A Whistle Challenge for Peter Laban

[MTGuru]

Peter, since you're fond of posing challenges and puzzles to other people, perhaps you should try one yourself. That seems only fair.

So here it is, 10 clips of different whistles that happened to be sitting in my whistle rack and jar. The tune is, of course, Mouse in the Mug, covering the compass from bell D to high b. I played the parts AB without repetitions to keep the files small. That should be enough for a good listen.

The recording setup: Shure SM-57 microphone and Behringer Xenyx board/preamp to SoundBlaster card and SoundForge, direct to hard disk. Wav files recorded at 44.1/16-bit stereo, and transcoded to 128k mp3 with Lame. Whistles are fairly close-miked with a tiny bit of compression and reverb to compensate for poor room acoustics, and normalized to reasonable volume. Equalization is dead-flat, with no additional enhancements. With 2 minor exceptions, the instruments are unaltered from their off-the-shelf configurations, and are as I usually play them. I didn't even attempt to tune them here.

The mp3 clips are fairly small, around 350 kB, for your dial-up connection. I randomized the order of the clips by throwing dice. As with your original quiz, there may be extra noises at the end of clips, which may or may not be significant.

To echo and paraphrase your own words ... Point to prove: can you identify the whistles? Can you yourself do what you expect of others? If one's dislike of certain types of whistles is based on acoustic acuity and knowledge, not dogma or extra-musical considerations, then it should be obvious, shouldn't it?

Now show us what you're made of. This is your chance to put some beef to insinuations nod nod wink wink that ignorance rules the day at Chiff & Fipple, and wisdom is the province of the few. Show us how it's done. Make your point now otherwise maybe hold your peace forever, as you yourself said.

The clips are here:

http://www.box.net/shared/neoxdzls04

Of course, everyone is welcome to have a go at this. Good luck!

[CranberryDog]

I like number nine, number nine, number nine, .... sorry. It's got a good beat and you can dance to it.

As they say down here in Texas, never bring a whistle to a gun fight ...

But wait, I don't even own a Generation or cheapie; I got one of them designer whistles (good for playing sessions at Starbucks); so I guess I'm not smart enough to guess.

[Wanderer]

I somehow think Peter's not going to take you up on this..


I gave them all a quick listen while my son was getting ready for school. #7 sounded like it had a character I normally associate with Hoovers, but when I listened again, I didn't hear it. I'll have to go back and give them all a good listen.

[pancelticpiper]

Wow that is great MT!!! The same tune, played the same way, so we can compare the whistles themselves.
I have no idea as to makers, but here's how I rank how much I like the sound:
#2 this just sounds somehow more "Irish" (whatever that means) to me. Its voice has a certain something I really like.
#4 nearly as nice as #2.
Then there's a bunch that are OK but don't stand out from the crowd, #s 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Perhaps #8 is the best of this lot.
#5 was the only whistle I actually disliked: too pure, a "plasticky" sound.
With my known preferences, I might guess that the whistles I favour are Generations or perhaps Feadogs.
OK Peter, I took a whack, now the ball is in your court!

[free-feet]

Well they all sound like perfectly good whistles to me, apart from number three which has an occasional nasty sound on one of the notes.

I'll have a go at 5 as a Susato and 8 as a Gen. Other than that i ain't got a clue.

[Guinness]

Regrettably all these whistles clearly came from the dud pile given the extraneous noises that punctuate the end of the clips. The Doh! was particularly distracting and obviously non-Trad.

My guess is 3, 6, 9 and 10 are "cheapies", though one might be a Shaw (#3?) which is pricey for what it is. There's probably a Copeland in a Sindt in there too. Nicely done.

edit: huked in fonix

[Rob Sharer]

Clever to turn it around on Peter, but I don't recall his making the sorts of claims that he typically rails about himself. Clever, but disingenuous. Cheers,

Rob

[Romulo]

I think this is ridiculous. As Peter had said before in a reply to this thread (that he probably erased after realizing the uselessness of discussing such nonsense), if you're not simply joking, you missed totally the point of what he wanted to say and to be sincere, I got quite surprised and disappointed that this kind of misunderstanding came from someone that appears to have some culture/knowledge like you.

I got really happy that Peter came back to post at this forum and I don't think that he assumes that knowledge is a privilege of a few as you ironically say. On the contrary, he has contributed during many years with real knowledge to this forum instead of just showing off and going for personal attacks.

If you want so bad to prove that ignorance doesn't abound in this forum, you are like giving a declaration of ignorance with a personal attack to someone that deserves respect and gratitude. It was probably because of cynical attacks and lack of respect accumulated during several years that made him "take a break" of such ingratitude, and I wouldn't like that he stopped posting again...

I'm not saying I'm any "enlightened" one, but I'm capable of assuming my ignorance and I think people should be more humble and stop thinking they already know too much to stop respecting the ones with more experience. I couldn't distinguish the whistles in Peter's thread, with exception of maybe one that I didn't like much the tone, but that's all... and I think one of Peter's intentions was exactly this, that generally from the audience side, there isn't much difference in perceptions, so his main point is exactly the opposite of what your "wisdom" was capable to realize. I don't think he expected hardly that people could identify the whistles and that's a similar premise with experiments that many people might have already heard about, for example, with flutes made of different materials (including concrete) and that couldn't be distinguished by the audience.

