First Dozen To The Engraver

Just a quick note to report the contents were intact and there is enough pipe to make 104 D whistles plus a lesser number of C and Eb bodies. I made up a dozen D whistle blanks, C and Eb bodies and dropped them off at the engraver yesterday. I should have them back next Sunday.

I didn't want to commit any more pipe at this stage, since I may find I want to adjust the length of this part or that before making more.

I took some photos but they are stuck in the camera. I can't find the cable with which to let them out.

But I do have a sound sample of the prototype which uses all the notes below 2nd octave C: Carey playing three jigs.

Take care,

Carey

Arrival

The package from Phil arrived yesterday, which was quite good time to cross the Atlantic. Here's the courier punching up the document for me to sign to accept the shipment. Out man here used to be a musician in the Cleveland area where I lived until going of to university. Small world. Perhaps he will come catch a session sometime. 

The pipe sections can roll over one another in the box, so the ends have no internal support. The result being a landing on the edge opened up the box a bit. I don't think anything went missing, but I have not opened it up yet, knowing after I do so it will consume all of my time. And the grass is getting really tall and I have an errand to run today. But after my grass cutting and errand I will open the box and dive in to the project.

Is mise,

Carey

Prototype Progress

 Yesterday I decided to get a jump on the Parks Black/Ninja/Shadow/Stealth whistle project before the box of material from Phil arrived. I had one section of pipe of sufficient length to make another body for Prototype #1. So, since I had not yet tried to place the tone holes in locations appropriate for this pipe, I decided to get as many tries out of the existing body as I could. 

 Above is the prototype as it was. 

I cut a piece of all-thread (I'm not even going to ask what it's called in England) and made some square Delrin nuts to use as stops for the hole template. I put the nuts on the rod in positions matching the holes in the prototype, then played the prototype into Flutini, chewed on the exported data with Polygraph, and got the RTTA plot I expected, inclined from one end to another since the ID of this pipe is different from that which the template was created for. 


So I cranked the nuts around on the rod into positions that I thought would be better and drilled a set of holes opposite the exiting holes. Did I mention I engraved "Set 1" on the side with the original holes? Gotta keep track of who's who here. It's easy to get confused when they all look the same. 


After de-burring/undercutting the new tone holes I taped over the old set of holes and played the whistle for the computer. Better, but still a way to go. 

Above is the hole template and Prototype 1, Body 1 with three sets of holes. 

Repeat with "Set 3" see above with two lengths of tape covering sets 1 and 2.  Not too shabby sounding, and the plot confirms it. 


So I make a final adjustment to the hole template and went for the new section of pipe. I could have done another set in the old pipe, but frankly I was running out of time if I wanted to take this whistle to the session that I was about to attend. That, and the "spare" holes, even tho taped over, are perturbations in the air flow so if you get close, one needs to go with a fresh section of pipe. 

The last hole arraingement going into the drilling jig.

Locking the template in the jig. The sliding car which holds the whistle body for drilling is see on the right here. It slides in the grooves of the aluminium extrusion under my bench-top drill press (pillar drill.)

Here's the last hole, with the clamping mechanism of the sliding car on the left, and the brass pin (like the knurls?) that locates against those Delrin nuts. 

Not perfect, but not too bad either. Good enough for folk music as the saying goes. 

People who played the prototype like the sound, but said they needed some time with the whistle to see how they really liked it. 

I also would like to make the mouthpiece and markings the same cream color I'm using on the Bb whistle. That may be a challenge given the dims the CPVC is available in. But I'll have a go and see if I can manage it. 

Little Pieces From Big Pieces

Phil sent these photos yesterday, which is when he got the package off. As you can see in the photos, Phil is a man all about music. Tools? Yeah, he can probably handle those as well, but he's having a little fun with us. Catch Phil on BBC Lancashire on Fridays.  

(click any photo to enlarge)

I notice his tape measure (do the call it that in England?) is in centimeters only. Mine is in inches only. However most of the smaller rulers and things have both imperial and metric units. Is that the case in England too, or is it only here where we're too darn lobbied to make sensible decisions? 

Careful Phil, the mechanical dinosaur looks like it's winning! 

