Seven holed whistle help!

[HunterGatherer]

Can't we pretend that it's just a seven holed whistle in D? Please!?
Surely there's not that much difference between them?

[Ted]

Point of order, Mr. Gumby. An Draighean brought up concert-pitch and you responded to it. I was trying to point out the difference between "concert pipes" (wide bore and fairly modern) and concert-pitch pipes, which were mentioned before I chimed in.

[MTGuru]

Can't we pretend that it's just a seven holed whistle in D? Please!?
Surely there's not that much difference between them?

That's what's called doubling down ...

A frula is not a pennywhistle. You really want a 7 hole Serbian frula fingering chart. Because you have ... you know ... a 7 hole Serbian frula.

But try this: Keep your thumb on the thumbhole, or cover it with tape. Then, starting with all six fingers down, play the ascending scale starting with the bell note xxxxxx all the way up to open oooooo. Does your frula play a diatonic D major scale? Does the bell note xxxxxx overblow to the octave? If so, then you can ignore the thumbhole and use a D pennywhistle fingering chart.

But no one here seems to know much about frula's

Well ... If here = Chiffboard, there are quite a few people here with some knowledge of frulas and other Eastern European winds.

If here = New Zealand, you might try contacting our member Yuri Teryeni in Dunedin.

[Tommy]

Here is a visual of playing seven holes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMJBGCC6akc

[Sirchronique]

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=61225


According to this post, it does play the same as a pennywhistle if the thumbhole is ignored. So, you can likely learn to play any tune on it that the whistle can play, if you use the same fingering, and just ignore the thumbhole.

However, this still does not explain what key your frula is in , so if you learn a tune on it, you might not be playing it in the key of D, but you'll still be able to play the tune.. just not with other musicians playing the tune in the proper key (assuming it's not in D) .

So, you can ignore the thumbhole and pretend it's a tin whistle, and play the tin whistle tunes, yes. The notes will be different if it's not in the key of D, but you can still pretend it's a pennywhistle and use the same fingering if you don't use the thumbhole, yes. The tune will come out properly, but in a different key, I think. You can pretend it's a regular whistle, ignoring the thumbhole.

[MichaelLoos]

As has been said before, it's a frula fingering chart you need.
Since you don't seem to know much about these instruments (just like myself, BTW), it might have been a much better idea to get the student's pack offered by the same trader, which includes playing instructions...
Anyhow, I've been strolling around the trader's site (that's what YOU should have been doing!), and actually found the fingering chart: http://www.frula.info/prstored-i-odrzavanje/
This is for a C frula, so yours will sound "D" when you finger "C", and "E" when you finger "D", and so on.
And - it's a frula. If you want to play whistle, buy a whistle.

[HunterGatherer]

MTGuru,Sichronique: thanks, your answers were very clear and helpful. I've just tried playing an octave without the thumbhole, and it is quite possible. This has opened up a whole world of tunes to play!

MichaelLoos: thanks for your wonderfully...blunt...answer. There was no point in me getting the student's pack because I can't read or speak Serbian, only a tiny bit of Croatian. I did have a look around the website and found that chart, but: 1) couldn't understand the language, 2) I didn't know what key the frula in the picture was so didn't know if it would work for mine.

[MichaelLoos]

If you can read music, there's no need to understand the language, to work with the fingering chart.
The basic chart starts and ends on C, and there are no sharps or flats, so it must be for a "C" instrument.
Cross fingerings and half-holed fingerings for the semitones are given in the charts below.
If, however, you can't read music, then you need to know that the Serbians obviously use the German system of naming the tones, which is a bit more complicated than the English system: C, D, E, F, G and A are the same, but "H" means "B", whereas "B" means "B flat". Sharps have the ending "is", "Fis" means F sharp, "Gis" is G sharp, and so on. Flat have the ending "es" (which is irrelevant for this chart), with the exceptions of "As" meaning A flat, and "B" for B flat.
So if you want to work with this chart, you could print it, and move all the notes in the stave one position up (don't forget the accidentals), and re-name the tones so that C > D, D > E, E > F#, F > G, G > A, A > B, B > C#.
Do the same with the other charts: Fis (F#) > G#, Gis/As > A#/B flat, Ais/B > B#/C natural.

[MichaelLoos]

Here's another fingering chart for frula (scroll down):
http://arhiva.elitesecurity.org/t262492 ... anje-frule
It shows basically the same fingerings as the other other one. Again, you need to transpose for the D frula.
Which means, the basic fingering is the same as that for the whistle, plus a few more possibilities.