Playing the flute with an angle, rather than nearly parallel to the floor seems to be more common in trad. flute playing than in classical Boehm. Why is that? Is there an acoustical benefit to playing at an angle? Or it’s just a matter of comfort? Or is angled playing just the natural way and keeping it parallel to the floor is just a band thing, or something that’s taught for form’s sake with no actual effect on performance?
To see what I mean, I’ve pasted this photo from celticmusik.com
Having the foot down, at least a little bit, helps condensation drain out of the bore. If you are playing for long periods of time this will help your tone.
Aside from that flute playing is a complex blend of ergonomic compromises between hand, wrist, shoulder and neck comfort. Transverse flute playing is intrinsically flawed from an ergonomic perspective, being asymmetrical, twisted and at the limits of some people’s range of motion, so you just have to find what works for you, and maybe change it up a bit over time.
It would be nice to see modern makers focus a bit more attention on improving on the ergonomics of simple system flutes. It might help some of us older players keep going for a bit longer.
Agreed Paddler. I thought the 2 approaches the FluteLab people offer for Boehm flute should be achievable for our flutes…
vertical | flutelab vertical | flutelab
I hope those links work!
The links work! Interesting! I wonder how well it would be adopted. Geoffrey’s Selkie takes a different approach altogether.
I had been doing a little messing around trying to make a Swan Neck using traditional flute making methods, but concluded that it wouldn’t be easy. Currently collaborating with a 3D printing flute maker to see if that methodology has more promise.
Which is not to say it couldn’t be done traditionally. But it would be great to prove the concept would work before killing yourself trying to make it the hard way.
And if course begs the question, why do it the hard way if the easy way works?
Hmmm… To be determined!
The link worked!
However- can black and brown be worn togeather and still be in fashion?
Hmmm, thinking about the bent head approach (whether swan neck or vertical style), whatever approach you take is going to be hard. Ideally we would like perfect smooth curves at the bends, but that’s hard to imagine in wood. More imaginable in 3D printing, but you would still need to sand the bore surface to make it smooth. How do you sand around inside a curved bore?
I note that the FluteLab people don’t attempt to bend their tubing, but segment it in wedges, and then presumably solder it. You’d imagine that still needs sanding out inside to smooth the inside of the joints.
I wonder if they have come up with special tooling to achieve a well-smoothed bore. And would that same approach work for 3D or wooden bends?
Maybe fabricate a Left Side and a mirror image Right Side, then glue them together using a jig to keep the two halves aligned? And smooth the half bores before gluing up?
Anyone had experience working “round the bend”?
I should probably suggested trying this experiment to see if a bent head would be an advantage to you.
Hold the flute up to the lips at whatever angle feels comfortable, and play a bit to prove it’s well in place.
Now, without taking it away from the lips, let the flute drop to around 45 degrees. You probably can’t blow it convincingly but that’s not the point. Do your fingers, hands, wrists, neck feel more relaxed in the sloped mode? Do you feel more capable with the finger hole stretches and of covering the holes securely and comfortably?
Repeat, noting where you feel stresses as you alternate the two positions.
So that’s the Swan Neck approach. Now just pull the flute away from the lips and hold it vertically, or perhaps almost vertically. That’s the Vertical head approach. Even better?
I think I’d definitely want a thumb rest for the lower hand in the vertical mode.
You can use a router to create a bore in two halves, polish it smooth, and then bond the two halves together and shape the outside as you choose. This is the de facto standard way of making Native American flutes. They typically have straight bores, but there is no reason you couldn’t route along two matching curved paths.
Makers of brass instruments, and of course Uilleann Pipes, have long had ways of bending tubing while maintaining the inner volume. The techniques I’ve seen involve filling the pipe to give it a solid center, and then bending the “rod” before removing the center. The fill can be molten metal which is left to cool before bending, and then heated for removal, or some water based approaches that require deep freezing before bending.
The latter approach is the one I intend to try if I ever get around to experimenting with this. I originally bought the materials intending to make a set of uilleann pipes, then I thought about trying to make a head joint with a U-bend for my low Bb flute model, similar to the approach Gilles Lehart took with this low A flute:
I’ve always wondered to what extent the angle is a product of crowded session playing and the need to take up a bit less space. I try to keep it fairly level but find myself contorting when things get cramped. At a certain point when it gets crowded enough it’s time to switch to the whistle!