Not a bad sized parcel. If I understand Phil's e-mails, he's done two rounds of cutting 30 meters each time following the schedule I gave him. So there is 60 meters of pipe in that box. 


Cutting Schedule
Pipe   Cut
 1     8x375
 2     8x375
 3     8x375
 4     8x375
 5     8x375
 6     8x375
 7     10x300
 8     10x300
 9     10x250,  1x375
10     3x375,   5x300, 1x250


I planned it out so we could get the most whistles out the ten three meter pipes, going for a balanced mix of D whistles and C and Eb bodies. We are not going for any Walkabout models in this iteration. the are similar, but require an additional cm or two to cut the joint between hands. 

A man after my own heart. Riding his bike to send off the pipe sections. I also deliver most of my shipments to the local post office via my bicycle as well. Maybe I'll get a photo of that sometime too. 

Black High Whistle Development

I have been wanting to make some high whistles in black, but try as I may, I could not find a source of suitable pipe in America. I found one possible source a couple years ago, but they just sold the last of their black stock and were not ordering more. A few months ago I found a source for 1/2" PVC in black, but the smallest they had was schedule 40, so I made some alto whistles in black. (Which you can see on my web site at http://parkswhistles.com/AltoWhistles.html
Recently I found a web site that will make "any size, any color" PVC shapes. OK, this should be it. And it would be, if I wanted to purchase 20,000 feet of the stuff. Yes, you did the math right - almost four miles. I'd have to put it in my will.

Quite a while ago, I did a swap with a "web pen-pal" Jem, a wooden flute player, restorer and pvc piccolo maker in Wales, UK.Jem sent me a few lengths of the pipe to experiment with. It would make a nice whistle. But I couldn't find anything like it over here, and I didn't feel right asking Jem to get involved, as I didn't want to put the burden of a regular commitment on him.

One of my dealers, Phil Brown at Big Whistle Music in the UK, called a couple weeks ago and while we chatted he mentioned that he thought he could sell more of my whistles in black than white in Europe.

"Maybe the white color doesn't cross the Atlantic well" he suggested.

"No, I think people would like a black whistle here too" I replied, "But I can't find the stuff over here."I told Phil about the pipe from Jem, which is sold as electrical conduit in the UK. I had the brand, size and everything, and they sold it all through Europe and Asia from the looks of the web site, but nothing in North America.  
 

So began Phil's quest for the pipe, and after only a single day I see the following in an e-mail from Phil: "I found where I can get it, but they have to order it in special. If I waited a day to place the order, it would come in a week later. So I placed the order before speaking with you. They only sell it in ninety meter lots. I hope that's OK, because it's too late if not."

HA! My man Phill seems as excited about this project as I am.

Suspecting it might make an interesting tale to follow in real time, I plan to report on the progress as the material arrives, comes across the Atlantic and is turned into the first batch of black Parks high whistles. So as milestones are reached I'll post some photos and reports to this blog.

From what I can tell having played around with a short section of the material I got from Jem, the whistle will sound enough different from the white Every that I don't want to use the same name. Plus the material will be more costly with the shipping over etc. so it will be a different price. So it will need a new name. The first name to come to mind is "Ninja", because of the blackness. Not sure that's Celtic enough.

Thoughts?

Here's Phill taking delivery of the first ninety meters. 

(Click on image to enlarge)

Another shot of what ninety meters of 17 mm conduit looks like. 

That should keep me busy for a while. 

Letter To A Beginner

From time to time I get questions about my whistles, and I'm happy to tell people about them. Considering that for every person who asks there are several others who wonder, I thought I'd just put my reply to Mike on my blog where everyone can read it. 


Thanks for asking Mike!

Hello Mike,

Yes, while an advanced player will find a lot to like in the Every Whistle, it is also quite suitable for a beginner. In fact, I was a beginner myself when I designed it, and thus I wanted it to be easy to play. Air requirements are low for the volume. The only way to use less air is to make a smaller wind way, which would make the whistle quiet to the point where it would not be useful in a session. 

That said, by closing the "Parks Tone Ring" down, not only do you make the whistle quieter, but you also reduce the air requirements. 

