So many people sing the praises of Generations that I keep giving them another chance despite not liking them when I try them. They are cheap enough it doesn’t hurt.
Lately I’ve started to wonder if it is not the whistles - maybe it is me. When I play Generation whistles I get a lot of screechy resonance on the second octave, usually especially bad around the high G mark (or equivalent). Very often if I tongue the notes I can get them crisp, but if I want to move straight into a high note I frequently miss and land in screech town.
This doesn’t seem to happen with my other whistles which are Shaws, Clarkes and Dixons.
Are Generations less forgiving to amateurs? Are they more susceptible to drool? I’ve noticed if I blow them through sometimes the screech will go away for a while.
Or have I had a run of bad ones? They were all from the same shop, and for all I know maybe even the same production run.
An interesting dilemma there mate..
Maybe a way to put your mind at rest would be to get a Jerry Freeman ‘tweaked’ Generation.
I dont believe that they’re very expensive and at least you’d know whether it’s you ..or the Whistle…
Just a thought…good luck…and regards from OZ.
That doesn’t answer the question at all. The OP already has other whistles that he can play. Jerry may makes some good whistles, but all these posts just parroting “get a Jerry Freeman whistle” are just getting a little bit tiresome. A “good” whistle will not fix poor technique.
At the risk of putting words in Weedie’s mouth, I think the suggestion of trying a tweaked whistle (whether by Jerry or some other “professional” tweaker) is to help the OP find out whether he’s just gotten bad Generations (assuming there is such a thing) or whether it’s his technique that needs tweaking. A tweaked whistle should remove one possible element in the question. And since the OP’s question was whether it is the whistle or him (“Lately I’ve started to wonder if it is not the whistles - maybe it is me.”), this has the potential to provide an answer.
It’s just a quirk of the manufacturing process, with the injection molding and all. I think it would somehow be more expensive to plug it at the factory, so they leave it up to us.
Injection molding of ABS plastic requires that the “wall thickness” be relatively uniform. If there are areas where the plastic is much thicker than others, the part will not shrink uniformly on cooling after release from the mold, and distortions will result.
In a typical Generation whistle, you can sight into the beak and see some indentations in the windway floor. These are not intentional; they are shrinkage distortion where the bottom of the mouthpiece tapers up to the beak and the cavity underneath the windway merges with the beak, creating a thicker area of plastic there.
If the area under the windway were solid plastic, the whistlehead would distort too much to be serviceable. The only solution would be a two-piece whistlehead, which would raise the cost.
Not to contradict any of the above, but merely to add to the thinking about the “simplicity” of our instrument, here’s something you might want to consider. Transverse flutes do incorporate a cavity upstream from the embouchure center.
So that somewhat describes the effects that filling the cavity can have. It’s worth a little experimentation if you are curious.
This effect can be used in a whistle to bring the two registers into better tune with each other.
When I was working with the various keys of Shaw whistles, I observed that one of the keys had a shallow round hole drilled into the wooden fipple block, maybe 5/16" or so diameter X 1/8" or so deep. Sometime later, I received a message from Walt Sweet, when he was working on a new whistle design, asking if I had any ideas about how to make an adjustment to the tuning between octaves. I told him what I had seen in Davy Shaw’s work and suggested he experiment with it. I believe he did make use of that method.
There’s also the story from Bernard Overton, who had just begun making low whistles and had been asked to repair one that had become dented along the side of the mouthpiece. He noticed that with the dent, the registers were better in tune with each other, so he incorporated the principle into the design, which is the source of the compressed sides of the mouthpiece on Overton and similar whistles made since then.
Although it’s been a long time since I did the experiment, I did check to see if filling under the windway of a Generation whistlehead makes a difference in tuning between the octaves, and at that time, I didn’t detect any difference. I’m better equipped for such things now, so without repeating the experiment, I can’t say for sure how meaningful that result was.
Jerry, I should have mentioned that I was not suggesting that you personally experiment with the cavity. Especially not after that thread on head removal. I figured you would have things in your grasp just fine. I was just trying to add some “Hmmmm?” to the discussion. So before folks go filling up the entire cavity they may want to take a little extra time to play around a bit as they perform the poster putty tweak. Several well regarded makers have used a concave surface on their plugs for what they believe are good reasons.
The Overton example you cite may be a little different though. Still a good story though. The Overton plug face is still positioned at the windway exit. Heck, it is the windway exit. It does have to do with the effects of constricting or narrowing the bore near the point where the oscillations are generated. It has an effect similar to the Boehm taper, the Fajardo wedge or the Sandner spike. And I just don’t know if that is having the same acoustic effect on the upstream air space as the positioning of the plug face.
I noticed the effect more on low whistles in my experiments. So my personal conclusion on the high whistles was that they didn’t need the extra effort to help the tuning or the generation of the high notes. Of course I’m not talking about molded whistle heads on my own whistles.
Head removal … Was there something about head removal? I’m interested in that. I’ll have to see if I can find that thread.
In case anyone hasn’t figured this out already, I consider these discussions extremely valuable for exploring how these instruments work, how to make them, how to make them better. I welcome any and all such discussions, even if they can be contentious at times.
Edited to add: It may also be worth mentioning, this is my full time work.
You mentioned that blowing sharply through the whistle makes the shrillness go away, at least temporarily. This suggests that part of the problem is condensed droplets of breath moisture.
Make a solution of an ounce of water with about 2-3 drops dishwashing liquid (eg Dawn). Dribble some of this through the windway of the whistle, shake out the excess and you’re good to go. The detergent disperses the droplets before they get large enough to become a problem. Repeat as necessary.
Not a Gen (haven’t tried it on my Gens yet), but I did the poster putty tweak on my Walton, and while it eliminated the Walton’s desire to have the lower octave cut into the upper one and I’m well pleased, I do feel like now the upper octave tends to be flat (esp. from G upwards). I wonder if the concave putty method would improve that; shall have to try that next.
But the OP has already got a “decent” whistle - a Dixon, which he can play without having the issues he has with the Gen. Whilst it might be good to get more whistles, I don’t see what’s so magical about a tweaked whistle in that it will detect whether the Gen is a bad one. Different whistles require slightly different techniques - getting yet another whistle will tell you nothing about the Gen.
I figured you would have things in your grasp just fine. I was just trying to add some “Hmmmm?” to the discussion. So before folks go filling up the entire cavity they may want to take a little extra time to play around a bit as they perform the poster putty tweak. Several well regarded makers have used a concave surface on their plugs for what they believe are good reasons.