I was thinking about having a little Fajardo wedge as part of the fipple block. Just a little wooden wedge about 3 cm (considering the Fajardo wedge in a Tipple flute is 3 inch long and I probably would need less than half that lenght) maybe tapering down from about 2mm to 1mm sticking out at the end. Should be easy to cut. This way I wouldn't need an extra part. The construction would still be as simple as it is now and the last two notes might also be a little easier. It does take some push toward the end of the 2nd octave. I will give this a try on the weekend.
But it already plays pretty great. I noticed another more serious problem however. Because of the massive alloy profile the whistle reacts a lot to temperature. And so far I didn't come up with a good idea how to make it tunable. Guess I just can tune it to a certain temperature. I was warming it up of course before tuning but still the about 18 degrees Celsius in my workshop compared to the 20 in the living room made quite a difference. Tuning can differ around 10-20 cts up or down. It's probably the same with my other alloy whistles, I just never paid much attention to it. But that does change, when you try to make them on your own . I want my whistle to be as "perfect" as can be attained even with the shortcomings of constructing an in-tune cylindrical (or in this case square) whistle.
Tell us something.: I am a flute, guitar, keyboard + whistle player learning about quality whistles, musical possibilities and playing techniques. I've recorded a CD of my own music and am creating music for kids.
I'm not sure of the physical properties of air vibrating within a square tube, but I'm wondering if it sets up an intonation and harmonic resonance capacity superior to that of round tubes. I would suspect that intonation problems could be fixed easier. And what about using a tapered/conical square, to help intonation between the two octaves?
Also, would it help if the finger holes had a straight edge on the side closest to the mouthpiece (or if they were square), so that the precision of their interaction with the vibrating air column was maximized? On a rounded tube, that might be impossible to try, because the finger probably couldn't cover the hole as easily. I've always wondered why silver flutes didn't have square holes and key covers, because I would think it would increase note precision and maximize harmonic projection.
Interesting ideas but it would probably make the holes very hard to make. I think it works fine with the round holes (I have read somewhere however--migh have been on this forum--that elliptical holes are better than round ones acoustically). In fact they are easier to cover because of the flat surface. It's hard to tell without further analysis, with means I don't possess, to tell if the square shape behaves somehow "acoustically superior" to a round shape. I would suspect that there might be more reflection of waves inside a square tube but I have no idea how that would affect the sound. It would probably amplify some frequencies and make others weaker. But I don't think that happens in any fashion which I could easily analyze, let alone control or influence. All I can say is that the whistle behaves very dynamically. The 2nd octave sings rather nicely. But that is true for some other round whistles I have, too. I think there are just too many factors involved when comparing different whistles.
I don't know how to make a tapered bore from the material I have. I wanna keep the construction as simple as possible. In fact the tuning between octaves is rather good. Not worse than on most round whistles I have. Of course my Carbony is better in tune but it has a tapered bore. I will experiment with the wedge I will try to make on the inside of the fipple block.
That's awesome. I love rethinking the whole thing from a different perspective, and the result sounds pretty good. Keep going.
Wouldn't apply to your design at all, but another example of rethinking things were the Macneil whistles, made by Ryan J. MacNeil of Beolach. Not made any more. I have one. If you haven't seen them, what's different is there is a plastic mouthpiece that fits on the tube, and the edge of the tube splits the airstream..... no ramp on the body. By moving the mouthpiece up and down, you can change the tone a lot. Little video here of when Ryan was making them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgal31ZDGd0 Just throwing it up as another example of individuals working stuff out in small shops and seeing what they can come up with.
Thanks for the link! Always on the lookout for whistle-making videos. Of course I cannot take credit for the square design. At the moment I try to improve octave tuning. But yesterday I lost about 3 hrs of work since I was too dumb to put in the correct values in the calculator software.
WIDesigner was recommended in another thread but for the life of me I cannot get it to work. Looks like I am too dumb to run a Java app.
I got it to run finally. Still coming to grips with it. I need to watch some more tutorials.
In the meantime I made this--experimented with a small Fajardo wedge as part of the block. Tuning is good but the smaller window makes it play almost too sweet. It lacks some chiff. I will make the next one with a longer window. The jewelling came out nice though.
Tell us something.: I'm a historian and the author of "The Beat Cop:Chicago's Chief O'Neill and the Creation of Irish Music," published by the University of Chicago in 2022. I live in Arlington VA and play the flute sincerely but not well
This is the latest version. After experimenting with thicker tubing (1.5mm wall thickness) I went back to the thinner walled tubing as it gives a better resonance. This one has a delrin mouthpiece and I slightly modified the hole sizes to get an in-tune cross-fingered (oxxooo) C nat. My wife made a felt-pouch for it. https://youtu.be/a9CattfSHOI
. I want my whistle to be as "perfect" as can be attained even with the shortcomings of constructing an in-tune cylindrical (or in this case square) whistle.
