Flanna Whistles

JordanII · Post by **JordanII** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:22 pm

Has anyone tried a flanna tin whistle? (http://flanna.com/) How are they? Thanks!

~Jordan

CranberryDog · Post by **CranberryDog** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:49 pm

Well now I can say I've seen my first square holed flute. That's interesting. I would think square holes would facilitate slides and half holes.

crookedtune · Post by **crookedtune** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:49 pm

Wow, that's strange! Square finger-holes! It's odd that there are no pictures or prices. Anyone know what this is all about? Is it a gag?

JordanII · Post by **JordanII** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:50 pm

CranberryDog wrote:Well now I can say I've seen my first square holed flute. That's interesting. I would think square holes would facilitate slides and half holes.

Yeah, me too.

It's kinda cool though. I just don't like the idea of having a wood fipple.

JordanII · Post by **JordanII** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:51 pm

crookedtune wrote:Wow, that's strange! Square finger-holes! It's odd that there are no pictures or prices. Anyone know what this is all about? Is it a gag?

Good question.

There is a price though ($50). It says it on the side bar of the page.

anniemcu · Post by **anniemcu** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:15 pm

crookedtune wrote:Wow, that's strange! Square finger-holes! It's odd that there are no pictures or prices. Anyone know what this is all about? Is it a gag?

There's a picture right on the left side of the page.

flanna · Post by **flanna** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:17 am

Hi all,
I'm Emma from Flanna Tin Whistles. New to the forum.
As you may have seen from our web page (flanna.com) , well... um... we're new to Internet. We're not new to musical instruments though.
It's only recently we thought of having a web site. The email facility is handy. Yeah, the site could be much more informative. It all takes time though. Most of our time goes on designing whistles and making them. Not much time left for building the website, but we'll get down to it. Flanna's policy has always been to do all design and manufacturing “in house”.
Flanna started as an electronics business in the early 70's, designing sound effects for electric guitars! Our designs were sold out to a big manufacturer many years ago. With the trend in the music industry going from electronics to computers, Flanna moved over to wind instruments in 1978.
Our interest changed to researching, designing and making of historical European wood winds. We still make these. Our version of the Dutch “Dordrecht Flute c.1350” is our second most popular design.
In the mid 1980's there was a surge of interest in Celtic Music and we designed some “Tin Whistles”. When we started to research these, we found that most had poor tuning and weak sound. Back then they really were “tin” whistles. Our emphasis is on accurate tuning, beautiful sound and ease of play. We found that flat sided holes are much easier to cover. We also use wooden fipples from either cherry or red cedar to help achieve our authentic historical whistle/flute sound. The 2 piece, tunable D whistle is our most popular design.
And we really do make left handed models. Our “easy half hole” and 7 hole whistles can be made for both left and right handed play. The “easy half hole” models have a longer edge on the fingertip side of the holes.
So, we make specialist tin whistles. Our team are all musicians, with our tester Genevieve being a trained classical recorder player.
Please contact me (emma@flanna.com) or Sue (sue@flanna.com) for more info.

crookedtune · Post by **crookedtune** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:01 am

Welcome Flanna! I meant no offense by the "gag" comment! It was just a surprise to see something so new and different. As you well know, we're an obsessive (but harmless) bunch. We look forward to learning about what you've come up with, and wish you the best of luck in your endeavor!

TheSpoonMan · Post by **TheSpoonMan** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:16 am

Cool!

And we really do make left handed models. Our “easy half hole” and 7 hole whistles can be made for both left and right handed play. The “easy half hole” models have a longer edge on the fingertip side of the holes.

How is a left-handed whistle different from a right-handed whistle?

I like the half hole idea.

