I’ve long been curious about what would happen if you drilled a left-hand thumb “venting” hole in a large-bore high D whistle with an overly-harsh second octave, so I decided to try it myself. I tested it on some of my plastic whistles, and then I finally did it to my high D Kerry Busker using some clamps, a titanium drill bit, and some WD40 as lubricant.
I find that if I place the hole fairly far up the neck and make it extremely small, it works well for making high G, A, and B significantly quieter while not changing their pitch significantly. More precisely, opening the venting hole sharpens the second-octave notes but also allows you to play them with less air without dropping octaves, which effectively lets you play them quietly at the correct pitch.
Even though I totally estimated the position of the hole and didn’t measure anything, I actually love the results. The whistle is overall much more playable in the second octave. High B used to be outrageously loud and shrieky, but now it plays perfectly fine, as long as the venting hole is open.
The only downside is that the tone of the second octave changes a bit when you open the venting hole, probably because it introduces irregular undertones and overtones. But this is basically imperceptible when you’re playing in a group.
Anyway, I thought maybe people would find this interesting. Anyone else tried this sort of thing on Buskers or similar whistles? I imagine it could be helpful even on smaller bore whistles for giving you volume control.
Because I start out by making quenillas and then add whisle-head adaptors to them, there’s already a hole there that duplicates the note one octave up from the base note, and it can be partially opened like when you play a recorder to aid the production of second octave notes at lower volume than if it’s fully closed, but it does push their pitch slightly higher, so it would work better on an instrument with a flat second octave, and it also adds a bit of hiss. If you listen carefully there’s a bit of subtle hiss with those notes anyway, but an octave lower than the note you’re playing, which helps to mask it, whereas when you partially open the thumb hole you shift that hiss to a different pitch which can clash with the note you’re playing (as happens on the recorder).
Indeed, the hiss is present! But it’s hard to notice for anyone other than the player, I think.
Also, I surprisingly do NOT think the usefulness of this hole is limited to whistles with flat second octaves. In fact, the Kerry Busker has a very SHARP upper octave (too sharp, if anything), and I find that the venting hole actually allows you to play it FLATTER (i.e. more in tune). Counterintuitive, huh?
I think what’s going on is this: opening the venting hole makes the whistle very slightly quieter and sharper. But that’s only a secondary thing it does, not the MAIN thing. What opening the venting hole really PRIMARILY does is force the whistle to stay in the second octave, regardless of how much air is being used. This effectively allows you to play the entire second octave even FLATTER than you otherwise would be able to, because you can play it with the same amount of air as the first octave (or even less air) without the notes dropping. Of course, flatting the notes like this will also lower their volume a lot - but that’s a benefit, in this case.
So yes, a venting hole is certainly useful on a whistle with a flat second octave, because opening the venting hole (and changing nothing else) will sharpen the second octave a bit and maybe make the notes a tiny bit quieter. But I actually think it’s even MORE useful on whistles like Kerry Buskers with naturally sharp second octaves, because it allows you to play in-tune with significantly less air, making the two octaves about the same volume as each other.
Thats an interesting idea. I wonder why we haven’t seen it used often on whistles, even though other instruments such as recorders, quena etc use it? Taming those high notes no a whistle, particularly a wide bore one, is an admirable goal.
I was also wondering what might be the optimum location for such a hole, acoustically. If you want to prevent a lower octave note from playing and want to avoid clashing overtones, it would seem that placing it at the pressure anti-node for the note in question would be the best location. Roughly speaking, this would be half way between the window and the first open hole that vents the note. Having a vent hole here prevents the pressure from fluctuating in the bore at that location, which prevents the wave form of the lower note from forming.
But of course, you might want to use this for more than one note, but then you can’t really identify a single optimal location. But you don’t really need it for all the notes in the second octave, just the highest one or two, say high A and B and maybe C. This would narrow down the zone for optimal placement. You could calculate the location of the pressure antinode for each of the notes low A, B and C, and then mark that region on the whistle and drill a hole in the middle of that zone.
But would that location be suitable ergonomically? This would be the other trade-off to factor in.
Well, just thinking out loud here. Curious minds want to know!
Where the recorder and quena have the thumb hole works fine for all notes of the second octave. It might be that you could make some subtle reduction of the already subtle hiss or shift the place of minimum hiss to different notes by moving the venting hole, but put it higher up and it’ll need to be operated by a key, which would be a high cost for any trivial gain.
I don’t know if it’s normal for quena players to use that hole for venting purposes, other than for the lowest note of the second octave which can misfire with that hole fully closed, but you can also vent the top hole on the top side for the same purpose and use the same method on whistles with no thumb hole. The main purpose of the thumb hole on the quena seems to be to facilitate some of the 3rd octave notes, but it also provides a useful alternative way of playing the lowest note of the second octave. A good reason for not having it on a whistle is that condensation can drip out through it unless you build an interior ridge into the bore to divert the flow around that hole, which is easier to do with the big-holes of quenas which can provide enough access to make internal modifications, although you could insert a short tube into a venting hole to raise the interior opening above the bore’s floor.
Note: on my chromatic instruments I use the thumb hole for the note a semitone lower than the base note of the second octave and I make the top hole on the top side play the note another semitone lower. It is able to perform the same venting job.
Yes, I should have mentioned that another potential drawback of what I did is that it does make for a slightly awkward thumb placement that’s rather high up. I tend to be very tolerant of whistles that require weird finger placement, but many people aren’t, so this would be a drawback for them.
Perhaps this could be remedied by making the hole even smaller and further down the body of the whistle - but I don’t have a drill bit small enough to test this.
For whatever reason, this hasn’t been an issue at all for me. Perhaps it’s because the hole is so small. Since it is only used for venting and not for getting an extra note, it doesn’t need to be large.
I should also mention that Clover Flutes currently makes whistles with this exact design: a very small thumbhole used only for venting the second octave. I’ve never owned a Clover Flutes whistle with this feature, however.
(For what it’s worth, I’ve also never had this condensation problem on recorder, but I have no explanation for that.)
