I didn’t write this text. I can’t supply pictures or a video because I can’t do this whistle. However, the website this came from is now defunct so I’ve left the text here in case it it useful to someone. If you have any further tips, add them in the comments. If you have pictures or a video, link it up!
Intro: Before you begin
Method 1: Fingered whistle
Method 2: Fingerless whistle
Introduction
Your fingers, washed (if you’re starting a practice session)
A mirror (optional)
Practice 5 minutes a day in the mirror, and you’ll have it in a few weeks (at the most)
Bevel: a sharply angled edge which air flows over and produces a tone. In the case of a whistle, the sound is created by the upper teeth and tongue forcing air on to the lower lip and teeth.
Sweet spot. the bevel’s area of maximum efficiency, where the air is blown directly over the sharpest part of the bevel. Once you locate the sweet spot, your whistle will have a strong, clear tone, as opposed to a breathy, low-volume sound.
Whistling is a funny skill: folks who can whistle, wonder how anyone could have a problem with it. Folks who can’t, wonder how anyone could ever produce such a sound. For those of you who can’t, consider learning–a quick, loud, penetrating whistle has many useful applications and can be mastered with relative ease. (Note: there’s nothing here on whistling Dixie or any other tuneful amusement.)
You’ll be shown two techniques for whistling: one that uses your fingers, and another that doesn’t. Say it’s raining, your arms are full of shopping bags, and you need to flag a taxi. This no-hands whistle will allow you to emerge victorious in this situation and others. But the fingerless whistle is a little trickier to master, so you should practice the fingered whistle first. Just practice a little bit every day; soon pets and taxis alike will be at your beck and call.
Familiarize yourself with the different parts of your mouth, and get a feel for how they work together. It’s mostly a matter of practicing whenever you get the chance: for example, walking a dog, applauding a live performance, or…flagging down a taxi.
If you can’t produce any sort of whistle at present, maybe just loud wheezing sounds, you may want to try the fingered whistle first. Some say it’s easier than the “no-hands” technique; others say they are equally easy (with practice.)
If you’ve set aside time to practice (highly recommended) then wash your hands first. It’s good to be picky about what you put inside your mouth.
Method 1: Fingered Whistle
Tuck away your lips
First, your upper and lower lips must reach over to cover your teeth and be tucked into your mouth. Only the outer edges of your lips are visible, if at all.
Choose your finger combination
The role of fingers is to keep the lips in place over the teeth. Experiment with the following combinations to discover which works best for you, depending on the size of your fingers and mouth. Regardless of your choice of fingers, their placement is the same: each are placed roughly halfway between the corners and center of lips, inserted to the first knuckle. (Again, this will vary depending on the size of your fingers and mouth.)
Your options are:
- a U-shape created with thumb and middle finger, or thumb and index finger, of either hand.
- right and left index fingers.
- right and left middle fingers.
- right and left pinkie fingers.
Now that your fingers are in place, be very clear on these two matters of form:
1.) Your fingernails should be angled inwards, towards the center of the tongue, and not pointed straight in and towards the back of your mouth; and 2.) your fingers should pull the lower lip fairly taut.
Draw back the tongue
Now comes the crucial part of the whistle.
The tongue must be drawn back so that its front tip almost touches the bottom of the mouth a short distance behind the lower gums (about 1/2 inch/1 cm). This action also broadens and flattens the front edge of the tongue, allowing it to cover a wider portion of the lower back teeth.
The sound is produced by air flowing over a bevel, or a sharply angled edge. In this case, the sound is created by the upper teeth and tongue directing air onto the lower lip and teeth.
Blow
Steps 3 and 4 follow each other very closely, if not simultaneously. Inhale deeply, and exhale over the top side of the tongue and lower lip, and out of your mouth. Some extra downward and outward pressure by the fingers onto the lips and teeth may be helpful. Experiment with the position of the fingers, the draw of the tongue, the angle of the jaw, and the strength of your exhalation. Adjusting with these will bring success.
Start off with a fairly gentle blow. You’ll produce a whistle of lower volume at first, but you’ll also have more breath to practice with if you don’t spend it all in the first three seconds. As you blow, adjust your fingers, tongue and jaws to find the bevel’s sweet spot. This is the area of maximum efficiency, where the air is blown directly over the sharpest part of the bevel. Once you locate the sweet spot, your whistle will have a strong, clear tone, as opposed to a breathy, low-volume sound.
Listen for these sounds: as you practice, your mouth will learn to focus the air onto the bevel’s sweet spot with increasing accuracy. You’ll probably hear the following: a breathy, low-volume tone that suddenly, as you adjust your fingers, mouth, or jaw, will switch to a clear, full, high-volume tone. Success! You’re on the right track–your task now is to reproduce the mouth and hand position that led to the better whistle.
