Chiff and Fipple Forums

Sedi wrote: The best low D for self defense that I own would be the brass low D "trad" Tony Dixon that I have. That is one heavy whistle. One of the reasons I never play it.

I had a "Chieftain Gold" Low D which despite the name is an incredibly heavy chunk of solid brass. It has to be the ultimate pub brawl whistle. I've not held a solid brass Dixon Low D, it's got to be comparable, unless it has a plastic top.

Sedi wrote: I also made a low D quenacho from aluminium pipe with 3mm wall thickness, which would make for a great self defense tool.

That is something I've always wanted, an Irish Quenacho!

I play Kena and Quenacho, but as you know the tuning and voicing of the Quenacho isn't quite the thing for Irish music.

I tried making one out of PVC pipe but the octaves were way off, I think the bore size was wrong for Low D.

I tried to make mine so it is very much comparable to a flute and it has no thumb-hole. The bore and the holes are also much smaller than on a real quenacho (I have one from "boliviamall" which is nice but the holes are so incredibly huge that even my rather big fingers have problems covering the holes).
I made simple PVC quenas for quite some time (around 5 years I guess) but the massive aluminium tube is something else. I should make a video with it so you can hear the sound. I can measure it and send you the exact data points, if you want to. All you need is the right tube and a box column drill and some drill bits for metal.
Concerning the Tony Dixon in brass -- the head is indeed plastic but it is still very heavy -- I think around 300 gr. In comparison -- my aluminium flutes are about 180 gr.

Thanks, the main thing I would like to know is the ID of the bore you used.

The bore of mine was off, I think, leading to a very flat 2nd octave.

I have a great-playing Quenacho to use as a model for the embouchure cut. My Quenacho, as you might expect, has a slightly conical bore due to the nature of the cane. The node is at the bottom.

pancelticpiper wrote:

busterbill wrote: Mid-Atlantic accent that Hollywood was pushing when talkies first came out.

Yet Sean Connery stuck with his for his entire career, a blend of Edinburgh, London, and American. It played well everywhere.

It even passed for Irish in Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

It's reasonable to expect reasonable fidelity to the accent of the place you're depicting, just like it's reasonable to expect reasonably accurate clothes for the period you're depicting.

"Wild Mountain Thyme" manages neither, amazingly. Perfection is an unreasonable demand but Christopher Walken is surreal phoning it in as an Irish farmer.

Ireland is kind of in a unique position and somewhat unfortunate position as a small country with a global cultural impact and a vast mostly clueless diasporic Irish population many times the size of the actual country, yet which claims it in various clumsy ways