A Confession of Ignorence

Irish Flute
1

In the last few days I have been reading the threads concerning the loudness and power of certian flutes, and ease of play or difficulty of play and I finaly realised that I dont have a clue about those things. I have never heard a flute in person other then my own and those were and are played by yours truely. I wounder if I even know what loud or powerfull realy means. Last year I was experimenting with my embouchur and for 3 or 4 days I locked myself in the bathroom for about an hour and a half each day with my humble little rosewood Dixon in order to see just how far I could push it and myself. I must say that at the end of that few days I was blown away by the power of that tiny holed wounder. Of late I have fallen in love with my Samuel Barnett single key. Bigger tone holes but much smaller blow hole. And yet it seems powerfull to me. Not yet like the Dixon but that is me not it. These two flutes are nothing like any Rudall or Pratten I have ever seen pictures of. So I must assume, I guess, that these two latter flutes must be way beyound my perception of powerfull instruments. I had a short aquaintence with a Lehart but we didnt become friends and it was a long time ago and I sold it without regret. Would that flute fall into the R&R or Pratten family of power tools?
Is the reedy sound everyone talks about a part of that sort of voice. I can get that out of the Dixon if I try and I think the Barnett will also allow me to achieve that sound though I dont realy strive for it. It was inherint in the Lehart. The only reason I am courious about all of this is that one day I would like to get my hands on a good R&R type flute, even more so after reading Jims adventures with his new Byrne which sounds like a flute I could love. Of course you all know what a flute whore I am and this cocus wood wonder that Terry McGee identified for me, (thank goodness he doesnt read his privet messages, though I should send it to him anyway because I am such an irrisponsible lout and never know where I will be from day to day as I chase my horse passion hither and youn <img src="//pfaffmanager.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/sites/chiffandfipple/original/2X/0/0287f377b0e103e172422ffbbe8c639fd3e12c9e.gif" width="15" height="15" alt=":boggle:" title="boggle"/>) is a very nice flute, I cant help but wounder what I am missing not at least having my way with a Rudall. So, that is my problem. What does this all mean. The tourist season is almost upon me, the horses will be here the day after tomorrow, god I cant wait, we picked up 5 more Belgians, 15 in all, and this may be the last summer I spend up here so possibly my last chance to get my hands on one of these devils tubes and I just cant make up my mind. I mean we are talking the price of a good horse here. So please, help me out. Wax a little poetic and titilate my more carnel instinks so that I may choose wisely :roll: .

Take care

Tom

2

The reedy sound everyone talks about is how impure the tone is a smaller hole Flute has less purity usually but with things like turning the head in, covering part of the e hole and tightening your embochure a Pratten can sound like a Rudall it is kind of like a fuzz that blocks the purity it is hard as hell to explain in words listen to Danu then listen to Lunasa hear the difference? Crawford’s Flute is less pure than Doorley’s so Crawford’s has more edge. A Pratten or similar Flute will have the ability to be pushed beyond the limit of of a Rudall of any type and way more than any Baroque Flute could ever imagine (yes the Flute is imagining). What are you more conserned (it is 5 am no sleep and now I think I am in the UK normally I would have changed that but it is too funny) about tone or power? If you need to be loud Pratten if you want the warm edgy beatiful tone Rudall of some sort. I like the sound of Rudalls but for my current gig I need a Pratten se (now I am in Spain I am just travelling the world tonight) my thread about under $1000 loud Flutes.

3

Surely the smaller holed flute will tend to have a purer sound, like all thse French ones which are so abundant.
Perhaps Mr Crawford sounds less pure than he might because he is sponsored to play a Grinter flute. The only one I have experience of is, or was, that of M. Veillon. Is sounded fuzzy, ( and had poor keywork ).
When compared with his usual Wilkeses it sounded very poor.

4

I don’t equate “reedy” with “less pure.” To my sensibilities, “reedy” is on the nasal side…quite pure, but not “sweet.” A reedy flute is usually a “honking” flute.

