So I spent about 6 hours at the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace in South San Francisco yesterday and saw precisely two whistlers. The performers rotate in and out while the fair is open so I'm certain I didn't see all of the whistlers that were performing for the month that the fair runs.

(Edited to add: A "Dickens Fair" is an event that re-enacts the era of the novel 'A Christmas Carol', by Charles Dickens. People dress up in period approximate attire and speak in faux English accents to recreate the time period. I failed to mention in my original post that one of the best booths I visited was dedicated to Steampunk. "Visit the future!")

There were groups with all sorts of instruments that were anachronistic: ukuleles, piano accordions, melodeons, flat F-hole mandolins etc.

The biggest shock for me was that I couldn't hear a single note from any of the whistlers. The whistlers played with what looked like abandon, but there was no whistle in the overall sound.

It wasn't just me. The people that I came with also mentioned that they couldn't hear the whistler or the flute player.

Of the whistles I saw there was what looked like an Abell, a whistle that looked like a Parks High D, and a Shaw that was about the size of a Bb whistle.

All of them were inaudible!

I was considering applying for a spot at the fair next year as a roaming whistler and thought my Susato high D, or my Sweetheart high D might be loud enough for the sound to carry through the crowd. Now I'm not so sure.

This post is just about sharing my experience and wondering if anyone has had a similar experience.

Also, are there any whistles anyone can recommend that would have a chance of being heard over the din of a crowd full of yammering adults and screaming children?

Thank you!
Aldon

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I'm always interested in this kind of thing.

A bunch of historians have tried doing the "history of the senses," to get a different sense of what the past was like. There are histories of sound that focus on the way certain rooms or halls sounded like--did people have to shout to be heard? Were murmurs and asides clearly audible? There's a good history that looks at settlement patterns in colonial new england in relation to being within earshot of the town bells, and looks at the acoustics of church design in relation to theology.

How loud was Dickens' london? A horse and carriage on cobbles is loud, louder than a car, and there would have been a lot of them going by. You'd have the sounds of industrial production around a lot--sawing, hammering. Peddlers calling, ropes creaking in the harbor. domestic animals

The biggest difference is probably that we have more continuous sounds. A car driving by doesn't change much: it's one continuous band of nearly homogeneous noise. I can hear the forced air heat running right now--it makes uniform white noise. Since you were in the Cow Palace all the sounds reverberated in a way that make a steady background hum, and that's going to "mask" a lot of frequencies.

"Auditory masking" is a really fascinating phenomenon, part of psychoacoustics. The ears don't hear like a microphone: at any moment lots of frequencies are "masked." It how Mp3 files take a 30 Megabyte audio file and reduce it to 3 megabytes. For a very significant part of that dance track the crack of the snare is masking the sounds right after and slightly before it: we don't actually here them and they can be cut out. The general hum of the crowd walla in the cow palace masks a lot of frequencies

But I also think in general people were quieter. I think of swing era big band--how was the bass payer audible at all, with no amplification? Because everybody was better at mediating and controlling their volume

It IS an interesting subject. I moved fro ma busy city to an very very quiet rural environment in the West of Ireland 23 years ago. First thing you notice is the hum of the city that's gone, mind you right now the roar of the ocean equals the sound of a motorway in the distance but when there's no wind the quiet is palpable. I remember the first few years, standing outside looking at the overwhelming number of stars in the Milky way (another thing: no light pollution) and the total absence of any human generated sound, the odd dog or fox barking. The sound perhaps of a car (and I am not so sure it's a continuous unchanging sound when heard on its own in a silent environment).

It's also amazing how sound carries in such an environment, I can, in the right circumstances, hear my next door neighbours talk outside, nearly half a mile away. Mind you I can't hear what they say but I can hear the sound of voices. Although, another neighbour commented on a particular tune I played on the whistle, he could identify it from a quarter of a mile away. People shouted news from one house to another across the valley. That sort of thing. I can hear the chiuchbells sound the Angelus, across hills and nearly two miles away, I have heard children playing outside the school over a mile away, when the wind was from that direction.

In cities and towns we've created a very noisy environment and you only realise it when coming in from the quiet.

The hum is very present, I can hear immediately when the power goes down (as it occasionally does), it's like the hosue holding it's breath to let the quiet from outside penetrate. Right now there's the hum of the ocean, angered by wind. The wind itself and, unfortunately, when the wind is East I can hear the swishing of the windpark that has transformed the Mist covered mountain into the Mast covered mountain, and I don't like it one bit.

If you look at Victorian whistles, they're quiet, few of today's whislteplayers would consider them, even if they are very well balanced between the octaves. Instrument development has been geared towards ever louder output and carrying power. Rising pitches and just plain louder.

