Double hole whistles?

[Moof]

Wanting to play the vast repertoire of diatonic tunes on a diatonic instrument to the best of your ability does not reflect a lack of ambition.

I agree. In the 60s/70s, my uncle lived next door to a white South African man who'd had to leave because his anti-apartheid campaigning had landed him in trouble. I was learning whistle at the time, and he played me some old reel-to reel tapes of ordinary people playing music, including Kwela – a relative of jazz, where the ideal lead instrument might have been saxophone. But the players were from poor Black communities who apparently couldn't afford shoes, never mind saxes, so they played tin whistles. They don't seem to have worried about the limitations, they just got on and produced extraordinary music in a style they developed themselves.

There were countless Irish and British whistlers who had the same mass produced, poorly tuned instruments and became virtuosos on them anyway. A lot of the music I play is their gift to us, and the limited scales of flutes and whistles is coded right into it. I don't hear a lack of ambition in the music or the playing of any folk tradition using simple woodwinds – quite the opposite, really.

[Cyberknight]

It's fine to get if you feel you need it, the overwhelming majority of whistle players get all they want or need from the standard six hole configuration and have no wish to turn the instrument into something else.

The overwhelming majority of whistle players are rather unambitious and generally don't try playing chromatically or in odd keys.

Wanting to play the vast repertoire of diatonic tunes on a diatonic instrument to the best of your ability does not reflect a lack of ambition.

Indeed, I never said that it did. I merely pointed out the fact that the vast majority of players aren't very ambitious, so using "the vast majority of players" as a gold standard for how whistles should be made may not be the best option. I never said that ANY player who doesn't want to play things in odd keys isn't ambitious. That would be an absurd thing to say.

I appreciate whistle makers who aim to make the best 6-hole diatonic whistle they can, balancing all the competing challenges, without looking to add design elements that their core customers aren't looking for. At the same time, I am happy there are makers like Joseph Morneaux who explore other instrument styles for those customers who want them.

Same here! I was expressing a personal wish that the chromatic models were more common. I have absolutely nothing against people making more traditional, 6-hole variants.

[Cyberknight]

As I said: it's fine if you think that is what you need for your own instrument. Advocating it should be standard is a different matter.

The beauty of the whistle is its simplicity. It is never going to be a fully chromatic instrument. As it happens, I have a fully keyed 19th century whistle. That is fine, it has the full range of accidentals but is it fully chromatic in the sense it able to play in many different keys? No, ofcourse it isn't.

I like to think there is a reason why these things never caught on. And it is not because of a lack of ambition among players.

An overwhelming majority of whistleplayers play a type of music that doesn't require a full range of accidentals, and the ones that are occasionally needed are fairly easy to half hole. Does that need practice? Ofcourse it does but once you put that in, it's not particularly hard. Having the ambition to be fully at home with the instrument and make most of its strengths and weaknesses is all that is required.

Adding more holes or even keys is fine if you think you need it in your own music making. For most of us it would be a distraction, a complication and an unnecessary addition to the cost of the instrument.

Ok, I guess I see your point. Maybe it shouldn't be the standard; at the very least, however, I wish it was more common than it is. And I also don't really understand why people are so resistant to it. As I previously mentioned, there are NO downsides to adding a couple more holes. It doesn't make the instrument any harder to play - just more flexible. So the fact that there's no compelling reason NOT to do it, combined with the immense advantages it offers whenever you want to play certain (admittedly uncommon) notes, makes me wish it was much more common than it is.

[David Cooper]

There's no need to use a thicker wall just to get extra thickity around a hole or double hole - you could design an additional part to glue on, making it from delrin, resin or even wood.

But why not make and sell whistles without holes so that the buyer can drill them where they want them? Give them interchangeable tubes to plug into the mouthpiece and a set of standard templates to use as a starting point, and then they can experiment on cheap practice pipes before making the holes in a proper one. Whether they want them offset, doubled or chamfered, and whether they want 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 holes, all of that should be up to them, and it doesn't take a lot of skill, particularly as it's so much easier to tune then these days with the help of apps. You might even make more off such instruments than the ones you sell in finished form. The skillful work that buyers aren't so keen to take on for themselves is in making the mouthpiece.

Incidentally, my mother's fingers can't get into the right places to play standard whistles, so I'm having to make one(s) specific to her with carefully designed offsets and placements, changing the hole sizes to enable this and make an instrument that she finds playable. There are also people with specific fingers that don't work and who have to give up playing as it costs too much to commission an instrument made just for them.

[Tunborough]

And I also don't really understand why people are so resistant to it. As I previously mentioned, there are NO downsides to adding a couple more holes. It doesn't make the instrument any harder to play - just more flexible.

At the very least, it makes the instrument harder to make, or at least make well. You need a compelling reason for that.

[Cyberknight]

And I also don't really understand why people are so resistant to it. As I previously mentioned, there are NO downsides to adding a couple more holes. It doesn't make the instrument any harder to play - just more flexible.

At the very least, it makes the instrument harder to make, or at least make well. You need a compelling reason for that.

True, but bear in mind that these accidental holes are easier to add than any of the other holes on the instrument, because each one affects the pitch of just one note in each octave (the accidental being played). This is unlike the main 6 holes, all of which affect the pitch of multiple notes in each octave.

