Hi, Buddhu.buddhu wrote:Hi Jerry,
I just dug out your tweaked head from the Mellow Dog and tried it again. Your description of the tone is spot on: pure and sweet. The issue I have isn't so much with the low notes (I learned to go gently with those on the first Dixon I had), but more with the second octave. Mostly on tongued notes, the first attack is very fragile. It's better with legato playing, but a careless cut can still break the note and squeak it. Also, just as the low notes need gentle blowing, the second octave seems to take a far more marked increase in pressure than I'm used to, and consequently seems disproportionately louder.
Don't worry too much - I'm sure the 'fault', if there is one, is as much with my relative inexperience as with the whistle.
BTW, do you take some off the top of the Walton tube as well as adding to the bottom? It's a great tube. I can't understand why more cheapie manufacturers don't do a D with the wider bore tube. Bearing in mind how accurate the tuning on Feadog tubes is I'd love it if they did a D in the same diameter as the C. Of course, that is pretty much what you achieve with the Mellow Dog .
The Mellow Dog sound is great, but I don't seem able to handle it well enough to get that tone consistently across the range of the whistle.
Thanks for the clarification.
In the top half of the upper register, a tweaked Mellow Dog has a rather definite threshold between "enough" and "not quite enough" push.
It doesn't require the strong push that a tweaked Shaw takes, but you have to give the upper register enough push to stay above the threshold or it will try to drop down into the lower register.
It sounds like you may be playing just "above the break," meaning that you're giving the upper register just enough push to go into the upper register, but not enough to make sure all the notes are staying there. You may find that you adjust to this rather effortlessly if you just play the whistle more. I don't believe there's anything about the whistle's dynamics that are truly problematical, just that it has its own personality.
Yes, I do take a little off the top of the Mellow D tube. If I don't do that, the whistle is only in tune when the whistlehead is pushed all the way on, and there's no room for adjustment if it needs to play slightly sharper.
Best wishes,
Jerry