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I like cities and city life but we could all stand to rethink noise and volume generally.

A similar phenomenon to sound is light. We have staggering amounts of needless light. There's kind of a compulsion to light things up and it's usually justified in terms of some kind of anxiety about safety.


Micho russell talked about practicing where no on would hear, because music making during work times was frivolous--I suppose he was close enough to the sea that maybe the ocean masked his playing?

My biggest complaint about other musicians is when they can't modulate their volume. Back in the day if a drummer couldn't "swing" at low volumes he didn't work.

Both Gussie and Micho played in the haggard below the house, in a dip by the wall. Not sure the ocean would mask the sound, on days the ocean would be angry to make a lot of noise, it wouldn't be a good idea to sit outside playing. It was perhaps more a way of playing out of sight and not having to confront other people and their comments. There was a house quite near to theirs and they would have been out of its line of sight there.

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When I play at church, we often have to mike my whistle unless I'm playing in the second octave (and even then it's been discussed, depending on the piece). It can't compete with the organ, congregational singing, other instruments, or whatever I'm playing with.



Oh yes. There are "dark sky" movements all over the place.

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Mair's the pity.

Humans generate a lot of noise when they gather in large groups and a lot of spaces increase the noise a good bit. A few years ago I was walking around the Fleadh in Ennis, large crowd filling the street and the buildings reflecting the noise back after a few hours of it, it became exhausting. Drove me bonkers to be honest. I was in a similar situation last week, at Limerick's Milkmarket on the saturday morning. It's a square with in the middle a courtyard surrounded by single story buildings, originally an open market but now covered over by a large canopy. On market days the noise level is deafening, even if you block it out, it's there. Several people are usually busking there but the sound completely disappears in the dim of the crowd, accordion players working away with perhaps four meters between them without bothering eachother one little bit. I assume the OP's situation was something similar.

Whistles are odd creatures though, I have been working away in noisy pub situations not being able to hear myself when a whistle player across the room commenting on the tone of the whistle. I was surprised she could hear me at all and was astonished when she had a go how clearly the sound projected across the room and through the noise.

You can also be in a very noisy room, hardly able to hear any music over the crowd noise and go into the jax and suddenly hear every little detail of whistle and pipes, better than when you're sitting right next to them(not so much fiddles etc though), the wall stopping the noise of voices and drinkers and filtering through some of the instruments.

I already mentioned the carrying power of the whistle outdoors, in certain circumstances. Another example of this, and I have mentioned this particular one a few times here over the years, was one time around this time of year at the Cliffs of Moher, a fair bit of wind, one of the whistle players who often plays there, by the name of Galvin, was playing a Susato near the visitors centre. Walking southward along the Cliff's edge I could hear the whistle and at times identify the tune from more than half a mile away (at a greater elevation than the player and the strong wind from the north carrying the sound).

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To echo Mr. G., I have recently acquired a Hoover Whitecap, and it is schooling me in how to quite softly blow it, and yet, with its small voice, it seems to have a presence well beyond what one would expect. It has a very ´pure´ voice, and I wonder if this sweetness and purity has something to do with its seeming ability to project.

Bob

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Yet, there's another thread here where somebody maintains that whistles require mutes.

About the odd carrying power of different instruments and human hearing vs mics, I attended a session around 30 years ago which had three or four terrific fiddlers and a person quietly noodling on whistle. He didn't seem to know any of the tunes, but noodled along all the while. There in person he wasn't much of a distraction and I could hear the fiddling clearly.

I taped a few of the unfamiliar tunes, and later when I listened to the tape all that could be heard was the whistle!

The other odd instance was with Highland pipes. We think of them as being very loud! But we might not appreciate how poorly their sound carries particularly on grass, which absorbs much of the sound.

I was up in the stands, in the crowd, when down below on the pitch there were six Highland pipers playing with a large brass band. The moment that how little the Highland pipes carried was when one trumpet (cornet?) played a solo bit, which from up in the stands cut through clearly, and was considerably louder than all six bagpipes put together.

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Richard Cook
1978 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle

Being a piper who has worn Highland Dress most of my life, and someone who has made a study of it, it's a constant source of amazement that at all 19th century-themed events (Dickens Fairs, Victorian Balls, US Civil War balls) the gents which show up in Highland Dress are invariably dressed in pure 20th century outfits, as if Highland Dress floats outside of time itself.

With Dickens events, the Highland Dress is off by a century.

Sort of like going to a Ren Faire and seeing people play plastic-topped whistles, and modern Highland pipes.

