Boxwood vs. Blackwood

Irish Flute
61

I think this is very true. Discernment of fine details like tonal differences takes experience and training. But just because you can’t identify them doesn’t mean you aren’t affected by them. The subconscious and one’s emotions can pick up fine details that people react to, while at the same time swearing that those details don’t exist! There are many psychological studies that show this. And when you put someone in a lab and ask them to answer pointed questions, you tend to turn on their “reasoning” facilites, and turn off their subtle, instinctive discernment. “Taste tests” in general are flawed in this way. What you say tastes better when cornered may very well not hold up as something you gravitate towards day to day in the future. This is one reason why packaged food is made so sweet and so salty – it gives a “wow, is this flavorful!” response in the short term, even if people might not prefer it in the long term.

I’m just saying this stuff is excruciatingly hard to test. Science is not equally good at everything. Sometimes disputed, subjective opinions of experts are verified decades or centuries later. And sometimes they’re self-propagating myths.

If I had to, I’d guess that sound absorption properties make up much of the tonal difference between materials. Also, the material resonating may not generate any sound on its own, but may serve to enhance and color the sound from the instrument through sympathetic amplification and attenuation of different frequencies.

62

Well, you’d be surprised. I can remember one case where a ‘customer’ of mine came to my place to pick a flute. At the time I had maybe 3 flutes in stock. He tried them all and although he was a beginner I could hear clear differences from one flute to another. He could not make up his mind and spent quite a long time trying the flutes and changing his mind. At a certain point I told him that I still had one flute, which was the flute I was playing at the time. This was a bit special because it had ‘combing’ (the decoration you can find on most GHB) on the headpiece. The moment I took it out of the case his eyes started glowing and I simply knew that this was the flute he wanted. He played one or two notes on the flute and bought it.
There is a huge difference between aesthetics and function, but believe me, there is a huge connection between the two also.

Luc

63

You beat me to it my friend, although I was going to use the “Remember the last time you walked into an empty room while looking for apartments” example :laughing:

Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me that people will say the material makes absolutely no difference, when most of us have already experienced the differences different materials make on the acoustics of rooms.

A flute is a sound chamber, one can’t escape that fact. Sound chambers “color” the sounds which are produced, or occur, within them, largely via reflectivity, due to material density and porosity. Just as an all wooden panel room will sound different from a steel bank vault of the same dimensions, so too will wooden flutes differ from identical metal flutes. The same holds true, to a lesser degree, between different woods, as density and porosity (particularly of the bore) vary from one wood to another.

Brad and Cat,

Why are the boxwood bores you’ve seen less polished looking than those of blackwood flutes? It’s not because boxwood is incapable of taking such a finish, it certainly is, as I’ve already mentioned. No the main reason is this: The grain of boxwood has much more of a tendancy to “raise” over time, particularly when exposed to high levels of moisture, such as you have occurring inside a flute that gets played. Blackwood is far less sucsceptible to this, the grain raising more slowly, and typically less, over time than box. So, it’s only on a relatively new boxwood flute (even within the course of a year the grain can raise dramatically), that you’re likely to see the highly polished bore. And, of course, much is still up to the maker, with regards to how much time and effort he/she feels like putting into making the bore glasslike to begin with.

I got to see the effects or grain raising, on various types of woods, from various time periods - instruments a hundred years old (from FVH’s personal collection of historic instruments), to many instruments from many makers around the world, which came in for repair, plus the shops own instruments that would occasionally come in for a “routine check-up”, some of the latter were 35 years old. (They didn’t always seal the bores Charlie :wink: ) Boxwood bores typically showed more evidence of raised grain than Grenadilla instruments, while maple and similarly soft/porus woods showed even more roughness in the bore due to the “raised grain” effect. Rosewood instruments seemed to vary more widely, which seemed to be dependant both on the variety of rosewood, and the smoothness of the original finish, (based on looking at the exterior finish.)

One of the most fascinating things for me, was to hear the difference it would make to polish the bores of these older instruments where the grain had raised significantly - which included anything from a flat, dull looking finish, to looking downright fuzzy in some cases :astonished:

A proper polishing (“Scouring” was the technical term used in the shop, although it sounds a little heavy handed), would take a dull sounding instrument and make it sound much more lively, responsive, and fuller, and gave the instrument a much more broad spectrum of tonal color. Volume was most often improved notiecably as well.

It’s for this reason that I highly recommend folks have the bores of their flutes lightly polished every few years. Particularly with boxwood, and some of the softer woods (maple, fruitwoods, etc.), however even Blackwood and Rosewood flutes often benefit from the occasional bore polishing.


Loren

64

Think you’re right. But what I meant to say was that not only functional aspects play a role when choosing things, sentiments are playing a role as well.

Once I played a classical concert and after that an eighty year old man came towards me and asked if I played the simple system flute as well. I answered that I’d love to, but that I lacked the instrument. Then he gave me a self-made wooden box with an eight key german made instrument and said: “you can have mine, I’m too old to play”.

Now, it’s a mediocre instrument, little sound compared to my M&E, it has no brand name. But it is valuable to me because of that man whom I never had seen before.

Bart

65

Cathy,

Thank you for your descriptions, I noticed that Loren allready gave comment to them, I’m not a flute-maker so I’ll go for his word.

Loren,

I checked the Gemeinhardt website and found this: “A solid silver headjoint produces a dramatically clearer tone than that of a plated headjoint.”

