I’ve tried explaining to a couple people how I whistle, but since I learned totally empirically I’m not really able to offer directions that others can follow. How do you do it ?
Whistling isn’t blowing air out a hole in your lips; it comes out there, but it’s not what you do.
Instead, you blow downwards across the hole, like blowing acrosss the neck of a coke bottle, albeit from the inside.
There’s two ways to explain this - different people do better with each.
The first way is with speech sounds
First, a raspy cat-hiss consonant somewhere between kkhhhkhkhkhkh and hhshshshshh with the back of your tongue, to aim a stream of air at your lower incisors.
Second, the tip of your tongue not all the way forwards as you would for yyyyyyy, nor all the way back as for awwwww, just neutral as for uuhhhhh. This sets the pitch: forwards for high notes (making the ‘bottle’ smaller), and back for low ones (making it bigger).
Third and least important, the lips. Don’t purse them tight for wwwww like you’re going to kiss your grandmother; go with a super-casual oooo, like you’re muttering ‘cool’ sarcastically under your breath.
Put them all together without using your vocal cords, and whisper hhkkhhkhkhkheeeeeeuuuuuooooo, or something like a raspy guttural version of ‘queue’.
You’ll want to mess with that consonant to get the airstream angle right; just keep practising and you should get a lick of tone in there. It’ll be breathy and you won’t be able to hit high notes - but we fix that in part two.
The second way starts off with shushing, like you’re soothing a newborn, or making steam-train noises.
Just shh-shh-shh up and down a scale.
No vocal cords, just shaping your mouth to filter the white noise into something lighter as you go up, heavier as you go down.
Do the shh-shh equivalent of do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do and back down again.
Keep doing that as you slowly bring your lips together.
As you do, you’ll find the filtering gets more effective, and your notes get notier.
Don’t purse your lips tight, just bring them together enough to blow crumbs off your phone screen (or something idk)
Practice a bit, and you will be able to make a breathy tone that’s more note than hiss. It won’t be great, but we fix that next.
Once you can reliably get a breathy tone straight off, then you can clean it up. Now you purse your lips tighter like you’re kissing your grandmother or saying wwwww, and the breathiness will go away, and you’ll be able to reach high notes without it falling apart.
It’s harder to find the tone in the first place this way, which is why you started out on easy mode - but once you can find it, it’s easy to fix up.
Beyond that, it’s just a matter of practice.
Remember that if you’re straining with any of it, you’re doing it wrong. Keep it super relaxed, and until you get to the cleaning-up part, quiet. There’s no strain, no pressure.
I’ve saved a few dozen kids from genital mutilation, that I know of.
That’s probably my proudest achievement to date.
I’ve also taught a good 50 people to whistle that never could before, and while that’s pretty low impact, it still makes me happy.
I’ve tried explaining to a couple people how I whistle, but since I learned totally empirically I’m not really able to offer directions that others can follow. How do you do it ?
TL;DR: whisper ‘queue’
Whistling isn’t blowing air out a hole in your lips; it comes out there, but it’s not what you do.
Instead, you blow downwards across the hole, like blowing acrosss the neck of a coke bottle, albeit from the inside.
There’s two ways to explain this - different people do better with each.
The first way is with speech sounds
First, a raspy cat-hiss consonant somewhere between kkhhhkhkhkhkh and hhshshshshh with the back of your tongue, to aim a stream of air at your lower incisors.
Second, the tip of your tongue not all the way forwards as you would for yyyyyyy, nor all the way back as for awwwww, just neutral as for uuhhhhh. This sets the pitch: forwards for high notes (making the ‘bottle’ smaller), and back for low ones (making it bigger).
Third and least important, the lips. Don’t purse them tight for wwwww like you’re going to kiss your grandmother; go with a super-casual oooo, like you’re muttering ‘cool’ sarcastically under your breath.
Put them all together without using your vocal cords, and whisper hhkkhhkhkhkheeeeeeuuuuuooooo, or something like a raspy guttural version of ‘queue’.
You’ll want to mess with that consonant to get the airstream angle right; just keep practising and you should get a lick of tone in there. It’ll be breathy and you won’t be able to hit high notes - but we fix that in part two.
The second way starts off with shushing, like you’re soothing a newborn, or making steam-train noises.
Just shh-shh-shh up and down a scale.
No vocal cords, just shaping your mouth to filter the white noise into something lighter as you go up, heavier as you go down.
Do the shh-shh equivalent of do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do and back down again.
Keep doing that as you slowly bring your lips together.
As you do, you’ll find the filtering gets more effective, and your notes get notier.
Don’t purse your lips tight, just bring them together enough to blow crumbs off your phone screen (or something idk)
Practice a bit, and you will be able to make a breathy tone that’s more note than hiss. It won’t be great, but we fix that next.
Once you can reliably get a breathy tone straight off, then you can clean it up. Now you purse your lips tighter like you’re kissing your grandmother or saying wwwww, and the breathiness will go away, and you’ll be able to reach high notes without it falling apart.
It’s harder to find the tone in the first place this way, which is why you started out on easy mode - but once you can find it, it’s easy to fix up.
Beyond that, it’s just a matter of practice.
Remember that if you’re straining with any of it, you’re doing it wrong. Keep it super relaxed, and until you get to the cleaning-up part, quiet. There’s no strain, no pressure.