JordanII · Post by **JordanII** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:11 pm

flanna wrote:Hi all,
I'm Emma from Flanna Tin Whistles. New to the forum.
As you may have seen from our web page (flanna.com) , well... um... we're new to Internet. We're not new to musical instruments though.
It's only recently we thought of having a web site. The email facility is handy. Yeah, the site could be much more informative. It all takes time though. Most of our time goes on designing whistles and making them. Not much time left for building the website, but we'll get down to it. Flanna's policy has always been to do all design and manufacturing “in house”.
Flanna started as an electronics business in the early 70's, designing sound effects for electric guitars! Our designs were sold out to a big manufacturer many years ago. With the trend in the music industry going from electronics to computers, Flanna moved over to wind instruments in 1978.
Our interest changed to researching, designing and making of historical European wood winds. We still make these. Our version of the Dutch “Dordrecht Flute c.1350” is our second most popular design.
In the mid 1980's there was a surge of interest in Celtic Music and we designed some “Tin Whistles”. When we started to research these, we found that most had poor tuning and weak sound. Back then they really were “tin” whistles. Our emphasis is on accurate tuning, beautiful sound and ease of play. We found that flat sided holes are much easier to cover. We also use wooden fipples from either cherry or red cedar to help achieve our authentic historical whistle/flute sound. The 2 piece, tunable D whistle is our most popular design.
And we really do make left handed models. Our “easy half hole” and 7 hole whistles can be made for both left and right handed play. The “easy half hole” models have a longer edge on the fingertip side of the holes.
So, we make specialist tin whistles. Our team are all musicians, with our tester Genevieve being a trained classical recorder player.
Please contact me (emma@flanna.com) or Sue (sue@flanna.com) for more info.

I can see how it would be a lot easier to cover squared holes. I like the half hole idea.

It's a very cool design!

~Jordan

flanna · Post by **flanna** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:42 pm

[quote="TheSpoonMan"]Cool!
How is a left-handed whistle different from a right-handed whistle?
I like the half hole idea.[/quote]

The difference is due to the different hand possitions. Left handers have their left hand at the far end of the whistle, right handers have their right hand there.
The side that the hand is on in relation to the hole is very important on 7 hole whistles and also on whistles where the holes have been shaped for easier half holing.
On a 7 hole whistle the 7th hole is at the far end of the tube further down than the natural lowest note. So it is covered with the little finger which can't reach beyond the side of the tube. The hole has to be on the side that the lowest hand is on.
On the easy half hole whistles we make one side of the hole longer so that a lot of air is released with a slight rolling movement of the finger. The long edge has to be at the tip of the finger. So the holes are cut longer on different sides to suit the right or left handed player.
You might wonder why we bother catering for left handers. One reason is that other than our QC, all at Flanna are left handed. The other reason is that historically 7 hole whistles were made with 2 bottom holes, one on each side. The player would simply block off the unwanted hole with beeswax. In the pre-industrial years, before writing was well taught, there were equal numbers of right and left handers. This is evident in ancient paintings where flute players can be seen holding there flutes to both left and right sides.

swizzlestick · Post by **swizzlestick** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:08 pm

flanna wrote: We found that flat sided holes are much easier to cover.

OK. I will ask the obvious question. Why are square holes easier to cover?

flanna · Post by **flanna** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:41 pm

[quote="swizzlestick"]
OK. I will ask the obvious question. Why are square holes easier to cover?
[/quote]

This applies to the larger holes really. The ones more than ¼ inch wide.
When viewed from the side of the tube, a round hole has quite a dip between the top (fipple side) edge of the hole and the opposite edge. It's kind of like a U effect. The bigger the hole and the smaller the diameter of the tube, the greater this effect is. A certain amount of finger pressure is needed to seal the deeper parts of the hole edge.
On a flat sided hole this dipping U effect is greatly reduced and flattened out. We found the flat sided holes required less finger pressure to seal them.
Of course this could mean that there are awkward corners to seal. That would be true if the holes were really square or rectangular. The hole corners on our whistles are rounded to various diameters.
There are also acoustic improvements with flat sided holes. This gives us more flexibility with accurate tuning and specialist sounds.
This “hole shaping” takes more time than just drilling a round hole. We think it's worth it but it does push the price of our whistles up a bit.

Aanvil · Post by **Aanvil** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:52 pm

I'm intrigued.

How about sending one on a whistle tour for us to try out?

Flogging Jason · Post by **Flogging Jason** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:37 am

Sign me up!

Flanna, you'll get lots of feedback and, with any luck, an increase in business. There are many whistlemakers on this board who often do "tours" to showcase their instruments to people who might otherwise never get to play them.