Silver conical flute

[Terry McGee]

Unfortunately, I suspect this won't be the case. Silver is now pretty expensive, and the processes needed to make a silver flute are complex and require some heavy artillery.

Does the kind of metal contribute anything to the sound?

In theory, no, although you'd be hard pressed to convince the owners of Powell gold flutes. Remembering that the flute is just the container for the active ingredient, air. Providing that container is rigid, non-porous and smooth, its job is done. So a brass conical flute should sound every bit as good as a silver one, or indeed a gold or platinum one. Lead will fail the rigid test, mercury is a bit runny, and uranium will make you glow in the dark, so I can't say any metal is suitable. Aluminium might be, but it might need to be made a little thicker to prevent wall movement. Certainly if the cost of the metal becomes an issue, a nickel silver or brass one should work out fine. It could be silver plated like the Flute for India pictured earlier.

Terry

[Terry McGee]

that's exciting! do you actually have a clinton to work with and model?

i would love to have one of those.

I would too, but unfortunately I'm aware of only three extent - two in private collections in the US and one in the Library of Congress in Washington.

I'm not aiming to make a close copy of the Clinton Flute for India. He appeared to base his on his own wooden 8-key flutes and it's essentially an improved era flute like a Rudall. I'll probably base mine on my Rudall 5088 model, which is a really nice flute from around 1845, about the time Rudalls quit improving their 8-keys and started getting seriously into multi-key flutes.

Having the same model available in metal, wood and polymer will enable me to compare them side-by-side to see what we have gained or lost.

Terry

[tin tin]

Does the kind of metal contribute anything to the sound?

In theory, no, although you'd be hard pressed to convince the owners of Powell gold flutes.

Ack! I thought my inner Boehm flute player had died when I made the switch to the dark side, but I (or it) must protest! I don't think it's just players trying to justify a five-digit-priced flute who notice a difference between metals.

I do agree with the science that says the flute is just the vessel and not contributing to the sound like a violin's top, but still, I did experience rather vivid differences between metals--gold, platinum, nickel silver (plated and not), and silver (even different alloys yielded different playing experiences). I think it's pretty much impossible to do a true scientific comparison between flutes, where variables are limited to one.
However, among my comparisons were headjoints (with the same cut) in different metals/alloys by the same maker on the same flute body. Maybe it was material, maybe not, but differences were there--at least to me, the player. And I also experienced some commonalities between flutes of the same material by different makers.
I'm not convinced different metals would be obviously distinct in a blind listening test, but as a player, I had pretty strong preferences. Perhaps different metals influence response and feel more noticeably than tone. Although I should also say design and construction trumps material every time.

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh, I thought someone would bite!

You actually experienced rather vivid differences between flutes that happened to be made of different metals, rather than experiencing differences betwen the metals themselves. And therein lies the problem. Until we can convince someone to make a few flutes in say copper and a few in gold, putting the same amount of exquisite care into both sets, and then carry out double blind tests on the flutes in front of an audience, we can't prove it either way. Certainly the tests carried out so far indicate that the metals make no difference.

Even if we could prove it, of course, who wants to buy an exquisitely made flute in copper for $20,000?

Terry

[highwood]

Back to conical tubes and placing holes, would the book "Acoustical Aspects of Woodwind Instruments by Cornelis Johannes Nederveen" have any information, any opinions about this book?

And on to materials. It seems to me a very difficult question given that even making several 'identical' instruments out of the same material at the same time (well not quite the same time) results in instruments that are slightly different - tough the stories I have heard of usually involve wood as one of the materials. I believe that material does matter but design and execution are more important - and of course copper and silver or some other suitable metal are likely to be far more alike than plastic or wood or whatever.

Finally, at the risk of opening a can of worms, a double blind listening test may sound like a good idea but is not.
Without going into other problems let us assume that my latest paper tube flute does sound identical to my gold flute, but the player absolutely hates it and finds it very hard to play well - the gold flute is better for this player and is a better flute (if they can afford it). Of course the differences between silver and gold flutes of identical design is going to be subtle.