My whistles are appropriately loud and shrill at the top of the second octave when the Parks Tone Ring is fully open. Not as loud and shrill as some however. In time, when you learn to finesse the whistle you will come to control and appreciate this character as appropriate to the music and the instrument. But by closing down the "Parks Tone Ring", the upper octave is the first to be tamed, giving you a nice somewhat airy sound without reducing the volume very much. 

At the other extreme, if you close the Parks Tone Ring until it is open only a crack you can play at a whisper. I've had one customer who wrote to thank me for the tone ring because it allowed him to practice on a cross-country flight without disturbing the passengers nearby. But my favorite was a fellow who wrote to tell me he could play in bed while his wife was asleep! 

So yes, by all means, try one of my Every Whistles. If you find it not to your liking you may return it.

Here is one of my customers, Tiffany, playing "An Feochán" (Gentle Breeze) on an Every D whistle. [Click to play]

You can't rush the training of your muscles. You just have to play, play and play some more, and the skill and ability will accumulate within you. Only play when you enjoy it, and put the whistle down when it is no longer fun. You need to do this to allow your body to assimilate what it has learned during the session. I find several shorter sessions per day are better than one long one. 

In the early stages you are teaching your body how to make the sound you want, so the notes of a tune or song are not as important as just making the sounds. Play things you know by heart. Don't struggle with dots on a page and try to learn to map them to finger positions. This will only be a liability in the future, involving way more of your brain than is helpful. Learn the tune so you can hum or whistle it with your lips before you try to play it, then play without looking at the dots, unless you just can't figure out what that one note is - then identify the note and put the paper away again. 

A friend at our session recently related a story. He was at a music seminar and one of the students asked another "So can you read music?" The second replied "Oh yes, I went to Juilliard. How about you?" "I can read music some, but not so much that it gets in the way of my playing."  

Good luck, and enjoy the journey.

Carey

Alto Bb Whistle In Production, A and G soon to follow

So I've made the Bb, and I have an A and G length body on the workbench waiting for me to get around to figuring out where the best place to put the holes is. 

I've been side-tracked by interesting technical questions pertaining to how to check the intonation of the whistle in my mid-90F shop when it is to be played in a upper 70's environment, and how best to adjust the holes by micro amounts. It's not as simple as moving the tuning slide, because the whistle is exactly in tune with itself AND other instruments only at one ambient temperature. Move the slide in or out and you move the high finger holes more (proportionally) than the lower ones, and mess up the intonation. Not so much that you notice on a casual playing, but enough that I can measure it, and I want the whistles to be as good as possible in actual use. 

Another challenge is the variation of the ID of the tubing as it comes from the factory. Is it less work/cost to try and "fix" the ID so I can use the same hole jig or is it better to leave the ID alone, and ooch the holes around to suit the ID on every whistle? 

I think the answer is ooching the holes for the ID of the whistle, but that requires a good way to measure the effective ID and calculate and accurately set the hole locations. 

Maybe it would be easier to use metal tubing with a constant ID. But I sooo like the black and cream colors of the Bb whistle....

Happy St Patrick's Month

Here it is St Patrick's Month. I wish I were five people given the number of calls the band is getting for gigs. Too bad we can't take them all, or rather too bad they all want to be on the same day. I'll post some photos of the gigs after I have some. Looks to be fun though. www.theboysofcountylee.com


The surgery went well. That was my first un-natural opening in my epidermis, and it was kinda fun being the center of all that attention at the hospital. Then three hours after the doc closed me up they told my wife to go get the car and take him home. Which was good too, being home that is. But getting home, my poor wife couldn't drive carefully enough to suit me. Every wiggle of the car put a strain on my new incision. Owch! 


Sitting around was pretty boring, but I read a lot and did get the new web site done. Do you like it? 


I'm in the final stages of developing some alto whistles. They will be G, A and Bb. Stay tuned for more on the alto whistles. 


That's it for now, I have to get back to finishing up some orders for dealers in England and Canada. 


Slan,


Carey

Time Out From The Shop

Hello, it's been half a year since I posted to the blog. Good grief! I think that happens because I'm posting smaller posts on Facebook, and even some smaller posts on Twitter. I'm trying to figure out what content customers and potential customers might find interesting, and how best to share it. 


