Whistle library ?

[Theodor]

Are there any whistling libraries available ?

If not , make one ! :)

Whistling is great with some reverb and easy to make i think ( Just find a builder, that's a good whistling performer ! )

With breath close mic, no breath far mic, vibrato etc etc .

[midphase]

I asked for one a couple of months ago....before me somebody mentioned it a while back.

Usual answer is...record yourself, it's simple.

I actually disagree (since I did end up doing it) whistling in tune is quite a challenge. Doing the scoops and getting the vibrato right is a bitch! Programs like Autotune have a hard time tracking at that frequency so pitch correction becomes difficult too.

Incidentally enough....about a week after I delivered my crappy whistling piece, I met a professional whistler here in LA. If you need a contact I will give you his info. If any developers are interested in taking up this challenge, perhaps you should ask for his contact info as well.

Too bad that it's such a niche market...I mean how many times do you need a whistle in your composition? For me it falls in the same category as yodleing (which I also used on a show for Nickelodeon). I auditioned 3 different supposed yodelers and was not satisfied with any of them. I ended up using some samples and time compressing and expanding them to match my tempos and such....but I digress!

[Nayi]

Humm...

Well, SOV has choir whistling, I use for mainly pads. But I guess that's not what you want.

[Kanjika]

I tried sampling my own whistle. I sampled one octave with sustained notes and staccatos. The sustains sound like crap because theres no realistic transition between notes (whistling depends on where your tounge is in your mouth. thats how pitches are made. It takes time for your tounge to move from note to note, and this creates a noticeable portamento effect). If you want to make a remotely realistic library youd probably have to do what VSL did with their performance legato patches; sample every note and every interval for that note, up and down. Then youd have to use a midi tool, or you could go through the slightly tedious process of keyswitching each note...

ANd then theres all though pitch slides and other characteristics of whistling. The only way you might be able to do it is how Synful orchestra made their instruments. I think a believeable synthesized whistle could be made, but sampled...thats a real challenge.

[Theodor]

I actually disagree (since I did end up doing it) whistling in tune is quite a challenge. Doing the scoops and getting the vibrato right is a bitch! Programs like Autotune have a hard time tracking at that frequency so pitch correction becomes difficult too.


Yeah , Challenge big time ! You can always whistle a simple tune etc, but getting that deep and nice vibrato is the hard part. As for the contact, i still have a long road in front of me regarding recordings... i don't even have a decent mic yet and my crappy english accent would show in the whistling anyway :D

I just believe that whistling has been understood wrong in the history of music - just like arabian, turkish , chinese instruments , even though they are so beautiful , most composers use them in the same context, using them as colours and not as creative instruments - .

,whistling always brings to mind old hollywood musicals like Singing in the Rain or something and everyone has now connected it with happy tunes. Or at least it does to me .

Whistling with a lot of reverb is a beautiful instrument ! Like singing, you can control so many nuances with your mind and practice. It's straight out of your soul but it's not singing, it's great.

Thanks for the replies guys :)

I wonder what Collosus will have at number 79 in GM Mode !

[Herman Witkam]

I actually disagree (since I did end up doing it) whistling in tune is quite a challenge. Doing the scoops and getting the vibrato right is a bitch! Programs like Autotune have a hard time tracking at that frequency so pitch correction becomes difficult too.


Why would you want to whistle perfectly in tune if you can pitch some of the lesser good samples anyway? A real performance wouldn't be a 100% in tune either, and Autotune will only make it sound more artificial IMO.

[Daryl]

I'm great at whistling; unfortunately when the red light goes on I'm c**p :>((

Daryl

[kbaccki]

I'm great at whistling; unfortunately when the red light goes on I'm c**p :>((

Ha! Lips dry right up, do they?

[kbaccki]

If you want to make a remotely realistic library youd probably have to do what VSL did with their performance legato patches; sample every note and every interval for that note, up and down. Then youd have to use a midi tool, or you could go through the slightly tedious process of keyswitching each note...

ANd then theres all though pitch slides and other characteristics of whistling. The only way you might be able to do it is how Synful orchestra made their instruments. I think a believeable synthesized whistle could be made, but sampled...thats a real challenge.

Yes, involving samples to any extent would be total overkill - maybe for initial attacks that are hard to synthesize, but then again I can't think of any! If you whistle cleanly and look at the waveform, it's a sine wave. Then you have the sound of air passing over the lips mixed in to varying degrees (depending on how "hard" you're whistling), minor pitch fluctuations, modulation of the sine wave to varying degrees (to alter the "perfection" of the wave), etc. Vibrato is simply modulating pitch and volume. Plus you want dynamic control over volume. All of this could be done with a simple FM synthesizer using a few operators and some creative modulation programming. Trying to do the same with samples would take 10x the effort!

[kbaccki]

Actually, after thinking about it a bit... the tricky part would be synthesizing the lower and upper ranges of one's whistling. There's only so high that you can whistle before it turns into almost all white noise, and similarly for the bottom end. As well the volume dips at both ends as it becomes harder to spit out a convincing tone. Still doable, just a little wrinkle to make it more realistic.

[kbaccki]

One other note... the waveform used to modulate pitch/volume for vibrato would be a saw wave if using the tip and middle of your tongue for fast vibrato -- this feels like the tip is flittering slightly while the middle is being relaxed and contracted. BUT you can also use the back of your tongue for a slower to medium vibrato which is more like a sine or triangle modulation -- firmly place the tip of your tongue against your teeth. So two types of vibrato...

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Autotune actually works pretty well on whistling if you're working in mono (and the tone is farily pure and not too "airy"). Just slow it way down so it doesn't track the vibrato and pitch-based expression.

[Know1]

A whistle library would be great.
There's a preset in Fl Studio's SimSynth that's sounds like a whistle (yeah off course a real person whistling is different but still... it's a nice sound :D )

synthesized whistle example (http://www.purser.nl/whistle)