Okay, so I’ve played the violin, I’ve played the guitar. For a very short time, I played the trombone. I often sing. (Note: I don’t do any of these things well, but I can please myself sometimes.)
So I understand how I can learn to position my fingers on a string and then use my ear to match a pitch. I can understand how to use my voice to find a pitch. I can understand using a trombone slide to change the length of the tube and find a pitch.
What really puzzles me is how I can whistle. Is my control of my lip muscles really so fine-tuned that I can make impossibly tiny changes to find a pitch? Well, clearly I can, but I find it almost unbelievable that I can do it. Somehow I find this more amazing than the existence of great singers.
Do you whistle? Are you good at it? Is anyone else amazed by whistling?
Of course, as soon as I read the OP, I had to try whistling a tune myself to see what’s going on. I find, at least the way I whistle, it’s not so much lip muscle movement involved in changing notes as it is manipulating my tongue and jaw to control the width / volume of the inside of my mouth- the more narrow, the higher the pitch.
From there, similar to singing, the action / feedback loop is quick enough to be able to naturally figure out the proper pitches to whistle a happy tune. Though, just as there are people who can’t sing on-key, I imagine there are people who can’t whistle on key.
I’ve never played an instrument in my life and always wondered if accomplished musicians who have played their whole lives can play a tune they just heard 20 seconds prior as easy as I could whistle it.
I’ve known some very good guitar players who could pick out a tune almost as quickly as whistling it. I play guitar, though pretty amateurishly, and I can pick out a melody I’ve just heard on my guitar but it takes some trial and error. Nowhere near as easily as whistling, for me.
If there was an Olympic whistling event, I’d have a display case full of gold medals. I was quite the menace in junior high – I liked to go into McD’s and whistle the same pitch as the french fry machine and watch the cook spin around to shut it off again. And again.
Ohmigosh, I haven’t thought of this in… forty-eight years!
Working in the college cafeteria, we were a very tight dish crew. United against… Theodore. You know the type, future CEO of his grandpa’s slush rug business, drunk on the power that the title of Cafeteria Honcho gave him.
Well, the wildest of us (let’s call him Trippy… sorry about your privacy, Trip), could do that perfect pitch whistling…and LOUD.
Once Theodore had proclaimed that from now on, only HE was allowed to add soap or make any adjustments to the dishwashing equipment, Trip was triggered.
I’m sure you can guess… the machine made a loud, piercing whistle when it needed detergent, and Trippy matched that note multiple times…
… until the entire dishroom, kitchen prep area, and cooler area was shoulder-deep in light, fluffy foam. And the fact that we had a fee-standing industrial fan meant that we could sculpt the bubbles and send them wherever we wanted.
It doesn’t seem any more mysterious to me than singing a tune. You can hear the note you’re singing and the effect of changes you make with the muscles in your mouth. With practice you learn what it feels like to whistle certain notes.
I was a fairly dedicated band member for six years in middle school and high school and generally tried to excel in that elective.
I became very good at many things, but “playing by ear” was not one of them. I could generally tell if the scale I played was in tune by dint of the notes’ relative tonality, but I usually couldn’t tell which scale it was.
I also had not developed any sense for knowing which note to play to continue a melody. Say I wanted to play the melody to Glenn Miller’s In the Mood. I’d pick a first note at random and just randomly select other notes until I landed on the ones that sounded right relative to that first note. I could at least tell if I needed to go higher or lower.
My takeaway was that I just hadn’t put in enough time. By the time I graduated high school, other priorities had risen to the surface and my burgeoning musical career withered away.
As a counter example, a friend of mine in high school could play by ear with apparent ease. Indeed, he depended on this because he ultimately never learned the read sheet music.
I can’t whistle very well by blowing but I can whistle a passable tune by sucking. It’s the lips.
By the way, I used to work with a guy who claimed to be a “virtuoso soprano whistler.” And…he certainly was. We used to hum or whistle a tune real quietly to see how long it would take for him to join in without even realizing it. And then he would take off, wow! My uncle played the harmonica and jaw harp and from his description of what he was doing the whistler was double and triple tonguing.
How do you think it’s any different than matching your voice’s pitch to the right tone? Or a flute, or a recorder, or a penny whistle?
My ex-husband was an excellent whistler and not shy about it. Strangers would often ask him if he was a professional whistler. Sadly, I can’t whistle the slightest bit, one of my regrets.
There are many who can, but it often requires hearing the music twice. The first time is to get the idea of what the melody is, the second time is to flesh out whatever parts weren’t caught the first time.
These are easy to understand. You position your fingers to change the length of the tube and then blow. The measurements are made for you—you just cover the right holes with your fingers.
I’ve never learned to play an instrument, but I can sing as well as whistle. It’s the same unconscious process for me, I just intuitively manipulate my lips, tongue and breath in both cases to get the right pitch. I can also play instruments that are played by only manipulating your mouth movements and your breath like a kazoo or a comb, but with every instrument that requires the hands/fingers, I’m at a loss. Like others here I wonder if for skilled instrumentalists playing becomes unconscious second nature like singing and whistling for me.
I whistle, to the great annoyance of my wife. One of my few claims to fame is that I can do a certain kind of trilling whistle—like rolling an ‘r’ in the back of your throat while whistling, leading to a rapid staccato noise. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody else who did that (which, probably, is simply due to lack of trying), and it does well to amaze little kids. Otherwise, my whistling is nothing special.
But if you’re amazed by whistling, shouldn’t speech production be even more mystifying? I mean, whistling is just shaping the lips and oral cavity and whatever appropriately for a single tone; with speech, you have to create complex wave forms even for relatively simple phonemes. And your ability to repeat nearly any speech at all (if you’re familiar with the language) is hampered only by memory.
I can neither sing in tune nor play an instrument, but I can whistle a tune in key easily. I’ve wondered this same thing, and all I can come up with is, practice, practice, practice. Whistling is easy to practice almost anywhere, so you can hone your skill through repetition.
I can also whistle a tune through my teeth (no wolf whistle), but I don’t have the range as pucker-up-and-blow. I’m assuming different placing of the tongue and definitely the facial muscles.
Roger Whittaker was a fantastic whistler; his bird calls were spot on and he’d work it into songs frequently.
I assume that a/the main issue is that we were born with the equipment for whistling and singing, so that it’s literally natural for us for the most part. On the other hand, though I love guitar and really enjoying struggling and noodling with it, I have not yet (if ever) developed an integral or near-instinctive knowledge and feel for the fretboard. I assume that, given time and effort, that would happen.
Whistling is as musical as I get. Not great at it, don’t know if I’m in the right key but I can control the relative change in frequency with something close enough to the right timing to produce a recognizable tune.
