I was the fellow for whom Jerry Freeman adjusted that C whistle. I had
tried to do it myself by flattening a D whistle, but it was terribly out
of tune in the upper notes. I did not own a C whistle, so took
advantage of Jerry's expertise while at Killington to get a C and
sharpen it. No need to modify the body or hole locations. 25 cents is
not too far and it tunes right on with the NSP. Also, retuning to its
original, it matches with an NSP in concert F.
On 1/31/11 5:44 PM, Richard Shuttleworth wrote:
Hi Matthew,
Don't be fooled by the nomenclature when talking about Northumbrian
small pipes. A set of pipes playing in F+ is actually playing about
75 cents below concert pitch i.e. if you finger a G on the pipes it
will show F+ on a meter. If you have a tuneable D whistle and can
pull the tuning slide out far enough, you should be able to get in
tune with a set of pipes playing F+. Conversely, take a C whistle and
push the tuning slide in to sharpen it. It depends on how good your
whistle is as to whether it remains in tune throughout the range.
Richard
ps SHAMELESS PLUG: The Pipers' Gathering will be featuring Mike
McHale and Andrea Mori teaching whistle and flute. Check out their
classes and then jam with some of the NSP players. See
www.pipersgathering.org for details.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Boris"
<[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2011 5:01 PM
Subject: [NSP] Tweaking pennywhisle to NSP F+ pitch?
At the Potomac piper's gathering a few weeks back, I noticed that few
folks had instrument set up to jam with the NSP players in their F+
sets, except for one pennywhistle player. Is there any standard
way to
play in F+ on a tinwhistle? Is it best to get an F whistle (low or
high), take off the head, trim a bit of the top of the body so you can
slide the head tighter? Or do the same on a C whistle to sharpen your
F scale (the "three fingers down" pitch)? Or do folks do the opposite
and get a 'whistle that can play a G scale and pull the head out to
bring the G down to F+?
Any advice on how to go about this, and which marques of 'whistle are
easiest to modify? Strings instruments are easy to play in F+ with,
clearly, though for my concertina it'd take a pretty specific re-tune
to play F+!
-Matthew
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