5

Way back when I was trying to be a classical guitar major, our professor had a guitar maker come in with a bunch of his instruments and play them all for us, and we had to write down adjectives to describe the sound of each one. It was fascinating – what one person said was “clear” another described as “muddy,” ditto “crisp” and “round,” “nasal” and “open,” and others I can’t remember now. The point was describing the tonal qualities of an instrument is hard if not impossible to do in anything other than fairly subjective terms. E.g., my boxwood Olwell is reedy, sweet, and honking all at once; my blackwood one is sweet, honking, less reedy, purer, but less emotional. The boxwood is a saxophone; the blackwood is a trumpet. The boxwood drinks bourbon and broods; the blackwood drinks martinis and drives too fast.

6

let’s not forget that it was Mr. Charles Nicholson who said the flute tone should be a reedy as possible.

Of all the wonderful players out there, and we all have our favorites for reason or another, I still believe and assert that Chris Norman is the one who interplays well between the sound of the “pure” player as well as the reediness of the “trad” player. Everyone has their areas of perfection and skill, but Chris seems to have them all well in hand and uses them with great clarity and effect.

However, when it comes to pure power…aka Conal O’Grada (whose playing to me reaches to the realm of dissonance despite his skill and dexterity)…Chris can compete, but he is much more subtle.

I think we must remember that clarity of tone, reediness, muddiness (which I would equate more toward the precision of finger work rather than embouchure) has much more to do with the player’s developed lip rather than the flute itself. Yet, a well-made flute will respond well enough that the skilled player (or at the least the attentive ones) will be able to make better use of its quality and we will hear that.

When Ro3b describes boxwood as a sax, I’m not that sure I’d agree, although the comparison to burbon is closer (I’d rather say a 21-year-old Bushmills). Switch the headpieces, if you can, of the blackwood/boxwood and see if their characteristics translate over. You might be surprised at the results!

7

I’m currently breaking in a McGee Rudall 5088 and a McGee Pratten Perfected (for the store not for me :frowning: ) and I can say they are very different beasts. Both have fantastic tone and great volume and, interestingly, I think there is much overlap in the tone pallette. That is to say I can evoke from either something very sweet or something rough and reedy.

That said, they play very differently and each certainly has strengths in its own baliwick that the other lacks.

A speed skater can do a beautiful pirouette but she really wants to go hard and fast. Likewise a figure skater can race with the best of them and hold her own but, ahh, when she figure skates… heaven.

Doc

8

Good point. One of my favorites quotes comes frome the WFO1 CD jacket.

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” :laughing:

Doc

9

My interpretation of that reedy sound is that we want a sound that is full of overtones. I know that when I focus my air, the sound begins to kind of “pop” out, and I can feel the vibrations of the flute in my nasal cavities and head. That is the kind of sound we are striving for, isn’t it? (that is not a rhetorical question.) at least it sounds a lot better to me when I play that way. Now, if I take this kind of tone production to the extreme, I can begin to actually hear the overtones separately. I know that I can hear an A while I am playing a low D, and that is the second overtone to D. So I am guessing that what is meant by reedy is that it contains many of the harmonics of the note.

An orchestral player on a Boehm flute would be trained to make a sound that has fewer harmonics, and so perhaps the “reedy” description is saying that we want a fuller harmonic spectrum in our sound than the sound we would connect with a flute played in a modern symphony orchestra?

Lots of long dry and not well organized stuff about acoustics (hopefully without the math) to try to support this is below. You might want to skip it.

I was lucky to be a performer in a master class held by John D’Lancie once (who is a big-big wig in the oboe world), and one of the events at that class was a demonstration of the difference in sound that could be gotten by changing the bell only on the instrument. Everyone had different words to describe the sounds, as well. So the use of adjectives to describe sound isn’t very accurate, I agree.

But there is another meaning to the words “pure” and “reedy” that might come into play here. You all know that a sound is made of its fundamental pitch, along with harmonics (aka overtones), in varying strengths. If you want to hear this, and have access to a piano, then try this experiment: Hold down a key around the center of the piano (the C above middle C is a good one, becuase it has good vibration), but do it slowly enough to not let the piano play the note. While holding that note down, strike the key that is one octave below, so that it does play. Release the low note, but don’t release the high note. When you release the low note, you are allowing the damper to stop its string’s vibrations. You will hear the high note speak. What is happening is that the vibrations in the first overtone of the low note have forced the high note to vibrate in sympathy.

