All thorough this week, for a reason unknown even to me, I’ve been playing with a notion of building whistles; but
due to my limited budget and tools I’ve decided to
stick to making low D’s only (thought it’d be easier to shape the lip / windway with bigger tools etc.)
…way-flat low E, and totally twisted up second octave notes.
Now I can understand how professional whistlesmiths take extra care and caution when building whistles.
Characteristics
Thickness of the wall
about 4mm.
Internal diameter
20mm.
Total Length
60cm
From the top of the fipple to the bottom
2.5cm
From the bottom of the fipple to the blade
1cm~8mm
Playing Characteristics
Fingering
Weird. The first octave is fine, but for the second ocave I have to use
a: XXO XXX
b: OOO XXX
I followed the spacings directed by the site http://science.univr.it/goccia/whistle/#Low, but is this strange fingering due to the small width (that is, the width of the blade), or the size of the fingerholes? Compared to other professionaly-made low Ds, the blades’ widths are narrower, as seen in the pics above.
Backpressure
Almost no backpressure at all. After having played these two for a awhile, a quiet Cillian or Dixon plays like Chieftain!
Tune
low E is unstable, too quiet and flat, and the second octave G is very, very flat. Low D and mid-D is to some extent satisfying.
Any ways I can possibly fix low E notes and the flatness/strange fingering requirement of upper octaves…??
I’ve had a good bit of trial and error(lots of error) whistle making, and had particularly large errors on my low Ds before I got it figured out. I can’t see your pictures, only those little red Xs, otherwise I might be able to offer advice. If low E is quiet and flat, making the hole larger should correct both problems, but I wish I could see the pictures!
I applaud the spirit of experimenters and
really enjoy seeing peoples efforts.
I have saved the picture of the fipples
and tweaked it a bit - to have a better
look.
I dont have much knowledge, but
I would say the window shape is not at all
right looking, especially with the one on
the right.
From what I have observed in low whistles
a wide and short window, rather than a
long one as you seem to have, might give
a better and more stable sound.
should’ve asked a friend of mine before starting this out. Today he (a plumber) gave me two pipes!
I took’em home and immediately set out building whistles (or wannabes’) again. I widened the X axis and shortened the Y axis, but the result was same again. Not good. I didn’t want to mess with the sizes of the holes (I’m no mathematician here), so I knew if I wanted to keep them as they are I had to do something with the fipple.
I have four lowwhistle-lookalike thingy now though, the best one I’ve made is the one I built for the first time in my life. Beginner’s luck!!
Prototype: relatively short X-axis, long Y-axis.
somewhat strong low D, weak low E, strange 2nd octave fingerrings.
Second Ver.: I used a superglue when adjusting the fipple and that was a mistake. Unplayable (a mere stick now it is).
Third: Wide X-axis, long Y-axis. 2nd Octave too breathy.
Fourth: Wide X-axis, long Y-axis (both larger than the Third). Strong and satisfactory 1st octave, but the 2nd octave is unplayable. Perhaps due to the hugeness of the distance between the end of the fipple to the blade.
Ah, so you’re using couplings for the outer part of the fipple end, yes? That seems to be what a lot of people do, but I always found it to make a whistle much too breathy and without any backpressure to speak of. I carve a channel into the inside of the main whistle PVC, or stick something to the inside of the coupling to make the windway shorter top to bottom. Of course, I’ve always used white PVC, and yours looks to be the gray kind, which I think has thinner walls, though I’m not sure.
Messing with hole sizes requires no math at all if you go about it right. I never use math if I can avoid it somehow. First make your fipple end so it’s playing nice low, second, and third Ds. Then mark your holes and make the E hole, starting small and gradually enlargeing it until it’s in tune. Then make the other holes the same way. If the E hole is bigger than on your other attempts, the F# hole might possibly end up a bit smaller, but it shouldn’t be a big deal as long as you tune each hole before going on to the next.
Fixing the fipple will make the whistle play better overall, and could help the upper octave’s tuning relative to the first, but I don’t think it’ll have much affect on tuning within octaves.
One of the reasons that almost all the whistles I’ve made require strange fingering for the second octave (i.e. out-of-tune 2nd octave when normally fingered) maybe be excessive thickness of the wall. The whistlebuilder’s site I referred to says he uses PVC pipes the wall thickness of which is about 1.5mm, but those I cannot simply find in the DIY shop (I tried three shops but the ones they had came in 5mm).
Did you undercut the fipple blade? You should undercut it by about half to bring the edge up to about 1/2 of the height of the airway. Note that doing that will make it shorter by half, too.
If you err, with the length of the fipple hole, err by making it shorter. That will favor the high register and the low register is a little more tolerant. After you get it tuned, then you can adjust the blade length to voice the lowest notes.
The fact that your upper register is out of tune suguests that the tone holes are to small. Move them closer to the end (away from the fipple) when you drill the pilot hole and then widen them to bring them into tune.
A more rectangular windway would be better, it is possible to get a good sound out of this shape. My early practice whistles were more squarish, later models are more rectangular. The one on the rigght is definitely too long.
The suggestion to under cut the ramp is good suggestion. This especially useful on whistles and have perfectly horizontal windways.
A few more suggestions.
Try filing more evenly around the sides, you have a curved windway there and so the blade needs to filed almost equally at the corners.
The “windsheet” (imagine the sheet of wind that travels out of the windway duct and approaches the blade). It change in size with the second octave, a well filed blade allows for this expansion. Otherwise the whistle may not behave as well in the other octave.
At the top of the PVC coupler, you should rub an exacto knife across it at a 45 deg. angle creating just a tiny hint of a chamfer (not too much now). This also influences octave changes.
