Delving into the black hole that is my office cupboard, I found this:
My question is what is it? And who made it?
It’s a conical with a pretty big bore - 17.2mm at the window end running down about 12.2mm at the foot end. And those points are 293mm apart. Those bore diameters would average out to 14.7mm. And so it has a pretty good tone in the low octave but gets pretty difficult above xxx ooo in the 2nd octave. It’s tuned around C.
Now it’s quite possible that I made it, way back in the seventies when I was starting out as a flute maker. Apart from flutes, I made a lot of simple piccolos and a few set of pipes while I was finding my way, so it’s quite possible that this was something I also made. The timber looks plausibly Australian. But, if I made it, what was my inspiration? It doesn’t resemble any of the whistles I have from the period or can remember seeing. I wondered if it might have been a design from a book or article, or based on some other whistle that I didn’t own but had come across.
And you’d think if I made it, I would have a reamer in the reamer drawer marked C whistle? No such thing. Or a drawing? But again nothing I can find.
The only conical I can remember owning was the classic Clarke’s in C, but alas, I can’t find it. From memory it was not a fat whistle, so it seems unlikely that this whistle is a wooden version of that. Anyone have a Clarke’s in C and measurement tools?
So, if the whistle above looks familiar, I’d love to know what it is!
Oooh, that’s an interesting hypothesis, pancelticpiper. I do remember than one of my whistle students (these were the heady days of the “W.T. McGee Academy of Flagellation”) took up an interest in Balkan music (and dance I think). I wonder if she could have been the source of the model?
Answering my own question about why can’t I find a reamer, I could have easily made this by step drilling the bore (I have suitable drills in 1mm increments), and then just sanded off the 1/2mm steps. It would have been stupid to go to all the trouble of making a reamer for something I didn’t then go on to make lots of.
Hmmm, I should keep that approach in mind for other dabblings…
It’s not a duduk, is it? I used to have a neighbour whose family was Macedonian, and although she played a duduk with a reed, I’m sure she once said some are like Irish whistles. Hers wasn’t tapered, but I haven’t seen an example of the whistle-style ones.
Kaval is probably the best known from Bulgaria, but they’re great long chromatic jobbies.
Moof is right, duduk is a Bulgarian whistle-type instrument. Although (like on most East European whistles) the fipple is usually on the underside of the instrument, every now and then you come across one that has it on the top side. The bore isn’t really conical, it is cylindrical with a constriction at the lower end, so the end diameter is smaller than the diameter at the windway end.
Armenian duduk, however, is a totally different instrument, it has a straight bore and a huge reed and sounds somewhat like a very softly blown saxophone.