A “purely” pure sound (sorry about that :stuck_out_tongue: ) is entirely fundamental. I know that we don’t want that kind of sound, because that’s very electronic sounding! Classical flutes are much more pure than oboes, and the frequency spectrum of a flute contains mostly fundamental, without much strength in the overtone. Oboes, on the other hand, have lots of overtones, and that is what makes it a reedy sound. I would not call a good oboe sound “fuzzy,” though.

BTW - if you can see the waveform made by an oboe and a flute (if you have access to an oscilloscope), you will see that the flute’s waveform looks almost like a perfect sine wayve. The oboe waveform is very square. Each fundamental and harmonic by it self is sine waved, but when they are combined, the higher overtones will affect the shape of the wave in different ways. Something that is close to sine waved is called pure, and something that is very far from that ideal sine wave is a sound that has some harmonics added to it, somewhere. By adding all harmonics in equal strength to the fundamental you will get a perfect square. It takes some math (fourier analysis – post calculus stuff) to do this rigorously, so let’s not go there.

10

Sorry, I posted twice by accident, so I removed the second post.

11

I guess the different adjectives to describe tone mean something else to everybody. I am happy this didn’t turn into an argument because on some fourms it would of but I guess it is because FLuters are more tolerant. :smiley:

12

DOWN WITH TONAL PURITY!

sorry, sorry…

13

Well now, thanks you all. You have given words to what were just unsubstantieated feelings I had about tone. I knew you would. Now the summer will be enjoyed not only for the ability to search out a good cow pony, but a good R&R. That sure makes a cold and rainy day feel a lot better :slight_smile:

Take care and thanks

Tom

PS; Frankie and Konan (my team of Belgians) and all the rest of the boys will be here tomorrow. My mouth is so dry with antisipation I dont think Ill be able to get a tone of anykind out of my flute today!!!
Oh and David Migoya helped me remember a question I forgot to include in my original post. How much did Mr. Nicholson influence the Pratten design?

14

Wasn’t Mr Nicholson criticized nearly as much for his tone as praised by his audiences ?

15

I agree.

16

Doesn’t any sort of purity ( except water ) tend to be tedious ?

17

Well I dont know Andrew, I have a real nice baroque flute made by Luc and it is quite pure in tone, though quite capable of nastying up, and I realy like it for some tunes. Realy helps me with my embouchur too. I guess I agree with you though that purity of tone is less fun to muck around with. Whistles did that to me. I got to where I couldnt stand a pure sounding whistle, though I still dont know that it wasnt because I was such a lazy player. But the one whistle I still play is this weird cridder in C that looks like no other whistle I have ever seen other then one that Dale has in his collection from some 80 years ago or so. Great sounding whistle, lots of chiff and overtones and such.
I`m still woundering how the Lehart stacks up to a good R&R. It is the only flute I have played that has some of the charictoristics mentioned in this thread. I know theres a few of them out there and it would sure help my imagination to hear of the similarities or dis… of these two styles of flute.

Take care;

Tom

18

Wasn’t Mr Nicholson criticized nearly as much for his tone as praised by his audiences ?

Yes, Andrew, as was nearly every other player of the day!!
Then again, the most critical was WNJames (who apparently had his reasons, according to a Letter Nicholson wrote in return, called “A Word or Two On Mr. James,” a wonderful 7 page missive!).
Yet others in the mainstream periodicals had much praise as well.
Whatever, he was clearly influtential, good or bad.

And Blackbeer…
there is an Australian fellow around your little island…runs a Kayak/tour business, and tends bar. Guitar player and singer…Greg Thomas.
Know him?

19

Ya David, I met him last year just before the season started. Played a few tunes with him. Then we both got so busy with tourists that I didnt see him again except when he played one night in the indian village across the road from me. Quite a whistle player also. I handed him my syn and he made it smoke. I should look him up again and see what hes up to. He spoke kindly of you and mentioned a band you both played in.

Tom

20

he better have mentioned me kindly! he was the best man at my wedding!!