So I tried the search function as well as Senior Google but I don’t think I know how to search for it.
Does anyone know if there’s a whistle maker making double holes (for bell D specifically but maybe others as well) for an easier D#? Or ir there a reason why double holes are common in recorders and not for whistles?
…is there a reason why double holes are common in recorders and not for whistles?
Assuming you’re referring to the design now commonly marketed as a Baroque recorder, such instruments are expected to produce a full chromatic scale over their entire range. This is done with evenly voiced in-tune cross fingerings, in turn requiring a significantly more complex bore geometry than typifies a tin whistle. Cross-fingering isn’t possible on the lowest two holes, which is why they are commonly doubled.
A few reliable cross fingerings may be available on some whistles but half-holing is otherwise a technique that needs to be acquired. However, it is used to alter individual notes in what remain diatonic tunes, played on an instrument not designed to provide unrestricted chromatic flexibility.
Thanks for the response, but I’m not looking for the entire chromatic recorder design; just the whistle but with double hole on the E hole (and perhaps others) for a D# and whether this has been attempted before.
I’ve talked to Gary Humphrey about it and he says it’s not something he’s heard done successfully before and if it was, it’d already be popular, but even that was not a satisfactory answer. Which is why I’m butchering some PVC pipes now to see if and why I can’t get a D# hole on an otherwise whistle design.
I’ve never seen one on the market on a standard 6-hole whistle design, with a double-hole added.
One consideration I’d wonder about is the ability of the player to have good control accessing
a double hole on a metal whistle or high key whistle tube, whereas, on a plastic bodied recorder, the double hole positions
are flattened down for both holes so that the finger tip can easily slide across one or both holes.
One a 6-hole whistle in the key of high D or going down to perhaps alto A, the curvature of the tube surface
would put the double holes at different horizontal positions, and the ease of controlling access to both
positions, quickly, might be an issue. I’ve got a Yamaha recorder right here, and I’m relaying this issue
as I see it. On a wider body whistle, such as “perhaps” alto G or lower keys, the wider body with therefore
more of a flattened surface, might be more agreeable as a experience making agile motions on double-hole air channels.
You might want to contact the Thornton Whistle folks, who on their whistles do flatten the surface
of the whistle at the positions of holes (all 6 of them), which might remove that issue, at least. The
thicker wall wood body of their whistles allows for that alteration. Sliding a finger tip across
that area would be simple, and Thornton Whistles would make a killing by having a monopoly on the market
of the only chromatic or near-chromatic whistle, now that Bracker is for some reason as yet still unknown,
not yet back in production, with their 9-hole whistles which ARE chromatic. The Shearwater 8-hole “recorder C” whistle
is almost fully chromatic, but only available in the key of C, a fine key with a lot of public acceptance,
I like C major more than nation states and religions, but I wish they offered that chromatic feature on altos and lows as well.
Take a look at wise innovation in whistle design: 
Thornton Whistles: https://tommmymartin.wixsite.com/thorntonwhistles
That’s interesting! I’ll give them a shout.
I’ve thought about the hole arrangement and that’s certainly a factor. I was hoping for High D at least the holes would be close enough to be covered by the flesh of the finger regardless but now that I think about it, larger bore whistles might have it easier as you’ve said it. Barring that, there’s the clarke design.
The double holes on a recorder have a flat space to make it easy to cover one and not the other. This isn’t possible on a whistle, which has a much thinner wall.
The answer on the whistle is to half-hole the Eflat. The hole is generally large enough that with just a little practice doing that is just as easy as navigating two smaller holes on a curved surface.
It is absolutely possible on a whistle! All you need is a whistle with thick walls that can be flattened slightly. Many whistle makers make thick-walled whistles (particularly the higher-end makers who use wood instead of metal). Even some metal whistle makers such as Goldie and Kerrywhistles make whistles with thick walls that could be flattened for a double hole.
I do not know of any maker who does this for D# specifically. But I’m certain that it’s possible.
