You Can Whistle While You Work—But How Does A Whistle Work?

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Flora Lichtman.

IRA FLATOW: And I’m Ira Flatow.

[“THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW” THEME SONG]

No, this is not The Andy Griffith Show that you’re listening to. For the rest of the hour, we’re going to be talking about whistling. Anyone who’s trying to learn how to make a powerful whistle knows it’s not as easy as just putting your lips together and blowing. It’s like an instrument. It takes practice. Flora, are you a good whistler?

FLORA LICHTMAN: I am not. No, I am not. But I do love that Kill Bill song. And I know that people who are not me have a deeper relationship with whistling than I do. And if that is you, we want to hear from you. For instance, did your grandpa whistle tunes from The Music Man 24/7? Did your parents have a family whistle to locate you in a Walmart? Call us with your whistling tales. We want to hear them.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, and joining us are two guests to talk.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Let me give the number, though. It’s 877–

IRA FLATOW: Go for it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: –SCIFRI, 8774-SCIFRI.

IRA FLATOW: OK, now that you’ve got that, let me introduce my guests, who are going to talk us through the science of a good whistle– Wanda Civic, whose stage name is MCP, currently training for the Masters of Musical Whistling.

WANDA CIVIC: Howdy.

IRA FLATOW: Who knew–

[LAUGHTER]

–there was one? She’s based here in our New York studios. Welcome to Science Friday.

WANDA CIVIC: Thank you so much for having me.

IRA FLATOW: You’re welcome. Dr. Aaron Johnson, a speech language pathologist and co-director of NYU Langone’s Voice Center in New York, New York, welcome to Science Friday.

AARON JOHNSON: Great to be here.

IRA FLATOW: Nice to have you both. Wanda, you’re a professional whistler. How do you get into a job like that?

WANDA CIVIC: Well, getting into any kind of music job, you just gotta show up and make some noise. And if they ask you to come back and they give you some money for it, you’re a pro.

IRA FLATOW: You have to choose an audition whistle when you do–

WANDA CIVIC: I mean, it depends on the gig. Personally, I started whistling around the city through jazz. You can take a solo on any instrument, and I just started doing it on the whistle. And I’ve never respected what a saxophone player had to say about me until he said he liked my horn playing.

IRA FLATOW: And you’re training for, what, Masters of Musical Whistling?

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah, there’s actually two global competitions. One of them is in Tokyo, but this next one, Masters of Musical Whistling, will take place in Hollywood in October. And there’s four divisions, if you can believe that–

IRA FLATOW: Wow.

WANDA CIVIC: –four different ways to compete.

IRA FLATOW: I can’t let you sit there without giving us a little taste of your whistling.

WANDA CIVIC: Oh, I would love to.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, give us a little–

WANDA CIVIC: How about–

[WHISTLING]

IRA FLATOW: “Sweet Georgia Brown”!

WANDA CIVIC: Hey.

IRA FLATOW: I’m a Globetrotters fan. I’ve heard that many, many times.

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah, listeners at home can’t see me spinning the basketball.

[LAUGHTER]

IRA FLATOW: Aaron, you’re an expert when it comes to vocal performance. What’s actually happening in the mouth when we whistle?

AARON JOHNSON: That’s right. So Wanda is a singer. And there’s a lot of similarities between how we shape what we call our vocal tract, which is essentially the space above our vocal folds in the back of the throat, in our mouth– a lot of similarities between singing and whistling. So in singing, the vocal folds is what create the sound. And that sound then bounces around in our vocal tract. And depending on the shape and size of our vocal tract, determined by our tongue and our lips and our jaw position, we’ll have different resonances.

And the same kind of thing happens when we whistle, except the sound source, instead of being at the back, the vocal folds, it’s at the front, at the lips. So that narrowing of the lips creates a stream of air, which makes turbulence. And then the resonance within the mouth is determined by, again, the shape and size of that vocal tract or the mouth.

IRA FLATOW: Now, there’s the regular whistling, the kind that Wanda was doing. But when I was a kid, there were these kids who could put their fingers in their mouth and just go crazy, either the ball game or something. How different is the physics of that?

