I’ve saved a few dozen kids from genital mutilation, that I know of.
That’s probably my proudest achievement to date.
I’ve also taught a good 50 people to whistle that never could before, and while that’s pretty low impact, it still makes me happy.
I’ve tried explaining to a couple people how I whistle, but since I learned totally empirically I’m not really able to offer directions that others can follow. How do you do it ?
TL;DR: whisper ‘queue’
Whistling isn’t blowing air out a hole in your lips; it comes out there, but it’s not what you do.
Instead, you blow downwards across the hole, like blowing acrosss the neck of a coke bottle, albeit from the inside.
There’s two ways to explain this - different people do better with each.
The first way is with speech sounds
First, a raspy cat-hiss consonant somewhere between kkhhhkhkhkhkh and hhshshshshh with the back of your tongue, to aim a stream of air at your lower incisors.
Second, the tip of your tongue not all the way forwards as you would for yyyyyyy, nor all the way back as for awwwww, just neutral as for uuhhhhh. This sets the pitch: forwards for high notes (making the ‘bottle’ smaller), and back for low ones (making it bigger).
Third and least important, the lips. Don’t purse them tight for wwwww like you’re going to kiss your grandmother; go with a super-casual oooo, like you’re muttering ‘cool’ sarcastically under your breath.
Put them all together without using your vocal cords, and whisper hhkkhhkhkhkheeeeeeuuuuuooooo, or something like a raspy guttural version of ‘queue’.
You’ll want to mess with that consonant to get the airstream angle right; just keep practising and you should get a lick of tone in there. It’ll be breathy and you won’t be able to hit high notes - but we fix that in part two.
The second way starts off with shushing, like you’re soothing a newborn, or making steam-train noises.
Just shh-shh-shh up and down a scale.
No vocal cords, just shaping your mouth to filter the white noise into something lighter as you go up, heavier as you go down.
Do the shh-shh equivalent of do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do and back down again.
Keep doing that as you slowly bring your lips together.
As you do, you’ll find the filtering gets more effective, and your notes get notier.
Don’t purse your lips tight, just bring them together enough to blow crumbs off your phone screen (or something idk)
Practice a bit, and you will be able to make a breathy tone that’s more note than hiss. It won’t be great, but we fix that next.
Once you can reliably get a breathy tone straight off, then you can clean it up. Now you purse your lips tighter like you’re kissing your grandmother or saying wwwww, and the breathiness will go away, and you’ll be able to reach high notes without it falling apart.
It’s harder to find the tone in the first place this way, which is why you started out on easy mode - but once you can find it, it’s easy to fix up.
Beyond that, it’s just a matter of practice.
Remember that if you’re straining with any of it, you’re doing it wrong. Keep it super relaxed, and until you get to the cleaning-up part, quiet. There’s no strain, no pressure.
oh, wow, an entire tutorial. Thanks for giving yourself the trouble. There are several places where I do things differently. For instance, whistling is generally straining for me. I’ll try following your advice, see where it leads me.
I set the timer on the dishwasher to finish approximately when I get home after work. However, that day I didn’t really know what time I would get home, as there was an after-work BBQ event.
When I arrived at home and stepped into the kitchen, the timer showed 0:00 and shortly afterwards it switched off.
My proudest achievement in like two years.
This makes me believe in a higher power
Well. What do I do with my orphanage saving story now ? it feels moot
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Reaching the point where I love myself.
That’s a wholesome answer and not always an easy task. Congratulations!
Thank you.
Starting my first position as a software engineer. I failed at continued academics, and essentially only had a GED. I’m not dumb, I just suck at traditional classroom environments.
That’s amazing! Congratulations on the career success!
Thank you. It’s been a great ride, and now I’m looking at my first Senior Engineer position.
It’s not genetic engineering, right ?
… right ?
(congrats !)
I try to not talk about this, though I jumped into a river to save a man who was lying face down and clearly drowning. Unfortunately I did not get to him in time and the bank was far too steep, and the man a solid 6’0 200+lbs, to get him onto any sort of ground.
Just proud that I tried and also proud that I didn’t allow the guilt to overtake me.
That’s pretty incredible. And I agree, you should be proud that you took a chance and tried
I’ve been a hobbyist musician for the past twenty-something years. I got up the courage to release everything on Distrokid a couple years back. I’ve gotten 11 million listens! Which gets me about $40, but who gives a shit? People actually listen to my music. And not just the poppier stuff, some of my more popular tracks are the outre noise experiments. I thought I didn’t care about that until it happened.
I played keyboards in a truly excellent band about 25 years ago. We caused much dancing.
Empowering people to boogie on the dance floor is an excellent accomplishment. Congrats!
I identified the biggest bottleneck in a solar panel factory and described how it could be more efficient to the Sr Manager of engineering. One month later, they implemented my plan, and output increased by about 15%. Thus, there are thousands more solar panels on Earth right now than there would have been without my unique influence.
Holy smokes! You’re literally saving the earth and humanity
Not lately. The plant shut down years later.
Also, I doubt humanity will survive. It’s more about saving some semblance of an ecosystem.
I was in a patient in a day program at a hospital. This program was different types of mental health information and tasks done in groups. One of those groups was about distorted thinking. You’d pick a random ball of paper and read out what it said. A guy pulled out one and read “I’m not worthy” my instinct was to to jump in and say “it’s funny, I hear that and I know it’s wrong and they are worthy but then I hear it and tell myself I’m not worthy.” I guess there was self awareness that I was trying to make them feel better while not derailing the conversation. I didn’t think much of it and about a week goes by.
It’s a rotation of a few people join and a few others leave. This person day to leave he sits next to me almost in tears and thanks me. Said he saw what I did, but it hit him so hard he had to leave to cry in his car. He thanked me.
It’s something I look at and feel pride because I didn’t do it for any other reason other than it just felt right. It’s something when I struggling I can tell myself you made ‘Jason’ feel worthy. Maybe I actually made a difference regardless if it was small.
Getting 400,000 views on a story I wrote.
That’s a whole lotta views! Congratuwelldone
In remission from cancer.
So in the summers my cat is outside with me and he has a harness and cord as to not get lost. He gotk himself stuck after having gone around the ladder and I told him “go backwards and around” and he bloody did it, he got himself unstuck by following directions.
Wow. Perhaps he understood everything you’ve been saying to him this whole time… he just selectively responds
Seams like that, he is an awesome little cat.
It’s a tough choice between some professional accomplishments and my relationship with my wife
Passing the assessment and training process to become a commercial airline pilot. Definitely my proudest accomplishment.