So check back in 5 years someone will be asking the same question and there will still not be a definitive answer at least not that everyone agrees on.

Oh I did read somewhere that at least some researchers of organ pipes have determined that the pipe material does make a difference.

[mcdafydd]

I agree this is all very exciting, Terry!

Not to offend the artisan in anyone here, but experimentally, would a machine-made exact replica be the best route to go? Is this possible to such a high degree today? Maybe a good project for the UNSW robotics lab?

[daiv]

Finally, at the risk of opening a can of worms, a double blind listening test may sound like a good idea but is not.
Without going into other problems let us assume that my latest paper tube flute does sound identical to my gold flute, but the player absolutely hates it and finds it very hard to play well - the gold flute is better for this player and is a better flute (if they can afford it). Of course the differences between silver and gold flutes of identical design or going to be subtle.

i agree.

as far as i am aware, the research done has been on listening. it seems perplexing to me why no one would do interferograms? first of all, you would need to isolate several phenomena, not just material. i would like to see experiments done solely on the resonance of a flute, not connected to a player, and then compare them to experiments being played by flutes. i have a sneaking suspicion if you were to approach even the silver flute from a strictly acoustical, experimental aspect, that the resonance and harmonics are not lined up as well as they could be.

i am very excited, terry, that you are starting the road of trying to separate the player from the properties of the flute. it is about time! i have a lot of experimental ideas i want to do with flutes. i am going to start from scratch. i am starting with materials experiments. i have a bunch of interesting ideas for flutes (retuneable flutes that can be changed to play in new keys as a home key) and new ways to use wood. i dont know if any of it all is going to work out--it very well might not. regardless, it will be a lot of fun. i am starting my first experiments with wood later this week, and i am going to try and track down a lathe. i have sent you a p.m., terry.

-----

if you listen to a violinist playing on a 3 million dollar violin, you can tell the quality of the violin, not by the sound it makes, but by listening to the way that the player uses it--you can tell that the violin listens to their every command. did the blind tests listen to that? did they ask the players how they liked each flute?

another problem with hearing tests and separate flutes is that flutes can play differently. two weeks ago i played 6 hand made silver flutes (all but one in the $10,000-$13,000 range; one was also a gold alloy). 5 of them were junk in my hands. it didnt matter that the flute was 13,000 dollars--in my hands, four of the flutes played worse than my several year old, never tuned-up, out of service $2,000 flute. i played 3 powels, a sankyo, an altus, and a brannen. all of them but the brannen were not worth a dime to me. the brannen, however, lit up in my hands. it was almost magical. it did anything i wanted, it was like a loose cannon. i could feel the whole flute buzzing in my hands. all the other flutes felt dead.

it was not that i just liked one flute better, the others sounded horrible when i played them, and the brannen i played sounded like a whole separate person playing the flute. it could be my playing style, the shape of my lips, the shape of my jaw, the cut of the embouchure, the resonant cavity of my mouth and throat; bottom line, the other flutes did not work in my hands.

I agree this is all very exciting, Terry!

Not to offend the artisan in anyone here, but experimentally, would a machine-made exact replica be the best route to go? Is this possible to such a high degree today? Maybe a good project for the UNSW robotics lab?

no, it wouldnt be, in the strictest sense of the word. a machine made flute would be ready off the assembly line, no hands required. those flutes exist, and they are no good.

interestingly, however, you could make a flute almost entirely with machines, and still call it hand made. there is an art to using machines. at brannen flutes, for example, the flute is cast entirely by machines. the people just transfer between them. however, the magic is in the finishing and assembly. they are considered handmade, and the amount of work that goes into them is much far beyond just pouring silver into a mold.

i am friends with a concertina maker, who used to make every single part by hand, including the screws (female and male). now he buys screws and has a lot of expensive machines (they cost more than concertinas could ever turn a profit), and the quality and time to produce have gone up. again, they are considered hand made.

