The Boy's Own Book of Indoor Games and Recreations / A Popular Encyclopædia for Boys

by C. Stansfeld Hicks; John Nevil Maskelyne; Gordon Stables

F-sharp, the next note, is got by unstopping 5 and 6; G, the next, by unstopping 4, 5, and 6; A, the next, by unstopping 3, 4, 5, and 6; B, the next, by unstopping 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6; C-sharp by unstopping all the holes.

Nothing can be easier of remembrance than this. The fingers are lifted from the holes one after the other, beginning at the bottom of the instrument, and with every finger you lift you rise to a higher note. But we have not quite finished the octave. How do you get the D? By leaving 1 open and closing the rest. And one note we passed, C-natural, how is that obtained? By unstopping 1, 5, and 6.

We have thus gone from D to D and got our first octave. How do we get the next? By blowing a little stronger, a very little, and unstopping on the same principle as before. Beginning with D, we have 1 unstopped, and then closing 1 and opening 6 we get E; opening 5 and 6 we get F-sharp; opening 4, 5, and 6 we get G; opening 3, 4, 5, and 6 we get A; and opening 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 we get B, just as we did before, the fingering being the same, but the notes, owing to the stronger blowing, being an octave higher. The next note, C-natural, is obtained by unstopping 1 and 6; the next, C-sharp, is given by clearing 1, 5, and 6; the next, D, by clearing 1, 4, 5, and 6. And so we have completed our second octave. But we have four more notes yet that can be safely sounded without giving our audience the ear-ache, and of these E is got by unstopping 3 and 6, F-sharp by unstopping 2 and 5, G by unstopping 2, 4, 5, and 6, and A by unstopping 1 and 6. We thus have a range of twenty-one notes, including the two C-sharps and three F-sharps, so that our instrument is by no means a defective one, and the only difficulty in playing it is the avoidance of overtones where the artistic merit comes in at the middle D. It is, however, easy to remember that if you blow softly you get the lower octave, if you blow firmly you get the higher octave, if you blow wildly you get the peculiarly metallic screech which has made the penny whistle the abhorred of civilised men.

And now, having cleared the ground—for it is not our place here to teach the ‘rudiments of music,’ and in showing how to produce the notes we have gone as far as we need in a ‘monograph’ such as this—we will unfold the little scheme we had in view when we started on this description, and introduce to our readers the Boy’s Own Mechanical Penny Whistle!

The principle of the whistle, and, indeed, of all instruments of the flute and flageolet type, being that certain of the holes in different combinations should be left open in order to give the different notes, and that the expression should be given by the modulation of the wind strength, it follows that the fingering is merely mechanical. A substitute for the fingering can therefore be found, and the simplest substitute we have come across is a sheet of wrapping-paper!

Take a strip of brown paper or manilla paper, just wide enough to cover the holes on the whistle, or rather overlapping about half an inch on each side of the end holes. Mark off on the paper at each end of the strip where the centres of the holes come, and rule parallel lines the whole length of the paper, so that as it pulls over the whistle each of the six lines will pass exactly over the centre of each of the six holes. On each side of these six lines draw a line so that the space between the two new lines on each side of the central one may be half as wide again as the diameter of the hole across which it is to move.

Now rule the paper crossways in lines three-sixteenths of an inch apart parallel to each other, and strictly at right angles to the lengthway lines. The strip is now ready for you to stop out your tune on the principle of the Jacquard loom or the American organettes now so common amongst us.

Fig. 1.

First find the shortest note the air contains—in our example, the ‘Blue Bells of Scotland,’ this is a quaver—and each of the ruled spaces cut by the lines through the whistle-holes must represent this interval of sound. Double the space will give double the interval of sound, and hence, if one space represents a quaver, two spaces will represent a crotchet. In the Blue Bells the first note is D, a crotchet; and as D is produced by unstopping 1, we fill up on the first line a double space. The next note is G, a minim; and, as G is produced by unstopping 4, 5, and 6, we fill up space on those lines, making them double the length of the first space, the note being double as long. The third note is a crotchet, F-sharp, and this is marked by blacking in 5 and 6. There is no need to continue this explanation in detail, as the method is sufficiently clear, and the notes are given in [Fig. 1], and can be compared with the scale. One space equals a quaver, two spaces a crotchet, four a minim, in this instance; but should a quicker tune be selected the spaces may have to be given values of less interval. The simplest plan is to find the shortest note, and then, seeing how many of it would go to a bar, to mark off the bars along the edge of the scale, and then fill in at your ease. In our example eight spaces go to a bar, because the shortest note is a quaver, and eight quavers make the semibreve. Having filled in the notes, take a sheet of glass, lay the paper on it, and with a sharp penknife cut away all the spaces you have blacked—in short, make a stencil of your brown paper.