Method 2: Fingerless Whistle
The fingerless whistle is a natural outgrowth of the fingered whistle. In the first method, you use your fingers to keep the lip taut and in place. With the next method, you remove your fingers and don’t use them at all (except to cross them for good luck). Instead of using your fingers, you rely on your muscles in your lips, cheeks, and jaw. Since this technique requires greater control of those muscles, it may be easier to master the fingered whistle first, and then move on to the fingerless method.
Draw back lips
Begin by extending the lower jaw slightly, and pulling the corners of your mouth back a bit, towards your ears. Your bottom teeth should not be visible, but it’s fine if your upper teeth are.
Your bottom lip should be quite taut against the lower teeth; if you have need help with this movement, press an index and middle fingertip on either side of the mouth to draw the lip slightly out to the corners. Note: this action is not an insertion of the fingers into the mouth, as the first method indicated. In this instance, you’re simply stretching the lower lip a bit, and the fingertips aren’t in the airstream.
Draw back the tongue
Now comes the crucial part of the whistle.
The tongue must be drawn back so that it sort of floats in the mouth at the level of the lower front teeth. This action also broadens and flattens the front edge of the tongue, yet there’s still a space between the tongue and the lower front teeth.
The sound of the whistle comes from air that is blown over a bevel, or a sharply angled edge. In this case, the sound is created by the upper teeth and tongue forcing air on to the lower lip and teeth.
Blow
Steps 2 and 3 follow each other very closely, if not simultaneously.
Inhale deeply and exhale–the air should flow under your tongue, up through the space between the tongue and teeth, and out of the mouth. Experiment with the position of the fingers, the draw of the tongue, the angle of the jaw, and the strength of your exhalation.
Start off with a fairly gentle blow. You’ll produce a whistle of lower volume, but you’ll also have more breath to practice with if you don’t spend it all in the first three seconds.
Using your upper lip and teeth, direct the air downwards and towards your lower teeth. The focus of the air is crucial for this technique–you should be able to feel the air on the underside of your tongue. And if your hold your finger below your lower lip, you should feel the downward thrust of air when you exhale.
As you blow, adjust your tongue and jaws to find the sweet spot. This is the area of maximum efficiency, where the air is blown directly over the sharpest part of the bevel. This results in a strong, clear tone that’s constant, as opposed to a breathy, lower-volume sound that fades in and out.
Listen for the following: the sound you’ll start with will sound as if you’re letting air out of a tire. Every now and then, the clear and full tone will come through, and you’ll know that it’s only a matter of time before you’re hailing every pet and taxi in your community.
For another take, try this video:
Hey
i found the website you got your info from
i was just on it!! 😛 its not mine!!
its:
http://www.natwilson.com/stuff/whistle.html
from Jess!!
Hi Jess, That site actually copied the content from me! You can see that it has the same disclaimer at the top!
I was trying to do it completely wrong until i read this guide. Now i am surely the finest whistler in South Yorkshire, and there’s a lot of ex-miners and similar working class types in this part of the world, so that is quite a boast!
gah… still can’t do it…
This is the best explanation i’ve found so far.
i cant do it
website you visited:
http://www.natwilson.com/stuff/whistle.html
Youre welcome.
Hi Harry, that site actually copied the content from me! You can see that it has the same disclaimer at the top!
there should be a warning on this site:
DON’T TAKE A MILLION SHORT BREATHES WHILST TRYING TO DO THIS. YOU’LL DIE.
i am SO bloody dizzy right now.
i cant do the fingered whistle but i have been able to do the non-fingered whistle since i was a kid, was worth a try i suppose
I never knew other people where able to do the finger-less whistle. I learned it on my own. I asked my friend how to do the finger whistle he showed me and I kept practicing but never suceeded. One day I moved my hand away from my mouth and I some-how made noise and I just mastered it a few minutes after I knew I could do it with out fingers.
The whistle is created by concentrating air on the back of the front teeth. That should give you a mental image of where to place the fingers. Make a sharp edge, so the air will be forced upwards, angled towards the top teeth. I can do the fingered version with ease, and am now practicing the fingerless version. With the fingerless version, you can actually feel the whistle on your teeth, or the airflow creating it. It also helps to have large frontal teeth like me (only time it’s been anything remotely helpful.)
OMG dis site really helped me!!!
Thanks
I think I found the original site, and its NOT the nat wilson one:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=419588
Nice try Chet, but no cigar. You can see under that text that they credit this site as the source!
I really love you guys!!! I finally mastered the fingered whistle!!! Thanks alot for the tips!!!
I still dont get it
yea ummm i still cant do it even w/ this i guess i am juss slow like that lol……….:-) well umm yea
I am in somewhat desparate need of an MP3 recording of a loud whistle to integrate into a song. Can anyone help?