[Terry McGee]

Back to conical tubes and placing holes, would the book "Acoustical Aspects of Woodwind Instruments by Cornelis Johannes Nederveen" have any information, any opinions about this book?

Pretty heavy going maths. And that's the problem with flute calculations. It takes my pretty hot computer about 30 seconds to recalculate a flute. I wouldn't want to do it by hand. I don't know if everything you need is there, I suspect not as Joe et al spend a lot of their time on the acoustic impedance spectrometer determining the impedence presented by things like a 6mm diameter keyhole, 3mm deep, with a 12mm key raised 2mm above where the thickness of the key cup is 3mm. Arghhhh!

They even factor in "face impedance" - defined I'm sure as the level of difficulty encountered chatting up pretty fiddleplayers.

And on to materials. It seems to me a very difficult question given that even making several 'identical' instruments out of the same material at the same time (well not quite the same time) results in instruments that are slightly different - tough the stories I have heard of usually involve wood as one of the materials. I believe that material does matter but design and execution are more important - and of course copper and silver or some other suitable metal are likely to be far more alike than plastic or wood or whatever.

Yes indeed. That's why I'd want to see a set of flutes in the two metals, not just one sample of each. And made serially, not in two sets. And have a second maker inspect them to eliminate any shortcomings.

Finally, at the risk of opening a can of worms, a double blind listening test may sound like a good idea but is not.
Without going into other problems let us assume that my latest paper tube flute does sound identical to my gold flute, but the player absolutely hates it and finds it very hard to play well - the gold flute is better for this player and is a better flute (if they can afford it). Of course the differences between silver and gold flutes of identical design or going to be subtle.

Agreed. In deed part of my requirement to have an audience is just so we have some witnesses, so it can't be argued later that the tests were done in isolation. I do expect the player to be more sensitive than the listener, probably by a factor of about 10. And it's the player we makers have to please, not the screaming fans.

So check back in 5 years someone will be asking the same question and there will still not be a definitive answer at least not that everyone agrees on.

That's been John Coltman's experience (the concrete flute man). Now in his nineties, he's concluded he will never succeed in convincing people that material shouldn't matter (within practical limits). When you look around at all the snake-oil products aimed at flute players, we have bigger hurdles to cross first.

Oh I did read somewhere that at least some researchers of organ pipes have determined that the pipe material does make a difference.

Haven't heard, but it would make sense that organ pipes would be more sensitive to materials than a flute, so if anyone can detect the difference, they should be first.

I think it will be very interesting to see if my silver flute is significantly different in tone or power to the wooden equivalent. I'd expect it to be different (if we can't tell between wood and silver, how could we ever tell between silver and gold?), but I don't know how different. And which will be "better" (whatever that means!).

Terry

[highwood]

Better is what you like right now - or when you buy the flute. Might be different tomorrow!

[Terry McGee]

as far as i am aware, the research done has been on listening. it seems perplexing to me why no one would do interferograms? first of all, you would need to isolate several phenomena, not just material. i would like to see experiments done solely on the resonance of a flute, not connected to a player, and then compare them to experiments being played by flutes. i have a sneaking suspicion if you were to approach even the silver flute from a strictly acoustical, experimental aspect, that the resonance and harmonics are not lined up as well as they could be.

It's certainly anticipated that once we have this sytem of flute modelling up, it will be applied also to the Boehm flute and should enable further improvements there.

another problem with hearing tests and separate flutes is that flutes can play differently. two weeks ago i played 6 hand made silver flutes (all but one in the $10,000-$13,000 range; one was also a gold alloy). 5 of them were junk in my hands. it didnt matter that the flute was 13,000 dollars--in my hands, four of the flutes played worse than my several year old, never tuned-up, out of service $2,000 flute. i played 3 powels, a sankyo, an altus, and a brannen. all of them but the brannen were not worth a dime to me. the brannen, however, lit up in my hands. it was almost magical. it did anything i wanted, it was like a loose cannon. i could feel the whole flute buzzing in my hands. all the other flutes felt dead.

it was not that i just liked one flute better, the others sounded horrible when i played them, and the brannen i played sounded like a whole separate person playing the flute. it could be my playing style, the shape of my lips, the shape of my jaw, the cut of the embouchure, the resonant cavity of my mouth and throat; bottom line, the other flutes did not work in my hands.

