Whistle for Pipers

[nigelgatherer]

I have been asking for years why they haven't made a whistle which pipers can play. In other words, an instrument on which you could use pipe fingering so you could play all your tunes, but it's actually a whistle.

Well, I've just come across the very instrument by accident:

www.carbony.com/Whistles.htm

It's a little expensive (high D $175, low D $295), but just the dab for pipers who don't already play whistle.

[Jack Campin]

There have been earlier ones -

Elf Song: http://www.elfsongwhistles.com/

John Bushby: http://www.shearwaterwhistles.com/#/photos/4530177658

The Elfsong is by far the cheapest and has a good reputation.

[NiallAnderson]

When I started trying to play whistle (after learning smallpipes for a while), the advice I was given by a couple of people who play both to a very high standard was not to try to play the former like the latter - treat the whistle as its own instrument, and don't try to play things the same way. Ornamentation, technique and style that works well on one doesn't necessarily transfer well to the other. Having that extra hole might be a bit dangerous in that regard...

[Jack Campin]

I think the idea of chanter whistles is to use them a bit like a practice chanter - they aren't supposed to be a "normal" whistle used for performance.

The big difference between any flute-family instrument and a bagpipe is that a pipe will respond instantly even if you leap right across the available range and a flute will have a wee think before emitting the new note. Complex and wide-ranging gracenote patterns don't work. The ocarina is a bit faster to respond than other flutes but still not quite fast enough.

Which is a plug for the update I've just done to my Italian ocarina page - http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Ocarina/ . I include a comparison of the fingering patterns of the Highland pipe and the G ocarina. Making an ocarina to finger exactly like the Highland pipes is acoustically impossible but there are some useful similarities.

It would help if ElfSong had even one non-trivial, well played, genuine Highland pipe tune among their samples - The Conundrum or something at that level - but they don't. Not encouraging. John Bushby (Shearwater Whistles) has no samples at all of the piper's whistle. I heard Wendy Arrowsmith playing one but she wasn't exactly pushing the envelope with it.

[alistair]

(26-10-2011 12:40 AM)Jack Campin Wrote:  ... I heard Wendy Arrowsmith playing one but she wasn't exactly pushing the envelope with it.

Well I guess no matter how hard she pushed the envelope, it would still have been stationery ...

[nigelgatherer]

Good one, Al.

[alistair]

Not original, but stuck in my mind when I first heard it.
Couldn't resist this chance to use it: you have to take these opportunities when you can ...

[Trish Santer]

Put your stamp on it Alistair!

[Jack Campin]

I can't lick that.

[John Kelly]

(28-10-2011 12:53 AM)Jack Campin Wrote:  I can't lick that.

Does this pass as a humorous posting, then?