I’m interested in how much different aspects of the flute play out in the final sound. For instance, take the color of the tone – what makes one flute bright sounding and another dark? Is it the shape of the embouchure, the undercutting, the size and/or cut of toneholes relative to bore dimensions? How much is the player, and in that case is it about the way you focus your breath or other factors?
Of course the obvious answer is: everything plays a part. But which features would you investigate and how?
A corollary: the sound I would like to achieve right now is dark, bubbly, and pure, which is not the most common tone, but some great players seem to have it. The opposite of bright and breathy. Almost like a sine wave, or like a more powerful baroque sound. So anybody’s thoughts on that as it relates to flutes and tone production would be interesting.
Thanks for the link. That thread just has a lot of people saying “It’s all in the player,” and one builder saying, “the cuts of the holes have a lot to do with it.” What I’d like to know is more specifically, what are the actual variables, and how do they work. For instance, take three major embouchure cuts, round, oval, and mostly squared – do those correspond with tendencies toward particular timbres? And what, specifically, does undercutting of the toneholes do? Is that only for tuning, or does it make changes to the timbre too? Hopefully some builders and restorers can chime in.
Or if it really is all with the player, what is it that the player does to effect these differences. I know it’s hard to put into words very slight changes of the muscles in your lips, ha!, but maybe we can try. I think it would interesting to really investigate this, instead of just making broad generalizations.
I came across an interesting discussion on Simon Polak’s website. Simon is a maker of baroque flutes. I’ve added two URLs below to pages where he talks a bit about the influence of harmonics on how a flute sounds to an audience vs to the player. I thought his observations on the role of feedback to the player in the second page were interesting. Specifically, he makes the point that something that sounds or even just feels different to the player will change how the player plays the music and hence will have a major impact on the audience, even if the first order effect is only detectable by the player and not by the audience.
I agree that the thread I linked to isn’t the most comprehensive thread on the topic but one thing that did come up in there was bore shape. That combined with a lot of other things I’ve read here lead me to believe that bore shape has the greatest impact on tone.
A great way to research this topic would be to play loads of different flutes and form your own opinion, rather than mining opinions from the likes of us who may, after all, not know what we’re talking about.
Well, what I really feel is that you mostly sound like yourself on whatever flute you play.
In line in front of whatever contribution the material makes, assuming the flute isn’t made of some sort of pasta product, are so many different inputs to tone production that material can seem, well, rather immaterial. On two identical flutes (as if that existed) of differing materials, a really together player might be able to tell them apart; a discerning listener in the room might do the same. Then again, maybe not.
I take as an example my little boxwood Olwell. It’s all wood in the bore, no slide, small holes, and not surprisingly I sound just like me on it. Give me one in blackwood and bedam if I don’t sound the same. In neither case could we “unmake” the flute and hand the same wood to a different maker to test whether the holes were responsible, and that’s not the only scientific breakdown in these conversations. Most folks don’t even bother shutting their eyes when comparing flutes.
Guitar players crap on all the time about this wood and that, forgetting how variable a commodity is wood. Will we do the same? What sounds better, a flute made from tight, ceramic-y blackwood, or one made from a crummy piece of cocus? The cocus one, obviously, because it costs more. And neither one sounds worth a damn if you embouchure sucks.
Well, yeah but we’re talking about the flute design so I was taking the player out of the equation. I’d think bore shape has more to do with tone & harmonics than embouchure cut though from what I’ve read. But hell, I don’t know what the facts are and even if I did I wouldn’t attempt to confuse the issue with them.
This is complicated. There are no quick and definitive answers to be given. If I talk or write too long about the subject, you will soon get the impression that I don’t know what I am talking about, and we wouldn’t want that to happen, now, would we? I’m having a hard time trying to imagine a dark, bubbly, and pure tone.
There are plenty of aspects that are subjective, of course. If you read my original post carefully you’ll see that I’m asking really specifically about what the effect is of certain concrete features. Let’s not bring in the discussion of materials though, too open-ended. I’d love to know if anybody actually knows some of the acoustical science of why a certain shape embouchure cut can have whatever effect it has. Or, what’s actually going on with the air inside the tube of the flute.
And then when it comes down to the player, I’d like to know what’s going on that a player does, that pushes the sound one way or another. Please, no more responses saying “It’s all subjective, so your topic is pointless”. If you feel that way, then there’s nothing for you to add here!
back in the late '70s I was at Jazz Alley, in Seattle, listening to a local band (Little Bill & the Blue Notes). Bill had a tenor sax player in the band at that point.
The horn player sounded like himself on the first two sets, the third set he did each song as a different tenor player.
I annoyed him, during the break, by interrupting his holding court, with a rather sizable bevy, by attempting to comment on how well he had portrayed the various tenor players. He got over being annoyed about the third one I named I did a couple more and dissed one of 'em for being, in me humble opinion, rather dodgy on his choice of progressions.
I retreated at that point as he had forgotten about his court but they were now annoyed with me.
Science of embouchure cuts… Shirley, how ya doin’?
You’re right Rob, the last part of my last remark was inappropriate. Sorry.
What would I do with the information? Nothing in particular. I just find it interesting, engaging, to approach ideas about sound from all levels… musically and acoustically and psychologically. I’ve come to realize that the conical flute is one of the most acoustically complex instruments out there, much moreso than the Boehm flute, and more than run of the mill string instruments etc, as far as the reasons that it produces the sound that it does. I figured that since several flute builders are frequent posters on the list, they might have some insight as to how their experiences relate to what I’m asking.
talkin’ ta you, Rob
I did a couple more and dissed one of 'em for being, in me humble opinion, rather dodgy on his choice of progressions.