A new make of wooden whistles

[JTC111]

Looking forward to hearing the clips.

[jemtheflute]

Interesting looking toots! Sign me up for the Euro tour too! (Inconveniently close to benhall1!)

[Deasan]

Greetings,
I am very excited to see that Yuri is making low whistles. He is a great scholar,outstanding craftsman and a joy to deal with. He made a wonderful set of bagpipes for me a few years back and I could not be more happy with the instrument and the service that I received. Look forward to hearing a sample and learning more.
Le deagh dhurachd (Scot. Gaelic: With best wishes),
Jason

[Wanderer]

Good looking whistles...the visual style reminds me a bit of the Bleazey.

[riverman]

There are all sort of sinister dealings going on behind the scenes, aimed at working out what happens next. (A flurry of PMs have been exchanged, and dark forces are stirring. ( add some boding slow music of your choice to the above.))
Updates to follow.

I'm adding the theme song to the movie "Jaws."

By the way, beautiful whistles!

[Yuri]

Can you play that on a whistle?
To answer some of the questions that arose. The shape is that of 17th century woodwind of more than one kind. In those times professional makers didn't seem to make much in the way of whistles, recorders being far more fashionable, but Mersenne for one does describe them. True, they are the French fingering type, which is a different kettle of fish, but still... The far more familiar bulbous recorder didn't emerge until the 18th century, with baroque overstated decoration applied to everything under the sun, including recorders and whistles. (flageolets, to be more precise). Well, I simply find the shape very elegant, and can't see why they shouldn't be made in that shape today.
The tuning is the simple kind. There is no metal pipe inside, just a socket and tenon, that's all. They are cottoned, not corked. There is a reason for both these decisions. I personally am not very happy about joining metal and wood much. The shrinkage/expansion ratio of the two are very different, and very easily can lead to splits in the wood, or the two becoming totally disjointed. The tiny brass bands on my joints are minimal, and they embrace only a very thin sliver of wood that is far more flexible than a more solid wooden tube.
The cottoning is preferred because cotton (wax-impregnated, of course) is more forgiving than cork. Change of weather, especially drastic change is accomodated much more easily by cotton. I have heard horror stories of recorder performers landing in some hot humid place after a cold, dry one, and trying to pull their instrument apart after playing. In one instance it's more-or-less a Laurel and Hardy scenario, with two people grabbing the two ends, bracing their shoes against the other's, and wrenching apart the instrument. Fortunately in that case, no damage was done, but only just. These instruments can be extremely expensive. Well, with cotton this still can happen, but far less likely.
To be continued...

[cboody]

OK Yuri, you've convinced me you know what you're doing. Add me to the list of folks interested in a whistle tour (I'm in the US).

Chuck Boody

[snakewriggle]

The shape is that of 17th century woodwind of more than one kind. In those times professional makers didn't seem to make much in the way of whistles, recorders being far more fashionable, but Mersenne for one does describe them. True, they are the French fingering type, which is a different kettle of fish, but still...

Wow, the internet is amazing. I had never heard of Marin Mersenne, but I see that his entire Treatise on Universal Harmony, published 1636, is online at http://imslp.org/wiki/Harmonie_Universe ... ,_Marin%29. The chiffy bit is Part II (8), Book V, Wind Instruments, pp. 229-244. It's in French, but there are many illustrations of funny-looking whistles/recorders/flageolets, plus fingering charts and some sample music to play.

Yuri, which of these beasties approximates a modern whistle to your way of thinking?

[Yuri]

That's a good question.
In short, te flageolet, which Mersenne spells with two l's. It is not quite the same as the whistle as we know it. To learn more, go here: http://www.flageolets.com/
Thing is, once they added a thumbhole and a little finger hole to the ancient 6-hole whistle, it became the "art" music's preferred instrument. The result was that while whistles were being made in big numbers through history, in Europe at least, professional makers more-or-less ignored it. To find any you need to go to rural, mostly self-made instruments.
The French flageolet is something of an exception. I really couldn't tell just how it emerged, but it did become fashionable in France alongside the recorder and flute. Anyway, if you look at the depiction of it in Mersenne's book, if you don't notice that the second and sixth fingerholes are circles rather than black dots, they are the same as modern whistles. The two fingerholes, by the way, are shown as white circles because they are on the back, not the front. They are two thumbholes. You really need to go to the above link to learn all about it.
The shape. It's not only Mersenne that I had in mind when making my whistles. The recorders of the age are all made very much the same, also some less known instrument as well. (eunuch flutes, for one, but you don't want to know what is required to play one.) ... ... (joke). Sixteenth century instruments are also following this general shape, but tend to be fatter, as they tend to have a smaller range, making the first octave much stronger, and a wider bore does just that. In the seventeenth century a larger range became more desirable, hence the slender instruments' emergence. (I'm writing like some old f*rt totally immersed in the subject, lecturing a bunch of students who cannot care less, and are texting even as the old f*rt speaks.) SMITH!!! CAN YOU REPEAT WHAT I SAID JUST NOW? GO OUTSIDE!!!
You have to remember this. Pennywhistles, as opposed to whistles in general, exist only since the year of our Lord 1843 (if I remember rightly) , when Robet Clarke made his first metal whistle. There was no production of metal whistles ever before that, even though it might just be possible that a very few have been made on a one-off basis. Of course wood and bone whistles existed for thousands of years, if not tens of thousands. There was a thread a while ago about a find in Germany, dated some 30 000 years old. There are also hundreds of bone whistles from all over Europe (and not only, of course) dating from the Middle Ages, and the Classical World. (Bored yet? I could go on, but Smith is getting really impatient.)

