Agreed on all counts; but a point or two. Are forgiving and responsive necessarily mutually exclusive? It is funny how I now care less about the actual whistle, except for say mostly physical comfort. For example, I love my Abell delrin but occasionally find it a bit fat and round and difficultBloomfield wrote:I would like to hear about balance between octaves, responsiveness (and I like to hear a soundclip with clean ornaments to judge for myself whether I'd find the whistle sluggish), tonal characteristics such as chirpiness or breathiness. I like to hear about tuning between octaves (and I don't mean play the thing into a tuner; I mean: how much effort does it take to blow the top g, a, b into tune?). I thought easily most helpful thing the review mentioned was the ease of playing The Inner Light. I don't know what it means that the reviewer would be "comfortable taking this whistle into seisiun." (I think 'seisun' Comhaltas-Irish for session). When I read that the whistle is "well-behaved" in the second octave, I get worried because that reads like the whistle might be not very responsive. A fundamental issue here is that what a player wants from a whistle changes over time: In the beginning, many want a whistle that props up the player, that is forgiving. Once you don't need to be forgiven for your playing anymore, though, such whistles tend to hold the player back, and you'd want something immediate, responsive, a bit dangerous, if that makes sense.dfernandez77 wrote:Maybe it's a good subject for another thread, but I was looking for Peter's (and any other knowledgeable and critical whistle fan's) take on what would go into an "objective" review. What would be the most pertinent criteria, and how would they be measured or rated.
So what do you think?
to hold comfortably for extended periods (more than say 20-30 minutes), while having to pay just a tad more attention to the embouchure because of the stubby mouthpiece. Also, I took another whistle to an accomplished player who remarked that he didn't find it responsive enough; that's when I began to understand that whistles can be better measured in the hands of more accomplished players. Finally, this same player remarked initially that he wasn't overly fond of my favorite player at the time, but later changed his "tune" and acknowledged that it really suited me in that I could easily push this whistle as far as needed in any way. I guess that brings me to the original question re responsiveness/forgiveness?
Philo
Searching for keyword "review", author "Bloomfield" in the Whistle Forum is likely to bring up a good crop.