I own a Morneaux chromatic wooden whistle, and it has a double hole exactly as you describe, but for G and G# rather than D and D#. Look it up on Musique Morneaux’s website and you’ll see the model I’m talking about.
Anyone who tells you this absolutely can’t be done on a whistle is mistaken. It is true, however, that it might be very difficult/impossible to do this on a more traditional, thin-walled whistle. This, along with people being sticklers for tradition, is likely why double holes are not common on pennywhistles.
If you want a whistle like this, you’ll probably have to get it custom made. So find a maker (such as Morneaux or perhaps Goldie) who makes thick-walled whistles and is open to considering custom designs, and shoot them an email.
I am one of those wooden whistle makers. I just took a couple of quick measurements of a Moeck descant recorder. The wall thickness is 5 mm/0.2", and the flat for the topmost set of doubled holes is 11.5 mm/0.45". The walls of my whistles are 5/64 or a little south of 2 mm, which is fairly standard. If I tried to mill a flat (actually a cylinder) 11.5 mm wide in that wall, i’d be well into the bore. I’ve never met a metal whistle with a wall as thick as my wood whistles, so it won’t fly on a metal whistle either.
It is still certainly possible to just drill two holes in a round body. But there’s a reason they have a flat on a recorder, that’s because it’s much easier to cover and uncover the individual holes on a flat surface. (They make the D and Eflat possible on a traverso with a key for the Eflat.) One could make a whistle with a 5 mm wall, but that would be a significant research project, and all that work would result in a d whistle that has a diameter as big as a low-D whistle.
Something that just occurred to me is it might be possible to have holes for both the ring finger and pinky of the right hand. Kinda like a D+ whistle, but the same length as a d and with two small holes very close together. That might be something to think about when I retire.
That’s an interesting design idea sir! Let me know if you ever get around to that 
Well, I suppose Morneaux whistles must have unusually thick walls, because my Morneaux has a flattened double-hole on it just like a recorder. But it sounds like any other curved-windway whistle, and not that much like a recorder.
As for metal whistles, I’m sure it’s possible. You’d just have to make the walls thicker. Kerrywhistle Buskers have extremely thick walls…perhaps they could have a design like this?
I’m not sure I know what you guys mean. Do you mean a small hole for your pinky that, when lifted, turns D into D sharp? Because that already exists. I have a whistle like that (the same one; my Morneaux). A few other whistle-makers have done that as well. And yes, it’s an excellent design idea. It really ought to be standard, in my opinion (along with a right-hand F natural hole - also present on my Morneaux).
it’s an excellent design idea. It really ought to be standard, in my opinion (
It’s fine to get if you feel you need it, the overwhelming
majority of whistle players get all they want or need from the standard six hole configuration and have no wish to turn the instrument into something else. 
The overwhelming majority of whistle players are rather unambitious and generally don’t try playing chromatically or in odd keys. Those who do typically are not too meticulous about being exactly on-pitch with their half-holing, resulting in a lot of pitchiness. Yes, there’s the rare expert player who half-holes extremely well and can genuinely play the whistle like it’s an in-tune chromatic instrument. But this is extremely difficult and takes years and years of practice. What could be wrong with simply improving the instrument so that it can access those difficult notes more easily? There’s no downside to that…it just makes the instrument better. So people shouldn’t resist it, any more than they should resist adding keys to Irish flutes.
Wanting to play the vast repertoire of diatonic tunes on a diatonic instrument to the best of your ability does not reflect a lack of ambition.
So people shouldn’t resist it, any more than they should resist adding keys to Irish flutes.
I appreciate whistle makers who aim to make the best 6-hole diatonic whistle they can, balancing all the competing challenges, without looking to add design elements that their core customers aren’t looking for. At the same time, I am happy there are makers like Joseph Morneaux who explore other instrument styles for those customers who want them.
As I said: it’s fine if you think that is what you need for your own instrument. Advocating it should be standard is a different matter.
