Thursday, October 07, 2010

Even more whistle / flute creation

I decided to revise the bend in the copper Bass whistle, and added a neck strap. The strap consist of the three pieces: a sleeve of bicycle innertube around the instrument, with a key-ring slipped in, and a clip-on strap.


 The playing position with the lower bend was OK, but this more conventional bend feels even better. Now to spend more time playing this thing and getting used to the finger hole spread...

 Time to give this beauty a final polish and then a spray coat of lacquer.
Next up: The low D pvc whistle sounds quite nice, and since it has a detachable head joint I decided to make two more bodies for it, one being in D minor (same scale as D but just a flatted 3rd), and then a weirder one in what I finally figured out is called "Phrygian Dominant".  This mode has lowered second, sixth and seventh notes that result in a scale used in lot of Arabic and Middle Eastern music. 

The only challenge with this last one is the large reach to the last hole! Since the third note (F#) is in the usual place and the next note is a minor third down to the flatted second I have one heck of stretch. This is being dealt with by using my pinky finger instead of the the third finger, and I also use this technique on the Bass whistle, and does not feel odd since I'm so used to playing recorder when the pinky is used for the bottom note. As a matter of fact, since my third finger sits idle with this technique I could be silly and add a hole under it, resulting in a major / minor scale!

D major on top, then D minor, then the Phryg.-Dom. scale.