Nearest thing I can think of is you could sample the beginning of Cannonball by the Breeders. That has a loud whistle (not a human whistle though).
agh! this is so frustrating because i know people that can do the fingered whistle soooooo loud and i can’t do the fingered one but with the fingerless i can barely do it and when i can you can barely hear the whistle
still cnt do it grrrrrrrrr
Can’t do the fingerless one learnt the finger on in 10mins.
nice site here. i’ve always wanted to do a fingerless whistle. Now I got a nice support group here. here I go. day one being November 23, 2006. I’ll let you all know my progress here. wish me luck.
Good luck 😀
I cant whistle but i will start practise when i come home from school. I need it at my job as bartender… :p
anyone knows how to do a so called one-finger-whistle?
in case you might be interested in, a translation of the german wikipedia entry which treats that topic:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPfeifen&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&safe=off&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
worth noting it says: “Also with only one finger whistles can be produced. Thereby extremely loud whistling is possible, tones with a volume of over 100dB (A) are easily achievable.” O_o
greetz
I can remember my grandpa teaching me to whistle “bob-white” when we were fishing. No fingers necessary. I did it backwards (by sucking air in) for a long time but I finally grew into whistling normally. I can whistle any tune, quite loudly, without my fingers. I have always envied my grandma, however. She can produce a whistle with her pinky fingers loud enough to call the kids to dinner from blocks away. I’ll be back to learn this soon.
K
easy
I find that whistling backwards can be useful sometimes, it does change the sounds dramatically, but if you are really out of breath and want to carry on without a tiny gap for breath it works pretty well. On a side note, I think I’ve been whistling since I was about 6 or 7.
All I am doing is making myself dizzy. Do you have to fold your bottom lip back? I’m just not getting something, but I can’t figure out what part.
i still cant whistle 🙁
I tried and tried and finally it worked when I relaxed my mouth, drew my tongue in, and placed my pinky fingers on my lower “pointy” teeth (incisors?). My lower lip was just below my teeth. Anyway, it was pretty loud, but I didn’t hear any dogs barking:)…try, try again! Good luck everyone!
I’m still not getting this. I’ve tried for days, but i’m not sure the air is coming out the right place. It almost feels like it’s coming out the top or something…? 🙁
it sure would be useful if there was a video showing what the inside of your mouth should look like
maybe some pics or sketches wud do
showin how exactly to articulate the tongue n teeth
i can whisle fingerless
cant figure out fingered way at all
tryin
thanks for the help
What I do for the finger whistle is fold my tongue back and put my two fingers on the tip of my toungue (which is now on the bottom of the tongue as it is facing back into my throat). My two fingers are pointing inward and the nails are touching each other. Dont put your fingers too far into your mouth, maybe up to the first knuckle. I close my lips around my fingers so that the air has to pass through the opening between my finger’s knuckles. And blow… maybe try tightening up your cheeks too.
Oh yes, try to use the same finger from both hands. Using the thumb and index finger of the same hand is harder. Rather start with both index fingers or both pinky fingers
=-)
ive been trying to whistle 4 ages but after i read some of how the sound is produced really helped me master it
Thxs XD
I’m addicted to whislting, actually addicted to tryin to whistle, i can produce couple of notes and run out of breathe, gets me in trouble everytime during class.
I tried doing it but all that comes out is just lots of air. One question though, am I supposed to move my lips? Or just leave it as it as when I put both my finger and thumb in? Oh btw, how far in should I put my finger and thumb?
I can do the fingered version pretty well, learned that as a kid, but I’ve been trying to learn the fingerless loud whistle for years now without success. Slow learner I guess. To those of you who can do it, are there any additional hints or tips you can give to help this newb out?
For those who can’t do the fingered version yet, here’s a couple of tips. If 2 fingers isn’t working, you might try to use both the index and middle fingers of both hands, that’s how I first learned how to do it. You can adjust the angle between your fingers and adjust how far in your mouth they are. Lastly you’ll want to use your lips to create a seal around your fingers so that the only place the air can escape is through that gap between your fingers. Hope this helps.
It is difficult… And wet… I needed to rehydratate myself after 15 min. trying.
Could you tell me where I put the tongue? (while whistling… Obviously) Over or under the tip of my fingers?
Tks.
Dan
You put the fingers under the tounge… but i still can’t whistle 🙁 damn.
When I do the two-fingered whistle I can manage to make a clear whistling noise but what i’m aiming for is to do it loudly and everytime i try to blow harder it stops whistling. Any tips on kow to make it louder?
Hey i’m getting better! thanks a lot. I used to be able to whistle when i was little, but i stopped and well forgot and this site really has helped me to remember thanks!