Saturday, June 11, 2011

Simple Gifts


I'm learning a great deal about clay whistling technique by watching myself play. I'm pretty sure it's poor form to cross one's ring fingers over one's pinkies, and that double-jointed bit with the bird finger on my right hand needs some straightening out. Fortunately for me, no one has composed any Hanon or Czerny-esque finger exercises for chicken whistles yet (and I'm not going to fill that gap).

On the to-do list: a whistle with an octave range, and a whistle with two resonance cavities to allow playing in harmony (say, a simple tonic/dominant egg coupled with a five-note chicken). A potter-musician can dream, anyway. And I think it's time to finally set up that extruder and try my hand at making some penny whistles...

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