Yes, this is an everyday experience for the maker - some flutes just seem to work for some players, and others don't. That's why I make so many models. Indeed the GLP experience has been fascinating there. Reigning wisdom was that to play Irish music you needed a large-holed London-made flute. These broke down into two types - Pratten and Rudall. So, you can imagine my skepticism when first faced with Grey Larsen and his little-holed, small bored American-made flute. What rock has this guy been sleeping under? The GLP is now probably my best selling flute, and has made a generation of very frustrated flute players happy. They now have a flute that works for them, just like the Brannen worked for you. I wonder what else we take for granted?

I think there's another piece of technology we are going to need before we can really get into analysing tone, like RTTA allows us to analyse tuning. If you play one note from your flute into an FFT (Fast Fourier Transform analyser) you will notice that the height ratios between the harmonics are constantly varying. Take a snapshot NOW and you see a very different picture to a snapshot taken NOW. And that's with us just sitting in front of the FFT, like we used to sit in front of the tuner, pre RTTA. We now can see that we get different tuning results when we play, I'd be pretty confident we would get different tonal results too. So I can envisage a tone version of the RTTA, that will listen to us playing at reel speed, take down FFT data for every note, and spit out a series of FFTs integrated over the whole playing period - a real tonal signature. Then we should be able to play some Matt Malloy followed by some daiv and see what the differences are. And some Prattens, Rudalls, Boehms and GLP's.

Graeme .....?

Terry

[highwood]

I'm not a flute player - though tempted (a story for another time) and am designing/making whistles. There are some similarities. I am interested mostly in making wooden flutes (and not metal) but have been mostly experimenting with plastic tubing (quick and easy for experiments). I have made a few wooden whistles and while they are not as good overall as the best plastic whistles I've made they have a certain quality to the sound and feel when playing that I know when figure out the details they are going to be better (at least for me).

My whistles are mostly 2 or 3 pieces and it is the head joint that seems to make the most difference. If I attach a wood head joint to a plastic body it sounds the same as with a wood body, if I attach a plastic head to a wood body it sounds pretty much the same as with a plastic body.

I believe is the case for flutes as well. By this I mean that given a reasonable body a new head joint can make a significant difference, correct?

Bill

[mcdafydd]

I agree this is all very exciting, Terry!

Not to offend the artisan in anyone here, but experimentally, would a machine-made exact replica be the best route to go? Is this possible to such a high degree today? Maybe a good project for the UNSW robotics lab?

no, it wouldnt be, in the strictest sense of the word. a machine made flute would be ready off the assembly line, no hands required. those flutes exist, and they are no good.

Sorry, I guess I should've clarified what I was asking. I was thinking about taking an experimentally acceptable flute, ie: hand-made, and creating an exact replica in all respects, down to the last micrometer. Since, as has been oft-mentioned, that no two flutes from the same maker are identical, it seems only logical to ask how someone might go about getting an "exact" copy of a flute in a different material. Are computerized manufacturing tools available today that could accomplish this?

I have visited one high-end flute maker who has the capability of duplicating the embouchure cut of any headjoint. I don't know why this couldn't be done with the whole instrument eventually, if the tools were produced. Just curious is all...

[daiv]

I agree this is all very exciting, Terry!

Not to offend the artisan in anyone here, but experimentally, would a machine-made exact replica be the best route to go? Is this possible to such a high degree today? Maybe a good project for the UNSW robotics lab?

no, it wouldnt be, in the strictest sense of the word. a machine made flute would be ready off the assembly line, no hands required. those flutes exist, and they are no good.