One of his points might be that many people insist in favoring expensive whistles when a basically similar(or indistinguishable) tone can be obtained in a cheap whistle. Anyone can hear fantastic music in Ireland with Generations or other cheapies being played not only by excellent musicians like Peter but in the hands of very young children that would make some "pseudo sapiens" blush.

The point might be not something like "Hey, you fools, can't you guess what I'm playing", but "stop fooling yourselves (sometimes wearing a mask of knowledge, sometimes behind an expensive instrument, whatever) and go practice and learn to do good music.

I heard Peter clips for the joy of it and I already expected that I
wouldn't be capable to distinguish them. I heard them (and didn't feel like
hearing yours) because despite of being an ignorant beginner, I trust in his knowledge and experience and can sometimes differentiate between someone who helps and someone who boasts.

[susnfx]

MTGuru, you've missed Peter's point entirely.

Susan

[fearfaoin]

Clever to turn it around on Peter, but I don't recall his making the sorts of claims that he typically rails about himself. Clever, but disingenuous.

He hasn't posted much in the last year...
Peter's been known to call SweeTones "toys". I thought about doing the same
as MTGuru, but I'm pretty sure that Peter could tell the difference between
a Generation and a SweeTone, and it wouldn't really prove anything... The
point is preference, not the differences in whistle sounds, or lack thereof.

[Wanderer]

Well, I don't think Peter's point is "there's no variation in whistle quality", since he clearly has said there were several times. And I don't think it's "you can't tell whistles apart on recordings" since he's clearly admitted that putting other makes of whistles in his recordings would stand out like a sore thumb.

Peter brought up his challenges in the context of "here's a good generation and a bad generation" posts, so I'm guessing that he's saying "you can't tell a good whistle from a bad whistle on a recording", but without giving a lot of parameters there. His first recordings (which he said weren't trying to prove anything, but then later tried to use to prove something) weren't any kind of real example of this, though.

I don't think he's gone to Custy's and picked a bunch of crap whistles and played them alongside good whistles. He's just playing what he's got already, which isn't a good indicator there, since he's already told us what kinds of whistles he favors when picking them out. So clearly he can't be trying to get us to tell whether nor not he's playing bad whistles. He's instead just playing whistles that he's hand-picked that sound alike, and then wants to use that to prove some kind of point. What? That the whistles he favors that sound alike do indeed sound alike? Heck, I have no problem conceding that.

Maybe someone could clue me in to what the actual point is. I'm guessing he has a point, since he seems to be a little worked up. I just can't figure out exactly what it is.

People can clearly hear whistles that are out of tune. I've posted clips in the past where folks have said things like "The 7th sounds flat on that whistle", when that was absolutely true. I've also heard whistles recorded that were scratchier, hissier, or otherwise not to my liking on recordings. So clearly, you can tell something about a whistle from a recording.

Listening to MT's clips, I can hear distinct differences among the whistles, even on the cheap 97 cent walmart earbuds I use at work.

1: a little hiss/chiff esp in the upper octave, though fairly clean at the very top.
2: a lot more hissy than #1, in both octaves. I'm not particularly fond of this one.
3: kind of hollowy-sounding. I don't hear a lot of musical character in this one..kind of "Flat" sounding.
4: fairly hissy throughout. I don't like this one either. Sounds like he's having to push it a little.
5: a lot less hissy. A hint of reediness. Louder. not much start of note chiff either.
6: I hear what I think of as "microsqueaks" at the beginnings of some notes. I've noted this same kind of character in Walton's guinness whistles before. Not very fond of this one either.
7: a lot purer in the 2nd octave than the first octave. With my cheap headphones, this sounds a little windier than it did at home and I don't hear that "hoover character" at all.
8: Sounds like a fairly crisp, responsive whistle.
9: kind of feadog-ish sounding.
10: Kind of standard-cheapie sounding.

This morning, on my speakers at home, I liked #8 better.

[CranberryDog]

In 1976, I was given a Clarke by my pipe major; my first whistle. Later that year, I found a Generation.

I preferred the sound of the Generation and the Clarke went to the sock drawer.

Years go by, the glaciers recede and I discover Michael Burke; it was 1999.

What happened next? You guessed it, the Generation went to the sock drawer.

Was it because I despised the Generation that had given me decades of delight? Of course not!

It simply sounded better and played better.

It would be nice if we could relax a little and not have such terribly thin skins. My previous post referred to the Beatles' Revolution #9, followed with a Dick Clark Show contestant quote; then a Texas saying about gunfights that Laban had previously alluded to; and a general poke at elitism. Maybe only Americans would get this; or at the least, people over 50.

At anyrate, MT Guru, thanks for the laugh and good humour.

[Denny]

Maybe only Americans would get this; or at the least, people over 50.

pidgin holed again...

[emtor]

Maybe someone could clue me in to what the actual point is

agreed,-what is the actual point? What are the opposing views in this discussion? Maybe it would be OK to sum it all up?

[eskin]

OK, we've run the 10 samples through WhistleMark 1.0, and the robots have decided that the only whistle worth playing is represented by the following recording, which the robots put together themselves, because, well, frankly, they have a lot of free time on their hands waiting for the babies to arrive on the rafts from China:

http://members.cox.net/eskin4/omniwhistle.mp3