you mouth whistle, this achieves a drop in pitch as well. It's completely doable without any lip movement, but it could be something to experiment with.

I'm also not sure how new you are to whistles, but it goes to show it's important to practice long notes to get them as stable as possible.

It's also possible to make the drop in pitch even stronger if you slowly slide your finger to partially or fully cover the next hole below while easing off the breath pressure.

For example going from xxx xoo to xxx xxo where x means covered hole and o is open hole.

Anyway, that adds another layer of difficulty but it's a really cool effect when you nail it

On the uilleann pipes it's mostly done with the finger or fingers involved, the same technique as bending up to a note, but done in reverse.

One of the coolest-sounding and most distinctive uilleann "licks" is bending downward from E, or D#, in the second octave to Back D.

Paddy Keenan in The Blackbird does a couple great downward bends here at 1:25 and 1:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmy-FJN2qzk

I heard a piper who was doing Riverdance bend downward at the end of a long Bottom D, this was done by putting the bottom of the chanter on the leg at an angle, and smoothly moving the chanter more upright making Bottom D bend downward, and finally silenced.

On the whistle, particularly the Low Whistle, it can be done purely with the breath.

Obviously the more force of air is required to sustain a note at pitch, the more room you have underneath the note to drop the pitch by backing off on the airstream.

This is where the octave relationship built into the whistle by the maker can impact what's possible to do.

On the MK Low Ds I owned there was a wider-than-usual interval between the octaves. This meant that to play the octaves in tune you had to blow the low octave strongly, nearly up to the point where it jumps into the 2nd octave, and blow the 2nd octave softly, nearly down to the point where it falls down to the low octave.
This gave an unusually large amount of room under the low-octave notes to do the dropoff effect, but virtually none underneath the 2nd octave notes. As soon as you back off a tad on a 2nd octave note it just breaks to the low octave (which is a cool effect, but not the same).

On the opposite end, I used to have an old Bernard Overton Low D which had a narrower-than-usual interval between the octaves. This meant that to play the octaves in tune you had to blow the low octave rather softly, and blow the 2nd octave quite strongly.
This gave you, on 2nd octave notes, an incredible range of blowing pressures underneath the up-to-pitch blowing pressure. You could blow 2nd octave notes whisper-soft, and very flat, without them falling to the low octave. However you had little to work with in the low octave, as you were underblowing the notes already just to get them down to pitch.

arthury wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 11:38 pm
So, it's controlling the pressure? How do you round off the pressure to give it a more gradual drop?

The same way you get to Carnegie Hall

Seriously though, practice working dynamics (volume) on your instrument - moving as slowly as you can from the lowest volume you can produce on a single note, to the loudest, and then back down. Or, if you can’t sustain a note long enough for that whole cycle from low to high and back down again, then do repetitions of low to high, breathe, repeat, then do repetitions of highest volume to lowest volume, take a breath and repeat. Eventually you’ll be able to link the two.

No secret techniques here, it’s just gaining basic command of you and your instrument.

Excellent suggestions from all the experts.
I will try them out to see how far I can achieve.

Just to clarify the effect you're going for-- you're looking for a drop in pitch, and not just an alternative to suddenly cutting off a note, right?

(I myself find the abrupt cutoff jarring, but also find the drop in pitch with a gradual taper-off to be undesirable-- it makes it sound like I ran out of air or something, rather than like a deliberate note/phrase ending.)


ETA: Ah, okay, I see... it's just an effect, not a way of ending a note/phrase. Okay, so what I said doesn't really apply.

Joanie Madden doesn’t tongue note to start or end a phrase,
hence the drop off which to some ears is annoying as fqqqall.
Watch the cutoffs in the air. When it’s a clean break she’s
taking a breath with the whistle not touching her top lip.
The drop off happens when her mouth is on the whistle
and her breath runs out.

Katharine wrote: ↑Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:31 pm Just to clarify the effect you're going for-- you're looking for a drop in pitch, and not just an alternative to suddenly cutting off a note, right?

(I myself find the abrupt cutoff jarring, but also find the drop in pitch with a gradual taper-off to be undesirable-- it makes it sound like I ran out of air or something, rather than like a deliberate note/phrase ending.)


ETA: Ah, okay, I see... it's just an effect, not a way of ending a note/phrase. Okay, so what I said doesn't really apply.

Thanks for the response in trying to help.
I'd love to hear your alternative to sudden drop and drop in pitch. Is there something else you had in mind? Please share.

arthury wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 10:25 am Thanks for the response in trying to help.
I'd love to hear your alternative to sudden drop and drop in pitch. Is there something else you had in mind? Please share.

Nope; I've not yet found a way to let the sound taper off without the pitch also tapering off (but, not being a very skilled whistler, I'm not the best person to ask, anyway). For me it's a choice between that, or the abrupt-ish cutoff. There may be a softer way of tonguing the note that sounds less sudden; I should maybe experiment more.

If, however, you're looking specifically for the taper in pitch as an effect or type of ornament, then of course that's achievable. I believe the control will come simply with practice.

How to do that droopy end-of-phrase thing?

1. Consider whether you really want to adopt what could, despite some expert and expressive exponents, become an awkward mannerism.
2. If you still like it, apply breath control and/or finger shading according to context (e.g. what note you're on).
3. Beware of overdone or habitual use.

Peter Duggan wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 2:42 pm ...an awkward mannerism...overdone or habitual use.

As is true with all Arts, no technique should draw attention to itself to the detriment of the Art's intention.