Headjoint stopper design and materials

[Berti66]

with all the above, would be an interesting experiment..........any volunteers???

berti

[Terry McGee]

If someone were to carry out the experiment, it would be interesting to have an audience as well, to answer the question can only the player hear a change, or does it affect the listener. Even one audient would be infinitely better than none. The audient can't be the stopper loader, the tester or the player. Where do we find four individuals, only one of them having to have any skills at all?

Actually, if you can muster an audience, it's good to know which ones have musical skills, to see if that determines how sensitive they are to the changes. Also good to make a good recording of the playing, to see if the player can hear any difference in the recording (assuming they could hear or feel a difference in the playing situation.

Terry

[Dana]

Put me down as one who thinks they can make a huge difference, at least on Boehm flutes and piccolos. Much of the difference is response - i.e. how it feels to the player. I've found that a heavier crown adds more depth and resistance. If it's too heavy, it can deaden the sound. A light-weight crown aids responsiveness, and decreases resistance. But a crown that's too light can prevent you from pushing the sound, if that's the way you like to play. I've found that each headjoint responds differently to various crown sizes and types, so there are no pat answers. Plus, players are looking for different qualities. So while I see definite differences, I've found no formulas.

I recently asked the maker of my picc headjoint to send me a lighter weight crown, to see if it would decrease resistance in the third octave. He sent me three crowns, all identical sizes, but different woods. Two were lighter-weight blackwood, and one was coccus. I ended up trading for the lighter blackwood crown, and I'm pleased as punch. I sacrificed virtually nothing in tone quality, but the high notes respond with less work.

Dana

[flutefry]

To follow on from Terry's comments.

Interestingly, humans are relatively insensitive at detecting changes in loudness. So in a blind test where many listeners hear exactly the same sound sample, but one is 1-2 decibel louder than the other (the engineer just turns up the gain on the preamplifier to generate the louder sound from the same sample), most listeners will report that the sounds are the same loudness. Nevertheless, if you ask them which sound they prefer, most listeners, trained or untrained, will prefer the louder sample, but will describe the louder sample as "richer, more complex, more detailed", rather than say, "the sound is the same, but this one is louder than that one".

This points out a way that Berti and my impressions, and Terry's measurements with different corks (eg corks don't make an obvious difference to the sound) could both be true. If Tom's cork makes the flute louder, but not much louder, our brains will pay less attention to the difference in loudness, and instead ascribe the differences to changes in the complexity of the sound. If this is what is happening, Terry wouldn't measure any obvious difference in the sound spectrum with different corks.

The difficulty with a live player is that there will always be differences in loudness that will be enough to make the comparison between corks futile, I predict.

If there actually is a difference in the sound produced by different stoppers, I'd vote for a good recording of a flute player playing the same flute with different stoppers blind, and followed by analysis of the sound spectrum. The claims I would make about the new stopper vs the old stopper (more harmonics in second octave), louder E relative to the D, would show up in an instant. There's lots of arguments about this, but my position is that if a difference in sound can be heard, it can be measured.

If one does do a listening test, the way that works the best for difference testing is to give listeners that chance to hear sample A, sample B, and and an unknown, and ask them to say whether the unknown is A or B. (In this case, A and B would be different stoppers, and the unknown would be one of these stoppers). The player that generates the sound samples still has to be ignorant about which stopper she is using, so there isn't unconscious bias towards making a better sound with the "right" stopper. The listeners are allowed to listen to A, B and the unknown as often and as long as they like before making the identification of the unknown. The faster the listener can switch between the samples, the more likely they are to be able to identify the unknown. The listener's ability to remember the sound of A, B and the unknown so they can make a decision about the identity of the unknown vanishes if the interval between hearing A,B, and the unknown is longer than 30 seconds. If the listener has to wait for the corks to be switched, the player to find their embouchure again, and then say whether the sound they are hearing is A or B, there is effectively zero chance that they will find a difference. So I think this has to be a test done on tape.

Having said all that, I'd bet Terry could measure a difference in the sound spectrum with Tom's new "cork" versus his old one. The design is enough different from every other stopper I have seen that Terry is unlikely to have tried one like it. FWIW, I didn't expect the new stopper to make any difference, and was astonished when I detected a difference that is not at all subtle.

I bought myself a nice condenser microphone, but so far have been completely stymied setting up the interface that connects the mic to the computer. When I figure it out, I'll see if I can produce anything convincing. My guess is that hearing the difference between crispness of my rolls on E with old and new stopper would be easily detectable, and that there is a chance of hearing the change in relative loudness between the E and D with the two corks.