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Richard Cook
1978 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle

I take my daughter to the ren faire around here and as a historian for a living I just have to take a vow of silence on what people regard as "the renaissance"

I certainly have wanted to mute my whistles as I live in a house with my family and much of my best practice time would be spent when they're around. It's not really much fun listening to somebody get a new tune under their fingers. A D whistle is plenty loud in a quiet house

Similarly I mostly practice the flute when nobody's home.

Side note: For Christmas I got my old turntable going--from college, about forty years ago--and bought some albums for our daughter, 15. She is totally excited about the whole process of putting a record on, setting the needle down, etc. etc.


It's interesting to listen to the records. They don't necessarily sound better but they do have more dynamic range

Oh, they do. Whistle outdoors or in well-sized church/building: hard to hear (maybe better in a cathedral or somewhere with a lot of echo/reverb). Whistle in small apartment with thin walls: neighbors would kill me.




Part of the reason I don't like brass bands with pipes (besides the primary reason that the pipes don't need anything added, thanks, and as I'm not that fond of brass bands anyway, I think it ruins the sound).

A discussion at church last night about loudness... with it having been decided that trumpet was loudest (the guy who made the assertion was the trumpet player, so he would know, and having sat next to him for the first hymn, my eardrums agreed-- although they weren't happy about the choir piece a while back where I played the flute part on whistle, which fell into the upper-half of the second octave, including many third-octave Ds... I actually saw one guy cover his ears, and I always feel super guilty for my friend's guide dog...). But he thought organ probably came a close second.



I don't even bother to worry about it. People are dressed up like fairies and elves... we're obviously not operating in reality here, so who cares about my modern-styled kilt??

(And, in the reverse, I see plenty of people at a Highland games who look like they're going to Ren Faire... like the fairies and elves.)

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As a piper, I appreciate solo Highland pipes, the Highland Pipes & Drums competition genre, and the Pipes & Brass genre.

Each is a unique style which has its own strengths and weaknesses.

For example, sometimes I'll hear a Pipes & Drums band play something and inside I'm screaming to hear the drones move off their continuous Bb and move to the chord I want so much to hear! It's tremendously satisfying and transformative when the brass realizes the chords implicit in the melodies.

On the other hand, there's a magical moment when a military Pipes & Drums is playing along with a Military Band (brass and woodwinds) and the Military Band marches off while both units are playing, and you can hear the steady diminution of the brass & woodwinds while the pipes remain at the same volume; indeed the pipes are left sounding better minus the Military Band!

Part of that is that the tunes they're playing aren't very musical, and the supporting chords aren't doing much to transform the tunes.



I almost certainly would have used a different whistle to bring the part into the more pleasant part of a whistle's range.



For sure that's one thing that's changed since I began attending Highland Games in the mid-1970s, at least here in the Western United States.

For many years the Highland Games here were not so unlike the ones in Scotland, with Pipe Bands and Highland Dancing and Scottish athletics and not much else.

Then the Ren Faire people started attending in ever-greater numbers, until it got to the point at our local Games where, in effect, there's a Ren Faire held on the same grounds as the Highland Games.

So, at our local Games now the people you see walking around are from both worlds.

I see you're in Michigan. I've not been to any Highland Games in that state. The closest I've been to are the Highland Games in Wellington Ohio that I attended last summer, and oddly enough I don't remember seeing the Ren Faire people there (but I was there for the Pipe Bands!)

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Richard Cook
1978 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle

I guess I expect a pipe band sound when I listen to a pipe band... so I don't expect chords and complex harmonies. That's what I listen to orchestras and choirs for. (Conversely, I've heard many a pipe tune ruined by being arranged for choir or orchestra. If I never again hear a choir attempting to sing Highland Cathedral, it will not be too soon. Sometimes things don't need to/shouldn't cross over.)




Then it wouldn't have been audible. I thought of playing it down an octave, but it would have blended into the choir. (And as I had to play over choir, organ, and snare drum, I wouldn't have had a chance.) That was the case where they were still considering putting a mic on the whistle, I insisted it didn't need it, and after some thought the sound guy "guessed" he thought it might be okay.

I recorded during practice to make sure it wasn't too much... once you got out further into the church, it didn't sound as screechy; I was surprised. Just wasn't fun two inches from my face.



I've never been to one in Ohio. Alma is worth going to since it's the pipe band championships... or maybe it's not anymore; I can't remember as it's been a few years but I seem to recall a controversy over that. I know the number of bands has been falling, attributed partly to increased difficulty in traveling over the Canadian border (especially with ivory-mounted pipes), and I think the band stipend was lowered a few years ago, too. The St. Andrews Society games in August is nice and well-attended too, also with a few (mostly local) bands, a good dance showing, and a fair amount of vendors.

_________________
Here's tae us--
Wha's like us?
Damn few--
And they're a' deid--
Mair's the pity.