AARON JOHNSON: Very similar. I mean, any sort of whistle– and there’s lots of different mechanisms of whistling, but essentially, we need some sort of high stream jet of air. And when you put your fingers in your mouth, you get a more rigid opening, and you can have a very high-velocity airstream, which is what then correlates with that louder, really piercing whistle.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I saw you shaking your head– in disgust, it looked like.

WANDA CIVIC: Ooh, well, there’s just so many ways to whistle. It’s true. And to me, it’s like all mystery meat because you can’t see it. I don’t how to teach it because I just always have been whistling. But I know I can whistle in. I can whistle out, maybe to reach different notes or to do different styles. So it’s something I’ve been exploring through my musical career, is the different ways to make sound.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, can you teach people to whistle? I mean, or is it just a natural thing?

WANDA CIVIC: I have not been able to learn when someone’s tried to teach me another way, like with the fingers in the mouth. Or I can do it with my hands, like [WHISTLING], that kind. But I have to take all my rings off to get a tight seal.

But I think it’s really difficult in the same way that it can be difficult to teach voice because everyone is built differently. The dimensions of everybody’s mouths and throats are all different. Maybe the way that your lifestyle– if you are not a water drinker, that can affect your ability to whistle as well, so.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, yeah. Did you find you could teach anybody?

AARON JOHNSON: I haven’t ever tried, but I think it’s like singing in that a lot of people just figure it out as they’re growing up. And like many skills, if we haven’t explored and played around when we’re a kid and discovered how to do something, it’s a lot harder to do when we’re an adult.

IRA FLATOW: All right, speaking of– let’s go to the phones. Let’s go to Jay in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Jay.

JAY: Hey, how’s it going, Ira?

IRA FLATOW: Hi, there. Go ahead.

JAY: Hey. So, back when I was a little kid, my dad would go sit outside in his various locations, light these little fires next to his– those old, plastic, “very breakable if you sit down too hard on them” chairs. And I would come outside after dinner, sunset, want to come hang out with him. He’d just be out there smoking his cigars. And we had our call and response whistle. I would go outside the front or back door and [WHISTLING]. And then I would get a response from him, and I would figure out which side of the yard he was sitting at and go find him.

IRA FLATOW: Wow, that’s interesting because I have noticed, as you have, that there’s a certain emotion attached to different kinds of whistles, right?

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah, my grandpa had a real loud one.

JAY: Totally, yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah.

WANDA CIVIC: My grandfather had a real loud one. He would shoot out at shows as his great applause. Or my dad had– we also had a call and response if I got lost in the grocery store. He’d go [WHISTLING], and I’d go [WHISTLING]. And then we would find each other.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Did you use it?

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah. I still do.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You do?

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: What about the wolf whistle, you know?

WANDA CIVIC: Oh, like [WOLF WHISTLE]?

IRA FLATOW: Yeah.

WANDA CIVIC: Ooh. Well, on a good day. I don’t hear it, but–

[LAUGHTER]

–I don’t have that many good days.

IRA FLATOW: What do you mean, on a good day, you don’t hear it?

WANDA CIVIC: Oh, I mean, who wants to be heckled? But there’s all kinds of– [WHISTLING] you could call a cab that way.

IRA FLATOW: Right. And people try to imitate birds.

WANDA CIVIC: Totally.

IRA FLATOW: Right?

WANDA CIVIC: [IMITATING BIRD WHISTLE] But you have to do it ethically, though. I learned recently that you really have to be aware of how you’re using bird whistles because they work, and it can confuse the birds.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Really?

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah. In the bird watching community, it’s–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you have a trail of birds following you at all times?

WANDA CIVIC: I will say, I was practicing “Sweet Georgia Brown” for today and running through the botanical gardens and figured that by the end of my run, all the birds would be whistling the Harlem Globetrotters.

IRA FLATOW: Wow.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Should we go to the phones? Let’s go to Jamal in Huntsville, Alabama.

JAMAL: Hi.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hi, go for it.

JAMAL: Thanks for taking my call. Yes, I have adult children now. They’d be embarrassed for this. But my son in particular, when he was a little boy, we’d be in the backyard, and birds would be making their calls. And I would imitate them, and he thought it was the coolest thing. And I’d go, [IMITATING BIRD WHISTLES]. And he thought it was just so cool, man.

