Ben,
Thought I’d reply in this thread in case I ‘spoiled’ the other one for any folks who might later wish to take the test.
What did the player say about the flutes? To paraphrase “This appraising flutes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I sound just like me on all of them, I can’t tell any difference! What’s going on?”
That’s why the original recordings were made, to see if there were any audible differences that the player wasn’t picking up ‘under their ear’ whilst playing, or indeed if I could hear any significant differences. Now, I’m privileged to have a number of recordings of the player on their (until recently) only flute, the Olwell that appears on the beginning of the test track. And yes, all the tracks did sound just like the player, and if the tracks hadn’t been labelled when I got them I wouldn’t have known they were being played on flutes of differing material or design either. And in common it seems with everyone who gave answers to the test, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to say which was wood, or delrin, or ‘Rudall’ or ‘Pratten’ (or Hawkes, either, for it seems there’s a possibility that the Ward delrin is in fact a Hawkes copy, not a Pratten, I’m waiting for confirmation of that).
Now, to be fair, after a week of ‘trying them out’ the player has subsequently expressed a preference for the Rudall, it apparently seems to ‘feel’ better and ‘play easier’ than the Olwell that’s been their main and only flute for many years. But, the player’s no newbie and is well aware of the ‘honeymoon effect’ that a great many people experience with new flutes… how they ‘sail effortlessly’, ‘play themselves’, ‘take no air at all’, but after a week or so suddenly the magic disappears and the ‘new’ flute requires as much work (if not more) than the ‘old’ one did. (It’s why so many glowing reviews which appear here on the first day of a new flute arriving look so much alike that the Automatic Flute Review Generator was invented).
To be fair again, it’s of course entirely possible that if the player bought a Gallagher Rudall and played it for a year or two, there might be a noticeable difference in tone between it and the Olwell in another test recording, and between itself now and 2 years down the road. It’s basic physiology, the player’s entire central nervous system would adjust to it and the player, being really rather good, would be able to ‘bring out’ any subtle differences. Or not, according to their ‘ideal tone’, and we all have one of those in our heads which our brain attempts to produce whenever we play. At the moment though, the player’s entire system has adjusted over many years to achieving their desired tone from the Olwell, and since the other flutes are of a certain quality, is ‘autonomically’ achieving that same tone on them. An experiment to test this would, however, require a long time to conduct, and I don’t know anyone who’d want to give up the fun of getting on and playing just to undertake it.
What did I learn from the experiment? Here’s a few things:
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No-one listening to the test track (who expressed an answer) could tell the difference between a Rudall and Pratten (and possibly also a Hawkes) just by listening, even though the different flutes were side-by-side in the same tune (where you would expect the brain to be able to readily identify significant changes in characteristics). By extrapolation, the same can be said for studio-produced flute tracks, on CDs such as WFO. It’s why people often ask questions here like "Wow! What flute’s that being played by Paddy McChud on “The dog in the bucket”? It’s also probably why Kevin Krell generously tries to include details of all the flutes played by those appearing on the WFO CDs, it saves him answering a lot of questions. My conclusion: Making bald statements ascribing widely differing and unique tonal characteristics to flutes of differing ‘models’ as a ‘universal truth’ is wrong, and blindly believing such statements (particularly as a basis for a purchase in the expectation of ‘a magic bullet’) is foolish. I’d defy anyone without prior knowledge of a player’s instrument to identify its ‘model’ simply by listening to it being played.
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At least one player, who is not a pro and has less than 10 years on the instrument, makes a Ward Delrin flute sound just like an Olwell Blackwood flute (to my ears and to the ears of others). My conclusion: people who claim their delrin flutes sound like wooden flutes should not be poo-poohed out of hand and neither should their instruments, and especially not because “you don’t see any pros playing them”. (A personal aside: I reckon there’ll be a lot more delrin flutes around in the future, and a lot less trees). Does that mean if you buy a Ward Delrin you’ll sound like you’re playing an Olwell? No it does not.
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No-one listening to the test track (who expressed an answer) could tell the difference between blackwood, delrin, and dogwood, and although blackwood and delrin flutes are common, the materials weren’t identifiable by the player’s tone. My conclusion: Seems to support JW Coltman’s experiment for the Acoustical Society of America, the famous (or infamous) concrete flute test, poo-poohed whenever it comes up around here. It would also seem that making statements ascribing unique tonal characteristics to specific flute woods (or plastics for that matter) is stretching the imagination, since there was nothing noticeably unique enough to make a positive identification here. Indeed, listening to the WFO CDs (a useful reference compendium) without access to liner notes or Mr Krell’s website, I’d defy anyone without prior knowledge of a player’s instrument to identify any of the flutes by material. A much better test for this though would be for a maker to produce ‘identical’ flutes in a range of materials and let a good player loose on them (Coltman’s Experiment revisited, but with tunes instead of just the open C# being sounded). It’s a pity one of the flutes in the test track wasn’t made of boxwood.
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People who use bucket-loads of adjectives to describe a tone no-one else can hear are reluctant to describe a tone everyone can hear. You may draw your own conclusions, I suspect you can guess what mine are.
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People have widely differing hearing abilities, but we all knew that already. It doesn’t hurt, however, for everyone to be reminded that one player’s ‘lovely rich tone’ is another listener’s “muffled”, and one person’s good hard low D is another person’s ‘awful honking’!!!.
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Many people are reluctant or unwilling to engage ‘publicly’ in practical experiments. It’s an observation, conclusions would be mere speculation.
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Some people are perfectly willing to engage in practical experiments, regardless of the outcome or any conclusions which may be drawn from their answers. An observation also, but I conclude we have a number of jolly good sports around here.
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People are very willing to believe what they read here, particularly if they’re new to fluting. Especially if it’s repeated often enough. People are very willing to believe what they read here, particularly if they’re new to fluting. Especially if it’s repeated often enough.
