New WARBL, new questions

[ubizmo]

My WARBL arrived today, and I've had some time to play with it. First, I'm delighted with the responsiveness, using the "Celtic Sounds" app, in standard overblow mode. Eventually, I decided to go ahead and try the soprano recorder fingering, and here I ran into problems. The R4 "low C" hole/sensor just shuts off the sound; I can't figure out why. There's no low C, although that hole works fine for getting Eb. Any clue what I might be doing wrong?

Second problem, although I have the "invert thumb/bell" turned on, I'm only getting a single octave, with thumb hole covered. When I uncover it, I just get the note B. Again, I don't see any obvious mistake in the settings, but there must be one.

Third problem, the "vibrato depth" that I choose doesn't save when I click "save to this instrument."

Once I get these issues worked out I'll be on my way. Meanwhile, instrument 1 in regular whistle mode works great.

[admin]

I'm glad it arrived safely and you're enjoying it so far!

The whistle sounds in the Celtic Sounds app only go down to D (the most common whistle key), so that's why you're not hearing the C play. A workaround is to change the key in the Configuration Tool to D and then in Celtic Sounds move the "Transpose Semitomes" slider to "-2", which will then transpose back down to C (and it will then produce a C).

The "Thumb register" mode only works with fingering charts that don't normally use the thumb, so it works with tin whistle fingering but with recorder it has no effect, as it would interfere with the normal fingering of C# and D. So, you'd have to overblow to get two octaves with recorder. I added the "thumb register" setting mainly for whistle players who didn't want to overblow to change registers, e.g. because they're using the pressure sensor to send CC messages and didn't want overblowing to interfere with that.

I just tried saving the vibrato depth setting, and it works for me. When you click "Save settings for current instrument" and then click "OK", does the LED on WARBL blink three times? That's the indication that it's saving. Let me know if you try it again and it still doesn't work.

[ubizmo]

I'm glad it arrived safely and you're enjoying it so far!

The whistle sounds in the Celtic Sounds app only go down to D (the most common whistle key), so that's why you're not hearing the C play. A workaround is to change the key in the Configuration Tool to D and then in Celtic Sounds move the "Transpose Semitomes" slider to "-2", which will then transpose back down to C (and it will then produce a C).

Aha, that never even occurred to me. Maybe Michael will consider adding a low C in an update. There are seven-hole whistles that have a low Cnat (I own one) or a low C# leading tone (the Pipers Union whistles have this option). It's interesting that on a low D I can shade R4 to bend the note down to a C#.

The "Thumb register" mode only works with fingering charts that don't normally use the thumb, so it works with tin whistle fingering but with recorder it has no effect, as it would interfere with the normal fingering of C# and D. So, you'd have to overblow to get two octaves with recorder. I added the "thumb register" setting mainly for whistle players who didn't want to overblow to change registers, e.g. because they're using the pressure sensor to send CC messages and didn't want overblowing to interfere with that.

I completely missed this. It seems to me that recorder players are very accustomed to "doing something with the thumb" to change octaves. Although the thumb hole is normally covered in the low octave, it feels more natural to me to use the inverted option (if it worked), because you don't actually lift the thumb to change octave; you just pinch it back a bit, which feels more like pressing something than uncovering something, to me at least.

I just tried saving the vibrato depth setting, and it works for me. When you click "Save settings for current instrument" and then click "OK", does the LED on WARBL blink three times? That's the indication that it's saving. Let me know if you try it again and it still doesn't work.

Yes, the green light blinks three times, but when I switch instruments and back, the setting always goes back to 15.

Also, the recorder has two fingerings for C#, one of which is thumb hole covered, all finger holes uncovered. This appears to be missing.

[admin]

It's odd, I can't seem to reproduce the problem with vibrato not saving. Are you using the WARBL app on iOS? When you move the slider, does it initially change the the vibrato depth as you would expect? If you switch instruments and then go back without saving first, does it still revert to 15, or does it remember your new setting? If you save the setting, unplug WARBL, plug it back in, and reconnect, does it go back to 15 then as well?

I can add the additional C# fingering in the next update.

I could probably add the ability to use the thumb for the second register too. Should the fingering be the same other than that? If so, the high C# and D wouldn't work (as the thumb is uncovered in the first register)-- should those have an alternate fingering in the second register? Does it make sense to have the choice of using the thumb or overblowing, or should the thumb functionality be hard-coded into the fingering chart, in which case you might also be able to overblow to get a third register?

[admin]

There was a slight bug in the Configuration Tool where it initially showed the wrong value for the slider (twice the actual value, actually), which I fixed. If you force the WARBL app to close by double-clicking the home button and swiping up, and then reopen the app, it load the fixed version.

I don't think this is what is causing your problem, though, unless you were always setting the vibrato depth to 30 and then going back to have it read 15. I gather that whatever you set it to it always goes back to 15?

[ubizmo]

Well, I tried removing and reinstalling the WARBL Configuration app, and that seemed to fix the problem of saving the vibrato depth. Simply closing and reopening didn't do it.

Concerning the thumb register in the soprano recorder setup... Yes, if you did it the way I suggested, you'd lose the standard "middle D" with thumb uncovered, so I guess that's reason enough not to do it. I guess most recorder players can get used to simply uncovering the thumb.

Speaking of that, I noticed that the thumb sensor was pretty unresponsive after doing auto-config. That is, removing my thumb to play from C to D worked fine, but covering it to play from D to C would take a long time for the pitch change to occur, like almost a full second. So I manually adjusted the sensitivity of just that hole. I had to kick it up to 5 to be able to play a C-D trill.

And there's something up with G#. To play E to G#, for example, should just require uncovering L3. That doesn't work. You can only get G# by fingering A and then adding R1+R2. Essentially, you can bend to it but not play it independently.

I'm impressed with the quality of some of the ThumbJam sounds, and all of the Celtic Sounds. Nice stuff.

[admin]

Okay, good, I'm glad the vibrato is working correctly now.

It's pretty normal to need to fine-tune the calibration after doing the autocalibration, but after you do the autocalibration a few times you'll probably get better at it by getting a feel for how hard you need to touch the sensors. It may be that you didn't touch the thumb sensor quite as hard as the rest. Let me know if it gives you any troubles, though.

I had accidentally left out the G# fingering in v. 1.5-- I added it into v. 1.6, which I had hoped to release by now, but things have been slowed a bit by my summer schedule. If you'd like to install the latest beta version, I'll attach it here. The user manual has the installation instructions. This version also has the additional C# fingering that you suggested, as well as the "original" modified sax fingering discussed in the other thread, and some other additions (listed in the changelog: https://github.com/amowry/warbl/blob/ma ... angelog.md). The release version of 1.6 might not end up having any sax fingering, as I want to solidify which version to include first.

[ubizmo]

Thanks, but I'll wait til you push the update out to iOS. I have plenty to do just getting used to WARBL. I'm not likely to need a refresher on recorder fingering. In fact, the harder thing for me is to remember NOT to use the recorder's 2nd octave fingerings.

On the subject of fingerings (again), I notice that the tin whistle fingering for high C natural is the same as the middle C fingering, overblown. On a real whistle, that fingering gets you high D. There is no spot-on high C natural fingering, but OXO OOOO comes close. And you can get high E with XXO XXOO.

[admin]

Yes, I made the decision early on to make the second octave fingering the same as the first octave wherever possible, figuring that that would be reasonably intuitive for players, and it makes the code much simpler.

[ubizmo]

Relatively few times go above high B anyway, so there's not much at stake.