about big and far apart holes

Irish Flute
1

recently i tried to learn playing using the normal grip instead of the piper’s. well, i didn’t like it, so i’m back to my old and comfortable grip :smiley:

one of the things i like of my old grip is that is easy to half-hole, and i can easily handle flutes with large and far apart holes (i have a low b bansuri, and the distance between the centre of the fifth and the sixth hole is about 6 cm!).

i’ve alwais thought (don’t know why) that the irish flute couldn’t have very big holes, and specially the D hole would alwais be very small, untill i saw the pics of Gabriel’s Aebi Pratten, that looks great. I like such big holes not because they should make a big sound, but mainly because you can easily slide and half hole them.

On McGee’s site (great one thank you Terry) i discovered the Siccama system, and i read its benefits. I thought that maybe i could kind of handle it even without keys, or i could handle something similar. also i belive that making the D hole lower requires it to be bigger, and i’d like it. Am i wrong?

Now, there would be any issue in making flutes with big holes? how would it be to blow in it? would it be easier to blow with a smaller bore? in that case what about its volume?

and would there be a maker that could and would make such a flute?
of course right now i don’t have the cash to order it, but i’m starting thinking about how would my definitive flute be, and in the future (as soon as possible anyway, maybe a few years) i would get it.

Of course answers by makers such as Terry, Dave, Jon, Casey etc will be highly appreciated :smiley:

Othannen

2

I’m sure one of our esteemed makers will elaborate, but here’s a brief answer:

Making a hole smaller drives the pitch down, which is to say that if you could change the size of a hole without changing the position, that is how your ear would perceive the effect of doing so. The sounding holes for E and A on a conical-bore flute have been made smaller in order to allow the maker to move them up the flute and into easy fingering range, for when they’re being used as the finger-holes for D and G (ever stop to contemplate how all those little flute holes are consigned to double duty?). If all the holes were like the F# hole, most of us wouldn’t be able to cover them. This issue was no doubt one of the main drivers behind the development of the Boehm flute. Cheers,

Rb

3

…have been made smaller in order to allow the maker to move them up the flute and into easy fingering range…

…If all the holes were like the F# hole, most of us wouldn’t be able to cover them…

this is exactly what i’m saying. “irish” flutes are made like that because people uses normal grip, and small holes are needed to to make them go up and become easier to reach. My point is that i don’t use normal grip, so i don’t have these problems, and i could play flutes with bigger holes (therefore more far apart) in order to be able to half hole and do glissandi in an easier way. And also i think there would be these benefits (taken from Terry McGee’s site, from the part regarding the Siccama flute):

  • Intonation (accuracy of tuning) throughout the flute greatly improved
  • the notes A and E as full-toned as the notes adjacent to them
  • the tone of the flute rendered sweeter and purer due to better harmonic line-up
  • ease of playing improved due to greater efficiency

what i’d like it to be different from the Siccama flute is just the hole size, that should be bigger, and maybe proportionately the bore dimention, that should be smaller in order to make it easier to fill… is it possible?

4

We recently had a discussion on the flute forum about the size of the finger holes and the distance between the holes on modern simple-system flutes that have larger finger holes. Since this is a common question that I get about my cylindirical-bore pvc flutes, I organized some of this material into charts that may be easier to understand and compare. While this does not answer all of the questions posed by the author of this thread, at least it is a starting point.
http://dougsflutes.googlepages.com/flutefingerholecomparison

5

Good lungs capacity and a workable focus of embrochure taken for granted, there is one more issue to be considered: I find that the smaller the holes, the crispier your ornaments, consequently it’s easier to give more and more (and more) lift to your playing. Not an insignificant aspect of ITM.

all the best

Levente

6

Doug on the page you have linked to you give Terry McG’s hole 5 as 10mm yet he lists his GLP as having hole 5 at 8mm. Looking at the other holes as well for the McG I suspect you have measured another of his models rather than the GLP

Cheers
Graeme

7

I took the measurements from what was given by a member of the flute forum. Of course, either of us could have made a mistake, the flute owner in reporting accurately and me for copying it right. I will try to see if I can find the original thread where this was discussed and ammend my page, if needed. Where is Denny with his thread-finding skills?

8

I was off tryin’ to find out what happened to e … :laughing:

9

here ya go…
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=695442

10

Here is the thread that I was thinking of. Doc Jones gives the measurements on the first entry.
here

11

:laughing: see! not so hard :laughing:

so have you seen e?

