Whistling

[owl]

How the hell do I do it? Someone teach me. The air goes through a narrow passage and vibrates, right? Which part of your mouth is the part making the tension? Should it be your lips? How hard do you blow? Where’s your tongue supposed to be? I can kinda whistle with my front teeth I guess but it’s airy and doesn’t make a pure note.

Any good threads, YouTube tutorials, personal advice? Maybe this will be my winter quarantine project.

[jpnickolas]

Steamboat willie whistle:
Louder and more distinct, but with a much smaller range. Relax the back half of your tongue, and tense the next quarter to form a U that bridges your front 2 molars. The tip of your tongue shouldn't be touching anything at this point - aim it upwards. Open your lips as if you're saying cheese for the camera but not actually smiling. Now you're going to move your bottom front teeth to be about a centimeter or so from your top teeth and slightly behind them. This is the bit I had to play around with the most to get a sound - how forward/back my bottom teeth are and how up/down they are. Imagine you're blowing air behind your top teeth to ricochet down and get sliced in half by your bottom teeth. To get different notes, flex the U in your tongue to be deeper or shallower. I think this will be highly dependent on tooth shapes, so YMMV.

Regular? whistle:
Repeat the above steps. Slowly close your lips as if you're going to blow bubbles (don't move your teeth, though). Try to maintain the whistling sound as you go. Once you start to lose the whistle, tighten a bit more. For me, my mouth is just open enough for the tip of my pinky to fit through. Now take the tip of your tongue and take it from pointing up to pointing forward. If you don't hear anything, blow harder. Your lips are now what's causing the whistling, not your teeth. Change the shape of your tongue to play different notes. You can make your lips wider to get a slightly higher pitch, but this shouldn't be the main way. You no longer need to be touching your molars with your tongue, which frees you up to get a much wider range of pitches (~2 octaves for me).

Everything else:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[crumpart]

I also cannot whistle. I’m glad I’m not alone.

(That’s not strictly true. I can make a whistling sound through my two front teeth, but that’s not the same thing.)

[owl]

Steamboat willie whistle:
Louder and more distinct, but with a much smaller range. Relax the back half of your tongue, and tense the next quarter to form a U that bridges your front 2 molars. The tip of your tongue shouldn't be touching anything at this point - aim it upwards. Open your lips as if you're saying cheese for the camera but not actually smiling. Now you're going to move your bottom front teeth to be about a centimeter or so from your top teeth and slightly behind them. This is the bit I had to play around with the most to get a sound - how forward/back my bottom teeth are and how up/down they are. Imagine you're blowing air behind your top teeth to ricochet down and get sliced in half by your bottom teeth. To get different notes, flex the U in your tongue to be deeper or shallower. I think this will be highly dependent on tooth shapes, so YMMV.

Regular? whistle:
Repeat the above steps. Slowly close your lips as if you're going to blow bubbles (don't move your teeth, though). Try to maintain the whistling sound as you go. Once you start to lose the whistle, tighten a bit more. For me, my mouth is just open enough for the tip of my pinky to fit through. Now take the tip of your tongue and take it from pointing up to pointing forward. If you don't hear anything, blow harder. Your lips are now what's causing the whistling, not your teeth. Change the shape of your tongue to play different notes. You can make your lips wider to get a slightly higher pitch, but this shouldn't be the main way. You no longer need to be touching your molars with your tongue, which frees you up to get a much wider range of pitches (~2 octaves for me).

Everything else:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Omg I made a few angry teakettle noises with method #1! Thanks for the tips, will keep at it till I can try #2. It still sounds a lot like an “s” to me, not very clear, but I can tell I’m making the noise in a different place than before.

[ken]

I'm not good at whistling, but JB is just about the best whistler I've ever heard. Hopefully, he will chime in with his secrets.

[jpnickolas]

will keep at it till I can try #2. It still sounds a lot like an “s” to me

It may help to force your tongue to sit at the bottom of your mouth (explicitly not touching the roof of your mouth at all). I think the tongue is mostly there to change the pitch for #2, so getting it out of the way while you get that signature whistle sound should get rid of the "s".

Also, if anyone knows how to do that "thumb and finger in mouth" loud whistle, I've been dying to learn how to make it!

[jb]

I'm not good at whistling, but JB is just about the best whistler I've ever heard.

Awww!

Hopefully, he will chime in with his secrets.

Never!

[jb]

I started to whistle a little to feel where my tongue goes, and suddenly a small hand slapped itself across my mouth and a wee voice said “Stoooop! I’m trying to watch my shooooow.”

[crumpart]

Gizo is the best whistler I know.

[fluffy]

The vibration isn't from anything in the mouth itself, it's like... across the opening. Have you ever blown across a soda bottle to make a tone? It feels like that.

Pitch is primarily controlled by tongue position. I keep my tongue butted up against the back of my lower front teeth, which gives me pretty good control over the positioning and the cavity size.

FWIW I don't think I learned how to whistle until I was a teenager and now I'm pretty okay at it. I don't remember how I finally figured it out though.

[jb]

There is nothing more obnoxious than someone who is wolf whistling at a concert. It's like they don't care that there are people around them being blasted into deafness by their selfish bullshittery. They probably don't wear masks now.

[fluffy]

I never did figure out how to do the finger-whistle thing. But that seems less useful for music anyway.

Oh also the teakettle tooth whistling is completely different mechanically from lip-whistling. Both of them annoy the hell out of my cat, though, and right now she's getting ready to bite me.

[jb]

My wife calls the teakettle thing "grampa whistling" and apparently I do it all day long. But I can only do this kind of very quiet whispery version that feels like the whisper version of mumbling to myself. "STOP GRAMPA WHISTLING OMG."

[Lunkhead]

There is nothing more obnoxious than someone who is wolf whistling at a concert. It's like they don't care that there are people around them being blasted into deafness by their selfish bullshittery. They probably don't wear masks now.

Hard agree with all that.