I don't think it matters that I've taken a liking to "McCann's Irish Steel Cut Oatmeal (Ready in Five Minutes)" or that I learned a new set of reels that I really like. But if it has to do with changes in my shop or my whistle making which impacts the quality, price or availability of my products, I guess that's worth a few words. Or even a picture or video. So if you are a Twitter or Facebook user, here's where you can find me: 


http://www.facebook.com/carey.parks
http://twitter.com/LuthierCarey


To bring you up to date here, I've had a pretty busy year filling orders to individuals and dealers. I think I've got enough dealers now and am not currently taking on more thanks to the internet which allows me to interact directly with my customers. (Like this.) 


I did get pretty far along on the new G/A/Bb alto whistles in November. I have recruited a dozen or so players to give me feedback on some prototype, or in software lingo "beta," whistles, and was preparing the whistles for the testing. 


Then in addition to the up-tick in direct orders, several large dealer orders came in so I put the final work on the new whistles aside until those orders went out. 


During that effort I started having trouble standing in the shop for long periods and found I had developed a hernia. Doc says "Just lucky I guess." With the holidays, the surgeon's schedule, and the games we need to play with our health insurance, I decided to try to make it to 2011 before having it repaired. He said I risk permanent damage if I don't take it easy until it's fixed, so I'm avoiding anything that hurts, doing a lot of computer work like improving my internal database for tracking orders, customers and product serial numbers as well as WIP stock levels. 


I am also working on a new website which will be done in the simplest way possible - just typing the html into a text editor - to allow (encourage?) me to make more frequent updates to the site and hopefully avoid some compatibility issues. I do the current website with Microsoft Visual Studio which is the normal Microsoft overkill for what I need. Hopefully I'll have the new site up in the next week or so. 


Since I just have a few more operations on the prototypes before they can be tested, I'm going to try and complete them in the next couple days so the trials can proceed while I'm following doctor orders to "do nothing" while the repair takes root. 


But I'm pretty pleased with how the alto whistles turned out, and am curious to see what others think of them.


Oh, one fun bit of news that has only indirect impact on my products. I have been wondering and looking to some degree for a link to the Parks who came over from Europe. I really enjoy listening and playing ITM, so I've been thinking there's got to be some Celt in there somewhere, but I couldn't prove it.


One tale my father told was that our name used to be spelled Parkes, but an ancestor got mad a the family, took the "e" out an moved to the Pittsburgh area. Well, that appears to be a red herring, no doubt created when "Irish need not apply."  As well as the single census in 1850 when the person who came over claimed to be from Scotland. Or maybe that's the truth, and the biographer in 1905 who wrote the following didn't chase up the name change:

"WILLIAM B. PARKS, a prosperous business man of Greensburg, was born September 13, 1838, in the vicinity of Courtney Station, Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, a son of James and Mary (Woods) Parks. James Parks (father) was born in Tyrone, Ireland, where he was reared and educated, attending the common schools adjacent to his home. When twenty-five years of age he determined to seek a new home for himself amid new surroundings and accordingly emigrated to the United States, settling in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, where he spent the remainder of his days. At the early age of fifteen years he married, and the death of his wife occurred nine months later. He married a second time, this wife dying one year later, survived by one child, and at the age of twenty-five year? he married his third wife, whose maiden name was Mary Ann Woods, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, and they had eight children: Alexander, deceased; Martha, Nancy, Alice, deceased; Ann Jane, William B., mentioned hereafter; Thomas, and James, deceased." from "History of Westmoreland Co" by John N. Boucher


If that turns out to be true, and I expect it will, that means the two fellows in the photo at the top of this blog - my good fiddler friend Ian Barksdale and I - both came from the same county in Ireland several generations ago. 


So if anyone reading this has any more information on the Parks family in Co Tyrone, or in Westmoreland Co, Pa, I'd be happy to hear it. 


Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit!
(Happy New Year! )


Carey

Parks Whistles Goes to the Moon

Well, sort of. The clever folks at Google have been having some fun it seems. I have been advertising beside people's search results for a year or so. Perhaps you've seen one of my ads. Regardless, here's a look at Google's "Thank You" to their AdWords customers. And of course they are hoping we'll pass it along, like I'm doing. But only because I think it's sorta cute. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/adwords10?hl=en-us&forcelang=false&x=25162a57fd1f4dde9052f50c12fa4db5