12

We’ll need Terry to sort out the hole sizes of the GLP. If you look here http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/models.html there’s a photo of 3 of them. The original Firth, Pond & Co. the (first?) keyless copy, then a keyed one, and the keyed one has larger holes than the others.

Terry???

Cheers
Graeme

13

uhm not all my questions have been answered… Terry? :smiley:

14

Denny wrote:

I was off tryin’ to find out what happened to e …

Someone found a missing e over at Whistlethis.com

http://www.whistlethis.com/index.php?content=YkdsemRHVnU%3D&utid=TVRNeE9RPT0%3D

Michael

15

ah…that was a note not a player of the note :laughing:

this is one of those times to separate the two. :wink:

16

up :smiley:

17

Whoops, sorry guys, mind on plumbing of a different sort. Um, is the question what is the diameter of a GLP hole 5? If so, the answer is 8.5mm on the surface, with substantial undercutting to make it seem bigger.

This is one of the substantial points of difference between the GLP and the original Firth & Pond. Like many flutes of the day, hole 5 was left small, possibly purposefully to permit some success in crossfingering F natural as xxx xox. Limited success I might add. But the downside of that is that the F# is distinctly flat, unpleasant in the keys we use. I wanted the GLP to retain the small-hole feel that attracted Grey to it, so some enlargement at the surface and more at the bore was a way to achieve both aims.

Hope that helps!

Terry

18

Hmm, now that I’m back on topic, I guess I should attempt to answer the original question …

Its certainly going to benefit the flute if you can stretch further. All a maker would need to know is how far you are prepared to go, and you could test that by drilling some holes in a piece of pipe. There are no technical difficulties in making such a flute.

And yes, volume and quality of note would improve.

But consider this additional possibility. Our right hand is supposed to control the region from G down to D. We are alloted three holes. But interval 4-5 is a semitone, while 5-6 is a tone. So 5-6 spacing should be double 4-5. Stretch fingers R1 and R3 as far as you can and you’ll see that R2 likes to be in the middle of them, and does not like to be close to R1.

So we end up with a flute where hole 5 is too low (making F# flat) and hole 5 is far too high, meaning it has to be made small and weak.

Supposing though, we used pipers grip in the right hand and we used all four fingers available to us? Try this on your current flute:

Using pipers grip, cover hole 4. Let R3 fall just above the current hole 6, where an F hole would love to be vented. R2 will fall just above the current hole 5, where F# would prefer to be vented. And R4 would fall somewhere further down than the current hole 6, to the delight of E.

So we’d gain a useful accidental, F nat, and put all the right hand holes where they ought to be, making them in tune and sweet, and yet the hand could be delightfully relaxed!

We’d have to learn some new fingering:

D xxx xxxx
Eb
E xxx xxx
F xxx xx
F# xxx x
G xxx etc.

You could even have a G# hole under L3 if you use LH pipers grip as well. That covers the other really useful accidental.

I’m not sure what we’d do in a keyed version to recover Eb! Probably drop Long F and use L4. Although it’s possible with the relocated and larger E hole, R4 could half-hole an Eb.

Terry

19

looks very interesting Terry, but i’m not sure i’m ready for such an unusual and revolutionary feature :smiley: or at least not at the moment… and also i like to have the low C# and C.

i made a photo of my flutes, just to show the differences between the holes. the one in the middle is an old german (quite obviously), the other two are bansuri, the first one in the key of low B and the second one (the third flute from up) in the key of D.

is very easy for me to play the bansuri in D, and i can manage the low B one with a bit of practice (i played it a lot in summer, but now i’m only playing the old german).

As you rightly said, there’s a lot of space between hole 5 and hole 6, but i experienced that you can easily get used to it with the piper’s grip.

About the bore: smaller the bore, less volume and less the air needed, right? and about the same with the holes. So a flute with big holes and a medium-ish bore would be similar to blow to a pratten, or perhaps a bit easier, with just a little less volume?

20

Yes, I think that’s fair to say.

That really is a great comparison photo and illustrates well the compromises makers over the years have made to permit humans to play their flutes. Hole 5 is really placed centrally on the old flute, which made great sense in the days of the 1-key flute where you lipped “F + 0.25” up for F# and down for Fnat. But after adding keys it made no sense.

When you look at the RH of the Siccama-style flute:

but imagine the key wasn’t there, you see the same spacing pattern as the Bansuri. Indeed, I reckon I could just manage to play a Siccama without the key in pipers grip (I play standard grip).

Note also in both the Bansuri and the Siccama, hole 5 is no longer larger that the others. It needs to be in the standard flute as it is mounted too low. Having hole 5 a more moderate size would assist covering it reliably.

Terry