Course, such a test won't be blind, so sceptics could correctly discount such a result if one was obtained, by arguing I was "trying harder" with the new cork as a result of bias conscious, or unconscious.

Cheers,
Hugh

[greenspiderweb]

Hmm, what if the difference in sound you've discovered Hugh, is only perceiveable to the player, not the listener, and can't be measured? Maybe it's only detectable to the player's ears? The human auditory interface is kind of a sophisticated system in itself, along with the rest of the package-it's hard to explain a lot about human beings. Make any sense? Probably not!

[flutefry]

Are you suggesting that the broadcasts from the aliens that I am currently receiving through the crowns in my teeth that keep telling me to buy another flute aren't real? I can hear it, I swear I can hear it, and that it can be measured. Besides, I asked the deaf leprachaun in the corner if he could hear it too, and he said "to be sure, to be sure". There is a slight problem, though. When he asked me what my wishes were, he brought me a crock of mold, a great big mouse in the country, and the ability to play a flute of matt alloy, so I am not sure I trust him.

Hugh

[greenspiderweb]

I believe you, Hugh! Just keep your leprechaun out of that noisy session at the pub, and you may fare a little better!

[Berti66]

I am supporting hugh that it CAN be measured and DOES make a difference, and a BIG one, not only to the player but also to the audience.
You have to have tried it to be able to say this.
I was blown away, since I also was not expecting anything of a difference and was in complete shock upon trying the flute with the new stopper.
SO............I hope hugh can make the recording to prove it

Berti

[jemtheflute]

I too would be very interested in some objective scientific exploration of this - though I'd suspect our Boehm-ish mainstream classical friends are probably way ahead on this, somewhere...... After all, theirs is a much bigger field both musically and commercially, and they are much fussier about tiny differences than we tend to be!

That said, as my own best flute is an R&R Patent Head, it's all a bit academic to me - on that flute at least I can't possibly do anything about it!

Incidentally, at a sesh last night I had a go on a gorgeous sounding boxwood Sam Murray (2-key - G# and long F) - without a crown (don't know if it ever had one - didn't ask). Mmmmm, soooo easy and responsive, warm and powerful. Lovely!

EDIT: that's just brought on a thought!!!!!! You know those cheap Chinese reed dizi things? They always have a very long, apparently redundant length above the stopper position - no crown usualy, just a long open chamber. I wonder if that is simply a traditional conformation or whether it has any function - beyond possibly a visual/aesthetic one or a physical balance one? One could easily do some experiments with those putting a second stopper in, with or without assorted grooves, holes etc. and try it at different distances from the main stopper - again, trying various designs for that! One could also progressively saw off the "redundant" tube and see what differences that made as one approached the back of the stopper, if any.

Oooooh, so many possible permutations! I can see a phud thesis for someone in this!

Also a question - haven't I seen somewhere an end stopper that was itself pierced by a hole so that there was air/sound communication with the head cavity between the stopper and the crown? i.e. no seal as such? If so, does that work if there is no crown closing the end of the tube and if so what difference does the presence or absence of the crown make? Takes us back to the size of that head chamber, kind of. Have these folk who have been experimenting with stoppers also experimented with that? After all, if "resonance" is at issue, the cavity's size/volume and form must have an effect as well as simply the nature/design of the blockage that is between it and the main sounding tube.

[tin tin]

Here's some more headjoint voodoo I recently recalled: http://www.larrykrantz.com/rings.htm
This may be even stranger than changing the stopper/crown set-up. No idea if it would have an impact on a simple-system hj...

And another interesting take on the cork stopper, "TOOTS": http://drelinger.com/product.htm#toots_product
On another page, Drelinger mentions offering crowns in "weights of 3 to 15 grams in order for us to make subtle changes in timbre and/or resistance."

I think absolute quantification of the effects of different set-ups could be very difficult, due to the large number of variables. Personally, it wouldn't bother me if different set-ups were entirely subjective, even only heard/felt by the player; if it seems to help one play better, no harm done. Although when I tried different set-ups on the Boehm headjoint (Bigio stopper and crown vs. original cork and crown vs. original with extra weight), two pros were listening and were able to comment on the difference in sound they heard between the three set-ups, and our perceptions matched.

[Dana]

... when I tried different set-ups on the Boehm headjoint (Bigio stopper and crown vs. original cork and crown vs. original with extra weight), two pros were listening and were able to comment on the difference in sound they heard between the three set-ups, and our perceptions matched.

This has been my experience as well, with many different types of crown and stopper combinations.

Dana