IRA FLATOW: Wow. Wanda, you recognize that one?

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah, that’s something I’ve even observed in musical whistling, that ability to warble, like [VOCALIZING]. And there’s a term in brass playing or instrument playing called “doodle tonguing,” I believe. And I think, just using my brain, that you must be able to doodle tongue while you’re whistling to make some of those warbly sounds. I have been exploring it, but I haven’t been able– I’m not a master of that yet.

AARON JOHNSON: I think a theme that’s coming through is that there are a lot of different species that use the whistle to communicate– humans, birds. In fact, in some of the work that I do, I study the ultrasonic vocalizations of rats, which are produced with a whistle.

IRA FLATOW: Let me back you up on that.

[LAUGHTER]

Tell us about that.

AARON JOHNSON: So rats communicate with each other using ultrasonic vocalizations well above our range of hearing. We can hear up to about 20 kilohertz. And these vocalizations are 50 kilohertz, even up to 100 kilohertz, so way above what we can hear.

And they use that to indicate interest in mating, rough-and-tumble play, mother-pup location. And it’s produced using a whistle within the larynx. So it’s a little different mechanism than the way humans produce either their vocalizations or whistles.

IRA FLATOW: We actually have a clip of that. So let’s listen to that.

[RATS WHISTLING]

Wow. That’s in the range we can hear it. So you said it was–

AARON JOHNSON: So right. So that clip, we recorded with special equipment that’s ultrasonic. And then for that clip, I slowed down the vocalizations so that they were within a range of hearing. So they’re normally on the order of maybe 10 to 50 milliseconds. They go by very quickly, and we can’t hear them. So those were slowed down.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And why were you interested in this question?

AARON JOHNSON: Yeah, so the primary thing that I research is the voice and how the voice changes as we get older, and particularly, the muscles inside of the larynx. And so to study those in ways that we can’t do in humans, I use this rat model. And we look at changes in the acoustic features of the vocalizations. And then we look at the changes in the muscle itself with aging and also with vocal training. We actually train the rats to increase how much they’re vocalizing.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Really?

AARON JOHNSON: We use that as a model of vocal exercise. So we know that as we get older, all of our muscles atrophy. And one thing we’ve seen in the limbs is that exercise can help keep us strong. And so our research is looking to see if we can do the same thing with the muscles of the voice.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm. Fascinating.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s go to the phones, to Christopher– hi– in North Carolina. Welcome to Science Friday.

CHRISTOPHER: Well, hello.

IRA FLATOW: Hey there.

CHRISTOPHER: Thanks for taking my call.

IRA FLATOW: You’re welcome. Go ahead.

CHRISTOPHER: I’m so glad to be with you. So I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I grew up a drive from here over in Greenville. And when I was growing up and you still let your kids run around the neighborhood all day until dark, we would listen for my dad’s whistle across the neighborhood. And–

IRA FLATOW: Wow.

CHRISTOPHER: –it wasn’t– he wouldn’t purse his lips, or he wouldn’t stick his finger in his mouth. He would lay his tongue down on the floor of his mouth and kind of make it a little more rigid across the bottom lip, and then just pull his jaw back a little bit. And he had the most piercing whistle that would call us from two blocks away.

IRA FLATOW: You got to see us here in the studio trying to do that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Everyone’s got their tongue half out of their mouths.

CHRISTOPHER: And I mean, I can make the sound, but it was much louder, sort of, [WHISTLING], just really piercing loud. And he would call us home for dinner.

IRA FLATOW: Wow. That’s a great story. Thanks for sharing.

CHRISTOPHER: And my dad just passed away a couple of months ago, so it was really nice to hear your program and just instantly remember that whistle.

IRA FLATOW: Well, condolences to you and your family, and thanks for sharing.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wanda, is there a limit to what you can do with whistling?

WANDA CIVIC: I have found that it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to be able– I play other instruments. And my whole life, I’ve felt that I’m trying to keep up with my voice because that’s my primary instrument. I’ve done the most work on that. But the whistling is the closest I can get to my voice. So [LAUGHS] I can’t think of anything I can’t do, unless it’s just too high or too low.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, there’s the Beyoncé song “Love on Top.” there’s a bunch of key changes. Is that outside of the realm of whistling?