[Loren]

And I also don't really understand why people are so resistant to it. As I previously mentioned, there are NO downsides to adding a couple more holes. It doesn't make the instrument any harder to play - just more flexible.

At the very least, it makes the instrument harder to make, or at least make well. You need a compelling reason for that.

True, but bear in mind that these accidental holes are easier to add than any of the other holes on the instrument, because each one affects the pitch of just one note in each octave (the accidental being played). This is unlike the main 6 holes, all of which affect the pitch of multiple notes in each octave.

Says the person who has never made a wind instrument?

[Kedster]

The only reason I made this thread (and started a small scale civil war between ye olde conservative whistlers and radical anarchists) is because I love the harmonic minor scale, and it frustrates me that in some passages, moving from for example xxoooo to xxxxx- is rather cumbersome.

However, when I feel like it's the whistle's fault (and subsequently trying to find a maker who would accomodate for my lack of patience) I listen to Toccata on a tin whistle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOmba730e0A

There's numerous drawbacks to adding a 7th hole to a whistle. For one, I play right hand up. I could play a whistle from someone playing left hand up and literally have no problems whatsoever. Practising the D# for at least 15-20 minutes everyday is what I do lately for some songs I'm practising. It takes real dedication.

Some people simply lack the time or the energy to master the instrument to such a professional degree as to play perfect D#. Others spend maddening hours repeating same motions till they get it right. Both of them have a right to have fun.

[Loren]

Some people simply lack the time or the energy to master the instrument to such a professional degree as to play perfect D#. Others spend maddening hours repeating same motions till they get it right. Both of them have a right to have fun.

The whistle is already about the easiest instrument to learn to play that exists. Learning to play an instrument well is a challenge, deal with it.

If you don’t want to master half-holing the missing notes, get a recorder, they don’t sound that different and it’s about playing music isn’t it? The tunes don’t know the difference, and frankly neither do most listeners.

“Right to have fun”? Not sure about that but if we follow that logic then the makers also have the right to enjoy what they do and how they do it, and apparently double hole whistles aren’t part of that fun for 99.99 % of them. Must be some reason this is the case…..

BTW, I believe there are still a few people who make harmonic minor tuned whistles, if that’s your thing. Or just go ahead and learn to play flute, where there are lots of bamboo/cane flutes made in a wide variety of tunings and keys.

[Kedster]

Some people simply lack the time or the energy to master the instrument to such a professional degree as to play perfect D#. Others spend maddening hours repeating same motions till they get it right. Both of them have a right to have fun.

The whistle is already about the easiest instrument to learn to play that exists. Learning to play an instrument well is a challenge, deal with it.

If you don’t want to master half-holing the missing notes, get a recorder, they don’t sound that different and it’s about playing music isn’t it? The tunes don’t know the difference, and frankly neither do most listeners.

“Right to have fun”? Not sure about that but if we follow that logic then the makers also have the right to enjoy what they do and how they do it, and apparently double hole whistles aren’t part of that fun for 99.99 % of them. Must be some reason this is the case…..

BTW, I believe there are still a few people who make harmonic minor tuned whistles, if that’s your thing. Or just go ahead and learn to play flute, where there are lots of bamboo/cane flutes made in a wide variety of tunings and keys.

Sir, who hurt you?

[Loren]

Sir, who hurt you?

Depends what year and which sparring session

[Kedster]

Sir, who hurt you?

Depends what year and which sparring session

In all seriousness, it's about exploration. Recorder doesn't have 2+ octaves, and I already said I'm practising the D# diligently, haven't I? So I'm "dealing with it". But without exploration we'd be stuck with sticks and stones in a neandarthal age (even though there's good arguments that that's when the civilisation should've stopped...)

I've also looked into harmonic minor arrangements for flutes and they're really not good at playing anything else. Having a strong D# on an otherwise basic whistle makes it play major, minor, harmonic scales very elegantly. If there are elegant solutions to this problem, it only means more people can play more nice tunes on their instruments without significant effort (which is one of the greatest points of whistle - being able to play a lot of good music without the terrible practise it requires to, say, playing the turkish flute, which I do, and I doubt most whistle players could even get a single note out of, just saying).

So just because something is hard doesn't necessarily mean it's automatically more valuable. If we have a discussion and exploration, it only enrichens the experience - that's the whole point of music, isn't it? It's the connections. And I understand "fixing" the whistle is a tiring subject to veterans, but like music, everything is in repetition and patience, and who knows, maybe our discussions will spark an instrument one day that is as widespread as the whistle is. The important thing is having fun talking these points, so let's try to keep it all civil.

[Mr.Gumby]

so let's try to keep it all civil.

And we do that by using terms like 'ye olde conservative whistlers', 'dinosaurs' etc?

[Kedster]

so let's try to keep it all civil.

And we do that by using terms like 'ye olde conservative whistlers', 'dinosaurs' etc?

I was hoping to have a playful demeanor, as I didn't think radical anarchists was particularly flattering either. I'm sorry if my playfulness sounded insulting.

[Loren]

Are you implying my post wasn’t civil?