The beauty of the whistle is its simplicity. It is never going to be a fully chromatic instrument. As it happens, I have a fully keyed 19th century whistle. That is fine, it has the full range of accidentals but is it fully chromatic in the sense it able to play in many different keys? No, ofcourse it isn’t.
I like to think there is a reason why these things never caught on. And it is not because of a lack of ambition among players.
An overwhelming majority of whistleplayers play a type of music that doesn’t require a full range of accidentals, and the ones that are occasionally needed are fairly easy to half hole. Does that need practice? Ofcourse it does but once you put that in, it’s not particularly hard. Having the ambition to be fully at home with the instrument and make most of its strengths and weaknesses is all that is required.
Adding more holes or even keys is fine if you think you need it in your own music making. For most of us it would be a distraction, a complication and an unnecessary addition to the cost of the instrument.
I agree. In the 60s/70s, my uncle lived next door to a white South African man who’d had to leave because his anti-apartheid campaigning had landed him in trouble. I was learning whistle at the time, and he played me some old reel-to reel tapes of ordinary people playing music, including Kwela – a relative of jazz, where the ideal lead instrument might have been saxophone. But the players were from poor Black communities who apparently couldn’t afford shoes, never mind saxes, so they played tin whistles. They don’t seem to have worried about the limitations, they just got on and produced extraordinary music in a style they developed themselves.
There were countless Irish and British whistlers who had the same mass produced, poorly tuned instruments and became virtuosos on them anyway. A lot of the music I play is their gift to us, and the limited scales of flutes and whistles is coded right into it. I don’t hear a lack of ambition in the music or the playing of any folk tradition using simple woodwinds – quite the opposite, really.
Indeed, I never said that it did. I merely pointed out the fact that the vast majority of players aren’t very ambitious, so using “the vast majority of players” as a gold standard for how whistles should be made may not be the best option. I never said that ANY player who doesn’t want to play things in odd keys isn’t ambitious. That would be an absurd thing to say.
I appreciate whistle makers who aim to make the best 6-hole diatonic whistle they can, balancing all the competing challenges, without looking to add design elements that their core customers aren’t looking for. At the same time, I am happy there are makers like Joseph Morneaux who explore other instrument styles for those customers who want them.
Same here! I was expressing a personal wish that the chromatic models were more common. I have absolutely nothing against people making more traditional, 6-hole variants.
Ok, I guess I see your point. Maybe it shouldn’t be the standard; at the very least, however, I wish it was more common than it is. And I also don’t really understand why people are so resistant to it. As I previously mentioned, there are NO downsides to adding a couple more holes. It doesn’t make the instrument any harder to play - just more flexible. So the fact that there’s no compelling reason NOT to do it, combined with the immense advantages it offers whenever you want to play certain (admittedly uncommon) notes, makes me wish it was much more common than it is.
There’s no need to use a thicker wall just to get extra thickity around a hole or double hole - you could design an additional part to glue on, making it from delrin, resin or even wood.
But why not make and sell whistles without holes so that the buyer can drill them where they want them? Give them interchangeable tubes to plug into the mouthpiece and a set of standard templates to use as a starting point, and then they can experiment on cheap practice pipes before making the holes in a proper one. Whether they want them offset, doubled or chamfered, and whether they want 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 holes, all of that should be up to them, and it doesn’t take a lot of skill, particularly as it’s so much easier to tune then these days with the help of apps. You might even make more off such instruments than the ones you sell in finished form. The skillful work that buyers aren’t so keen to take on for themselves is in making the mouthpiece.
Incidentally, my mother’s fingers can’t get into the right places to play standard whistles, so I’m having to make one(s) specific to her with carefully designed offsets and placements, changing the hole sizes to enable this and make an instrument that she finds playable. There are also people with specific fingers that don’t work and who have to give up playing as it costs too much to commission an instrument made just for them.
At the very least, it makes the instrument harder to make, or at least make well. You need a compelling reason for that.