WANDA CIVIC: No. Actually, I was practicing that song for my Masters of Musical Whistling competition–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Really?

WANDA CIVIC: –because I thought it would be a– I thought it would be a nice, impressive– I ended up finding a karaoke track for that song that was just a little bit– set a little bit lower because where she hits all the way at the end, it’s right at the top of my [WHISTLING].

FLORA LICHTMAN: Can we hear a little bit of it?

WANDA CIVIC: Oh, yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, you can’t come here and tell us that and not–

WANDA CIVIC: Let’s see.

(SINGING) Baby, it’s you

[WHISTLING]

IRA FLATOW: Wow, nice.

WANDA CIVIC: You know, so on and so forth. She keeps going. But definitely–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Encore.

WANDA CIVIC: –any vocal things that I’m able to do, I’m able to replicate it with my whistle, which is something that’s been so exciting for me as a performer, who sometimes is doing three, four, or five, six-hour shows. I can give myself a break by switching to the whistle. It’s less fatiguing. I actually discovered my– or I think really beefed up my skills as a child, because I’ve been singing my whole life.

But before I really knew how to take care of my voice, I would lose it all the time by yelling or singing too hard. And when I lose my voice, I can still whistle. And when I lose my voice, I still have to learn my music. So I would whistle my music. I think it helped with my sight reading and everything. But I think that’s how I was able to approach it like my voice because it just replaced it when I wasn’t able to sing.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Aaron, have you done voice work?

AARON JOHNSON: Yeah, actually, my first career, I was a professional singer and teacher of singing in Chicago for about a decade. So I trained at Northwestern University. And actually, a classmate of mine, Jay Winston, was the 2023 Masters of Whistling Champion as well. So I was familiar–

WANDA CIVIC: Small world.

AARON JOHNSON: –with the competition. Yeah, small vocal whistling world.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you want to sing “Love on Top”?

AARON JOHNSON: No.

[LAUGHTER]

I appreciate the offer. It’s been about 20 years since I’ve– and I never really sang that genre.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How’s your whistling?

AARON JOHNSON: My whistling is OK. And I think it’s probably because there’s a lot of similarities, again, in the control that we have over our vocal tract in positioning the tongue and getting this kind of precise placement in order to produce resonance, which is what creates the frequency of the whistle.

IRA FLATOW: When you make a whistle out of a piece of wood, what do you have to do to make that into a whistle?

AARON JOHNSON: Yeah, so in humans, we have the lips, which is where we have the constriction for that air jet. In something like a flute or a recorder or a wood whistle, usually, what the mechanism is, is an edge. So there’s an opening that you blow the air across. And when that airstream hits that opposing edge, then it splits and oscillates. And that’s what creates the frequency.

So you need some sort of hole that has an opening that you’re blowing across or blowing into. And then that’s striking the other edge. You can think of it as sort of like a bottle of water or something that has an opening. And if you blow across the top, you can get the tone– that’s the space inside of the bottle– resonating. And it’s the sound sources that air blowing across and hitting the edge.

And you have to get the bottle just at the right angle and the airflow focused in just the right way at the right speed in order to get that resonance to happen.

IRA FLATOW: Hmm. Wanda, is there some kind of whistle you can’t do that you want to learn–

WANDA CIVIC: [SIGHS]

IRA FLATOW: –try to do?

WANDA CIVIC: Like I said, those warblings are really crazy. It really sounds like you’re playing an instrument when they’re able to flip the notes like that. Like, [WHISTLING]. I’m trying to use my tongue in there. It sounds kind of muddy.

IRA FLATOW: I’m hearing a lot of Disney, you know those birds in Disney that–

WANDA CIVIC: Yeah.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah

WANDA CIVIC: [WHISTLING]

IRA FLATOW: And Wanda is going to play us out as we–

[LAUGHTER]

–as we end, I think. We’ve run out of time. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us. Wanda Civic, whose stage name is MCP, currently training for the Masters of Musical Whistling, she’s based in New York. Dr. Aaron Johnson, a speech language pathologist and co-director of NYU Langone’s Voice Center in New York, New York. Thank you both–

WANDA CIVIC: OK, thank you so much.

IRA FLATOW: –for taking the time to be here to be with us today.

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