Sorry, I guess I should've clarified what I was asking. I was thinking about taking an experimentally acceptable flute, ie: hand-made, and creating an exact replica in all respects, down to the last micrometer. Since, as has been oft-mentioned, that no two flutes from the same maker are identical, it seems only logical to ask how someone might go about getting an "exact" copy of a flute in a different material. Are computerized manufacturing tools available today that could accomplish this?

I have visited one high-end flute maker who has the capability of duplicating the embouchure cut of any headjoint. I don't know why this couldn't be done with the whole instrument eventually, if the tools were produced. Just curious is all...

if it was an exact duplicate, down to the spin of the electron would be exactly the same and wonderful, i'd presume. the problem is getting the measurements, and the machinery. i also wonder if the maker you are talking about is getting exact, or nearly exact. in the world of science, even precise measurements are based on presumptions and averages.

if you really like the idea, go work on it! it is definitely something that needs to be done.

[Thomas-Hastay]

Many new flute designers are intimidated by the Acoustic Mathematics needed to make a flute and tone hole set accurate. I can say from experience that it is easier than you think. Basic Geometry and Algebra using a standard scientific calculator is all that is neccessary.

Conical bores and joints are used in woodwinds to manipulate the Nodes (places of least vibration) and Anti-Nodes/Waves (places of greatest vibration). By changing the angle or taper of the bore a designer can "tune" these Nodes and Waves for matching harmonics. Why? As each overblown register is acquired, the flute extends the air column a little at the toneholes,voicing and bore end due to increased input velocity. This "Phase-Shift-Flattening-Effect" is common to most woodwinds.

Recorders use a combination of tapered conical bore and a "speaker/thumb-hole" to tune the registers and the common "concert flute" uses a tapered headjoint and a tunable "plug" to balance the Nodes and Waves for inter-register tuning. A conoidal bore has a drawback though, reduced range. Any Tin Whistler will tell you that their Generation cylindrical bore will play more than 4 registers with very little embouchure correction, but Recorder players are restricted to a strained 2 1/2 registers.

Materials do contribute to hamonic acoustics, but in a minor way. Sound travels faster in harder materials and this favors high harmonics. The opposite is true of softer materials, like wood, that dampens high frequencies to favor low harmonics. It is the Harmonic "Tone-Color" that is effected by types of materials. (The speed of sound in materials are calculated using the "Young's Modulus" fomula.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_modulus

Changeable Joints: Thes are not "new" to woodwinds. Renaissance and Baroque instruments have been made with sets of joints for changing keys. This is done in many ways, including tapered joints, reduced/enlarged "stepped" joints and tapered foot joints. These techniques are generalized as "Bore Perturbation".

Once you get past the "stigma" of Acoustic Mathematics, you will achieve epiphany after epiphany! Simple calculator math for designing woodwinds can be found at...

http://www.shakuhachi.com/TOC-CM.html

I recommend the books of Bart Hopkin and Lew Paxton Price. Give it a try! I bet you're smarter than you think!

[AnthonyBeers]

Hey Terry,

Just wondering about FFT [I am a very young (24) Mechanical Engineer on my first job strangly building dams in Mocambique. so I have not had much access to elecronic test equiptment and other fun engineering toys] but can't a good pressure transducer or mic. with apropriate software for adjusting the sampling rate be used to capture the entire song played.

The data could be graphed with a simple ploting utility (I think MatLab is a good choice?) and inspected manually to isolate individual notes for FFT analysis. Then you could run the FFT on just that part of the data to get your frequency content. Then we could avoid a lot of confusion about dark or bright (they will always be useful for the musician) The war for the material would probably rage on however, but atleast we would have ways of talking about it in terms of percent fequency content.

I only really did this once to analyse compressed air line pressures in a machine shop while various air tools were running, 60 hz in the US is the dark horse you never are quite sure if it is really there or if it is the electrical supply, the flicker of the florescent lights was a pain as well. I guess you could just run the test with no sound going on to see what the ambient looks like.