This also begs the question of whether it is the angle of the flute that is the issue, or simply the distance you need to reach across your body with the upper hand.
I notice the ergonomic problems much more with larger flutes, like low Bb, than with smaller flutes like F, and I think it is simply a matter of the distance between the embouchure hole and the left (upper) hand tone holes. On a large flute I need to reach my left hand far across my body to the right side, and simultaneously twist my head to the left. It is uncomfortable for the neck and the wrist/hand on the left hand.
Angling the flute down is one strategy for reducing the length of this reach across. Another is to have a U-bend in the head so that the tone holes are not so far away from the embouchure hole.
Yeah, good point, Paddler. Again you can experiment with that by holding your flute up to your lips, note where you feel the strain, then slide your flute to the left until your left hand is about in front of your ear. Does that take the strains away?
Such heads are available for Boehm flute, as you can see from this video:
But I’m not aware of anyone offering them for our kind of flute. Anyone know?
And if not, how could we go about testing the idea? I see you can buy cheap curved heads on the Internet (Google: Curved Flute Head), but of course they will have the Boehm head taper. We need some curved 19mm (3/4”) bore tubing, or to come up with a way of fabricating a version of it. 3D printing? Or what?
You can make your own curved tubing by bending your existing 19 mm slide inner tubing. You just need a suitable matrix to fill the tube so it doesn’t kink, and a fixture that gives you the right radius of curve and enough leverage to bend the matrix filled tube. And you’ll need to anneal it first, of course. Maybe a thicker walled tube would be more forgiving, I don’t know.
This rather long-winded video from a trumpet maker has some useful information and includes a demonstration of bending brass tubing at the end (around 18 min in).
A condensed summary of what he says is that using lead or heavier metals as the bending matrix works, but not very well, and is clearly dangerous for your health. Using pitch as the matrix works very well, but is messy and smokey and you have to be careful not to burn it. Using soap ice doesn’t work very well and requires a special low-temp freezer. Using his own frozen matrix, a powder form with various additives that you mix with water and freeze in a conventional freezer, works about as well as pitch and is cleaner/easier to deal with. I actually have some of this stuff, but haven’t tried using it yet, nor have I built the fixtures. I got it for an ongoing (ie. stalled) uilleann pipe making project.
Interestingly, he does 3D print some of his tools/forms. And yes, this does seem like it could be a candidate for just 3D printing the part in metal.
An impressive display. I can’t help wonder though how well it would go with 19mm (3/4”) thin-walled tubing. Clearly the factories that make curved-head flute heads can churn them out pretty cheaply.
But I wonder why the Flute Lab people segment their heads rather than just bend them. Especially since their bends are more in the 45 to 90 degrees order than the 180 degrees needed for the curved head approach.
It would be good to practice on something a bit cheaper than my sterling silver tuning slides! Anyone got a source of brass or copper or nickel silver tubing say 19mm ID, 20mm OD?
I was joking about this in my crowded session a couple of weeks ago. I learned the flute parallel, but for all intents and purposes if the session is crowded one adapts by pointing it down. Sometimes the back and neck follows, sometimes it is the embouchure that does the work. I try to position myself so the flute gets some space by picking a spot where I can angle my body into open space like the bend of a square chair set up or the outside edge of a circle. But it is complicated if you or one of the folks with their back to the wall.
Amazon sell 3/4” pipe bending springs, so I guess someone makes 3/4”~19mm copper pipe. From my DIY plumbing efforts a spring would do 90 degrees without much flattening. Might be enough to try out some ergonomics. 180 degrees might be overambitous.
The brass wind manufacturers like Olds (remember them 
) had a fixture that clamped, sealed and pumped up the tubing with several tons of pressure with hydraulic fluid while bending, getting ripple free bends. I would think larger flute manufacturers use much the same.
I have mentioned before that when I worked as a pipe fitter/welder we used the pitch method to bend marine gunmetal brass exhaust systems for sub-chasers, these were up to 24 inches in diameter. It is dirty and smelly. You might try one of the low temperature soldering metals. At one time, someone offered a low temp casting metal that was claimed to have low toxicity.
bob (an seanduine)
