I used to think that all wind instruments should have tuning slides, certainly all the classic winds instruments do – Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Saxophone etc etc – although not so much their ethnic relatives. Having spoken to many customers over the last few years, I’ve realised that buying an expensive musical instrument, particularly when you’re just starting out and unsure how you’ll take to it, can be a little daunting. The trouble is, in this situation, most people often end up with really poor instruments, something which isn’t going to encourage you to play. This was really where the idea for the Kelpie came from – when you’re learning you want to know the instrument you’re playing isn’t holding you back.
There are so many compromises in making musical instruments it’s impossible to have everything, but a great instrument has it all balanced right. One of the big compromises with making whistles, is how easy or ‘accessible’ all the notes are to reach. It is possible to make all notes extremely easy to reach all the way up the scale, but by making the notes more accessible, you are also making them more ‘shallow’, and consequently some fullness of tone is lost as you can’t drive the tone to the same extent. A more experienced player, who has developed the technique, wont have trouble making use of the greater possibilities with the tone, but a learner might struggle a bit. The idea behind the Kelpie was to make a fantastically priced Low Whistle which made the instrument as ‘accessible’ as possible – it’s based on the original MKs but is very slightly biased to make the notes easier to reach.
There also seemed to be a place for something which is of a solid ‘one piece’ construction – that you could sling in a rucksack or canoe and not worry about. This of course, has to be the beauty of whistles.
We’ve started with the Low D with more keys to come >>>