So, IMHO there are three options:

  1. Gemeinhardt changed there point of view.
  2. It wasn’t Gemeinhardt who posted that ‘scientific’ article, but another company, or
  3. I made the whole story up and was writing bulls…

It’s up to you to choose. :laughing:


Bart

66

:boggle: :astonished: :boggle: :astonished: Aaaaack!! Noooooo!! Say it isn’t so! You so nearly had me convinced I was wrong! :stuck_out_tongue:



So, IMHO there are three options:

  1. Gemeinhardt changed there point of view.
  2. It wasn’t Gemeinhardt who posted that ‘scientific’ article, but another company, or
  3. I made the whole story up and was writing bulls…

It’s up to you to choose. > :laughing: >

:laughing: Fair enough.



Loren

67

next time you need more sperm samples, don’t hesitate to call cocusflute! he’s been really busy lately…and the sheep are nervous…again

68

No argument here. I was just describing the physical differences between the two. I’m all about grain – as anyone who’s played a cocus flute knows, its grain can make a blackwood flute feel like boxwood! :laughing: Although the “scouring” notion is intriguing – seems to me a smoother bore would “speak” more easily; after all, isn’t that what lined heads are for?

69

No argument here. I was just describing the physical differences between the two. I’m all about grain – as anyone who’s played a cocus flute knows, its grain can make a blackwood flute feel like boxwood! :laughing: Although the “scouring” notion is intriguing – seems to me a smoother bore would “speak” more easily; after all, isn’t that what lined heads are for?

I’m not a woodworker but to me it seems really simple. Softer woods are looser-grained and spongier and are thus naturally going to produce a different acoustical reaction; the sound waves are bouncing off something more absorptive or deadening. (Sort of like why an acoustically good facility for recording audio often has “dead” booths where the walls are covered with foam, mixed booths where there’s at least one wall made of stacked stone (that seems to be one of the latest things), different floor and ceiling heights and materials, you name it. Different materials and relationships produce different results. Nuanced in some cases, but they are different; I’ve spent too much time in audio studios not to be convinced.)

Meanwhile, a tighter grain or more densely packed molecules will logically produce a harder, less-absorptive surface for the sound waves to bounce off of, thus producing more resonance or brilliance.

And I’m glad to see Gemeinhardt changed their tune. That ran completely counter to their argument behind selling us all-solid-silver heads and bodies for all those years (So now, let’s talk solid sterling vs. solid silver. And thinwalls vs. thickwalls. And solid silver keys vs. plated ones. And … See? Everyone’s always tinkering. :slight_smile:)

Wow, this has been interesting.

But evidently I really do have too much time on my hands! :laughing:

Cocus, you’re just cranky because of your shed. :wink:

70

All this hardwood-vs-softwood stuff does raise one question for me:

As anyone who’s ever destroyed boxes full of nails trying to reassemble an oak-board horse fence knows, that danged oak is as hard as concrete (and sometimes harder).

So, has anyone tried making flutes out of oak? Or is the grain wrong, or is it too heavy or soakable or something?

Just curious.

OK, now I’m really going back to online holiday shopping – er, work.

71

Hmm, never heard of that…

They have been made out of ivory and glass and Trevor Wye plays Saint Saens’ the Swan on a cyclepump.

But that’s more like a swannee whistle, so off topic.


Bart

72

Meanwhile, back in Irish music land … was it James Murray’s whose first whistle was made from a bicycle pump? Or maybe Sonny Brogan??

:boggle: Help! Brad, you’ll remember, won’t you?

73

That was Sonny McDonough, although I’ve heard of other flutes-made-from-bicycle-pumps as well so I don’t think it was all that unusual. His was an old pump with holes drilled in it. I still wish I’d heard Aran Olwell’s flute though, the one he made from a carrot!

74

There’s no carrot but this video has something similar.

I remember Paddy Keenan telling a story about making whistles out of TV antennae.

75

Cool!

And let’s not forget the whistle from a drinking straw. Our own Jennie is a wonder at those. Personally I prefer the large-bore “Pratten McDonald’s” model, but she and her crew got lovely refined sounds out of the more Rudallesque bar-straw style.

Thank you so much, Brad. My hero once again! I didn’t have my reference with me (horrors!!!), so I’m glad you remember.

A carrot. Who says you have to starve to be a musician? :laughing:

76

Hmph, I get a message stating: That video has been removed by the user.



Loren

77

Same here.

Bart

78

There’s a guy here in Quebec named Richard Shuttlesworth who makes toy bagpipes (complete with functioning chanter and drones) out of drinking straws.

And actually Sonny McDonough played a flute, not a whistle, made from a bicycle pump…I didn’t notice until now that you had written “whistle” in your original post.

79

I think it was a pepper…

80

To comment on some matters arising.

I’ve always used the fact that the flute vibrates as a guide to good tone production from wooden flutes, so I agree with those who suggest that the flute can contribute to the sound.

Similarly, it seems likely that any aspect of finish that impacts turbulence in the air column could affect sound, so it’s at least possible that differences in materialsl lead to differences in finish. As a specific example, it also seems likely to me that bore smoothness makes a difference to sound. Rod Cameron used to modify plastic Aulos baroque flutes, and one thing he did was to roughen the bore with sandpaper.

In a post to another thread, I pointed out that scientific attempts to measure differences in sound contributed by materials are likely to fail because this contribution is likely to be swamped by changes in the embouchure, or contributed by the player. In other words, if there is a lot of variability in the experiment other than the variable you are attempting to measure, it won’t work. Conversely, if one uses machine made flutes, or artificial but reproducible ways of sounding the flute, the resulting crudity of flute and blower will make it difficult to measure the contribution of the material.

My take is that as long as it is difficult/impossible to design a really clean experiment, the discussion will continue. Can’t help noticing here a discrete silence from the actual physicists among us while amateurs like me guess.

Hugh