[Keltia-Art]

Congrats Yuri! They look very fine.

[Flavius]

(...)Sixteenth century instruments are also following this general shape, but tend to be fatter, as they tend to have a smaller range, making the first octave much stronger, and a wider bore does just that. In the seventeenth century a larger range became more desirable, hence the slender instruments' emergence. (I'm writing like some old f*rt totally immersed in the subject, lecturing a bunch of students who cannot care less

Some of us care enough to be taking notes, already... (blessed be the geek and all that)

[snakewriggle]

Interesting indeed, though perhaps this discussion merits its own thread.

Here's a simple but non-trivial question. What is the essential difference between a whistle and a recorder? Is it just the two extra holes, or are there other factors?

[Yuri]

The time, it seems, has come to reveal some taboo. facts.
First, recorders are not some sort of pariah instruments. You'd be surprised how many of the well-respected whistle players, among them ones on this very forum, are also well-respected recorder players. Yes, there seems to exist a snooty sort of attitude among recorder players towards the whistle, so don't go down that road, and imitate that attitude too.
Now, there are more differences. first of all, recorders are expected to be fully chromatic instruments, this being achieved by cross-fingering only. Some "shading" does occur, but only very occasionally, and only by really good players. The problem with designing a fully chromatic flue instrument is that you have to have relatively small holes, for the cross-fingering to be effective. Small holes also mean that the overblowing will be out of tune. (The larger the hole, the closer the second octave to true pitch.) To overcome this, changes in bore have been introduced, also undercutting of the fingerholes, sometimes drastic. The bores of the best Baroque recorders are very complex, they are basically conical, but not in a linear fashion,instead being a collection of cones and cylinders, with various steepness, down to the little finger hole, then either cylindrical or reverse tapered cone down to the foot. Renaissance recorders are similar, but tend to be fatter. Ganassi recorders (a kind of Renaissance one) have a very slight reverse taper throughout, with a drastic flare towards the foot. This whole thing is primarily for the chromaticism of recorders, but the aim is also to make the two (and beginning of the third) octaves more even in response. There is a rather audible diffeence in the quality of the first v. second octave in whistles. One of the recorders' aim was from the beginning to make it more even.
This were the technical differences. There are also the playing technique differences. These apply more to TIM v. recorder repertoire, as you actually can play the whistle recorder fashion. It's all down to intonation, breath control, embellishment styles and so on. The whistle evolved a playing style that is quite distinct from that of the recorder. Not necessarily everywhere and in all styles of music, , but the familiar style has.
Another boring lecture from the boring old f*rt.
Takes bow, and retires left stage, to the accompaniment of the sound of sqashing rotten apples and potatoes.

[DrPhill]

The time, it seems, has come to reveal some taboo. facts.
(....................................)
Takes bow, and retires left stage, to the accompaniment of the sound of sqashing rotten apples and potatoes.

No fruit wasted here, I found that very interesting. Thanks Yuri.

[Mr.Gumby]

You have to remember this. Pennywhistles, as opposed to whistles in general, exist only since the year of our Lord 1843 (if I remember rightly) , when Robet Clarke made his first metal whistle. There was no production of metal whistles ever before that, even though it might just be possible that a very few have been made on a one-off basis.

That is received wisdom from the Clarke whistle company anyway. With the many metal whistles that were in in use in Europe during the 19th century that go by and large undocumented, I tend to treat the claim of the Clarke company with some care. Norman Dannatt's History of the tinwhistle reads a bit too much like a company write up and too little like a serious piece of historical research into the history of the whistle in general to be take n at face value.