The study they refer to only compared different metals didn't it? Just a thought ...
You're right but it also mentions factors that may make a small difference to sound (which is the conclusion that others here have mentioned). The surface roughness of the (wood) bore, The differing vibration of materials - "Different materials may be easier or harder to shape, and so the sharpness of corners may be different at, for example, the junction of a tone hole with the bore, or the edge of the embouchure hole in a flute"
I wanted to second a comment hpinson made earlier, about feeling the slight vibration under your fingers with a wooden flute that somehow makes it feel "alive." I can feel that in my Windward flute in blackwood, mainly under my right hand with the lower flute segments and the lower-pitched notes. Not so much under my left hand. When my embouchure is right on the money and I manage to get a "hard" low D note it really gets the flute moving.
In purely acoustic-mechanical terms, it's probably a bad thing to have any of the vibrating air column's energy transferred to the flute body. Energy spent there isn't going into sound production. Still, this flute is very loud when I want it to be, and it does have a nice psychological effect. It would make me reluctant to play a flute that didn't feel similarly "alive" under my hands.
What this has to do with timber selection I don't know, except that it works with Blackwood at least. It makes me a bit reluctant to try a softer wood or synthetics (although I wonder how a thin-walled glass flute would respond?).
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Know what? I was playing my Copley wood flute in front of the computer when I stopped to read that, and also had my Copley Delrin to hand. And can feel them both vibrating under my fingers!
If I may make a daring and probably mistaken suggestion, possibly the wood of a wooden flute vibrates a bit when the flute is played, and this colors the sound somewhat.
Peter Duggan wrote:Know what? I was playing my Copley wood flute in front of the computer when I stopped to read that, and also had my Copley Delrin to hand. And can feel them both vibrating under my fingers!
Cool! I didn't know Delrin did that.
jim stone wrote:If I may make a daring and probably mistaken suggestion, possibly the wood of a wooden flute vibrates a bit when the flute is played, and this colors the sound somewhat.
Hmm... phase cancellation and reinforcement from the vibrating wood interacting with the vibrating air column? It's an interesting idea, but considering how loud the air column is, all by itself, it might be too subtle an effect to measure or hear.
Peter Duggan wrote:Know what? I was playing my Copley wood flute in front of the computer when I stopped to read that, and also had my Copley Delrin to hand. And can feel them both vibrating under my fingers!
M&Es vibrate less because of wall thickness. My old Seery vibrated and my Baubet is doing it as I play lovely waltz. I am not surprised both Copleys vibrate.
My observation is that, subjectively, that best sounding flutes that I have played ALL have this nice vibration. They best way I can describe it is that the flute starting to sing. It may well have to do with wall thickness. You can experiment by blowing into the head section and gripping the head section with your right hand below the embouchure. I notice a difference in tone, does anyone else?
I attribute this to vibrations in the flute material contributing to tone. Do some materials vibrate more, or less? Certainly use of different materials in violins and guitars flavors timbre.
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An important thing to remind ourselves of as we assess the sound of a flute is that what we (as the player) hear/feel is not necessarily what a listener hears. Flutes just sound different when you are playing them because you are getting vibration through your fingers and your face as well as bone conduction to your ears. Plus you are hearing it from six inches away.
If a player only ever plays for themselves then this discrepancy is irrelevant. If you play for an audience, using your own experience to evaluate the flute might be a bit incomplete.
I feel a lot of vibration through my finger tips when I'm playing a flute. This happens regardless of what the flute is made of, but the intensity does vary a bit from one flute to another. I think that the vibration I am feeling is mostly the air vibrating within the tone holes. On simple system flutes you can feel this directly, which is one of the great features of simple system flutes. If there is any vibration in the body of the flute, I doubt (but have no proof) that it is anywhere near strong enough to be audible.
The other thing I have noticed is that I feel the vibration more in some fingertips than others, and that the location of the felt vibration varies depending on which note I'm playing. I wonder if this is simply a matter of feeling the pressure nodes within the bore of the flute when they happen to align well with a larger tone hole.
paddler wrote:... I think that the vibration I am feeling is mostly the air vibrating within the tone holes...
Just what I was going to post.
I was also going to suggest that if one is holding the flute so as to use the minimum amount of effort then the weight of the flute and surface texture will make a difference has to how much effort (muscle tone or whatever) is needed and so maybe to how how sensitive the fingers are to the vibration.
I finally catched up the conversation. Thanks everyone to share a lot of your opinions and experiences. It's getting really deeper and more interesting than I first thought.
I think I got the conclusion about my question, but please keep going if you like.
The part about differences among various kinds of plastics are interesting too. I need to study this area more. People tend to think Derlin/polymer flutes are inferior to wooden ones, but it seems this is not true and it depends on other factors (what do you think?).
As for the whistles sometimes "wooden whistle" has plastic head, I am curious why the makers do so? If you know any answer please share.
paddler wrote:... I think that the vibration I am feeling is mostly the air vibrating within the tone holes...
Just what I was going to post.
A back of the envelope calculation indicates maybe a few tens to a hundred nanometers of vibration in the flute. Probably 100 times that much in the fingers themselves, so I think it's the air column that the fingers feel. I suspect that the difference in what you feel in different flutes is mostly hole size, and possibly the thickness of the walls, which would affect the air pressure at your fingers. If anyone has a Hammy practice flute, that would be an example of something that actually vibrates as much or less than a wooden flute, but has big holes and very thin walls, and I'd be curious to hear if there's a difference in how much vibration is felt between that and a wooden flute.
Charlie Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
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hatao wrote:As for the whistles sometimes "wooden whistle" has plastic head, I am curious why the makers do so? If you know any answer please share.
Sometimes (e.g. using moulded heads) probably ease of manufacture. But sometimes also even for fine machined examples because the tolerances for windway height, voicing chamfers, precise blade edges etc. in small wood whistles can be so affected by moisture which doesn't affect plastics in the same way.
