All excellent advice, thank you! I just warmed up and played with a tuner to get a more precise description of where the problems are. If I pull out quite a bit and blow as much down into the flute as possible, I can get most notes in tune at 440. Once I get there, if I keep my embouchure steady for the sake of experiment, B is 8 cents sharp and E is 15 cents sharp. C# is so low that it’s registering as a C natural, probably because I’m pulled out so far… You’re right, I should get my hands on some other flutes and see if I run into the same issues.
My advice is don’t play to a tuner. You will inevitably chase the tuner pitch with your embouchure as you watch the display.
Insead, use a RTTA app, free from various sources to record yourself playing a full Irish tune three times through. Then look at the RTTA display of the analysis of the full recording to see where your notes are hitting compared to 12TET intonation. It’s the only way to know how you’re actually blowing the flute in pitch when you’re just focusing on the music with your ears and not your eyes.
And then later on, once you’ve solved any major problems with embouchure development or a better flute, don’t focus too much on 12TET vs. the idiosyncrasies of Irish tunes. Due to the cross-fingered Cnat on flute, whistle, and pipes being a bit sharp, I’ve played in sessions where everyone hits that Cnat a bit sharp. ncluding the fiddlers! The “Piper’s C” or “C Supernatural” is just part of the music. I play an 8-keyed “Irish flute” and I always cross-finger that note because it just fits the tunes to my ear. I never use the Cnat key on my flute.
You should be able to correct that B with some tape or wax. The E is a problem, and it might be related to the fact that its a model optimized for small hands. One of the main issues with ergonomics for these flutes is the reach for the right hand ring finger to the hole that vents E. The reason it is always the smallest hole is because all makers move it up the bore in order to make it easier to reach, but then make is smaller so that its not too sharp. Most makers push this hole position to hole size trade-off as far as they feel comfortable. So when you make a flute for players with small hands, you are certainly pushing this hole movement up the bore to the limit, and hence really risking that note being sharp.
The C# being flat is normal for Irish flutes, but not that flat! How is the C natural fingered oxx ooo? It’ll be a veiled, weak, note, but how is the pitch compared to the other notes?
If you meet other players, ask if you can try their flute. Most people are pretty helpful in this regard. There are lots of good flutes out there.
This is a bit of a tangent, but Cnat isn’t always sharp on flute and whistle, depending on how you choose to play it (it depends on fingering, embouchure, etc.). And the problem with everyone just “agreeing to play that one note sharp” is that box players and concertinas generally can’t, even if they’d want to.
Also, someone who plays pipes please correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I’m pretty sure it’s more common for Cnat to be slightly FLAT on the pipes.
I agree with this. I’d say it is more common for makers and players alike to prefer to make C# flat in order to keep Cnat in tune. I’ve often heard people claim that Cnat is somehow a more important note. This may have to do with the fact that it plays the role of the 4th (which is supposed to be perfect) in tunes in G, which are common.
In the hands of a good player the C natural lands where it needs to land. The player is in control and makes a deliberate choice. And it is not always the same, it depends on context tune, mode, whoever you are playing with.
Listen to Seamus Ennis for example, when he plays the New Demesne/College Groves there are three different Cs in play in that tune.
There are always choices, on whistle, flute pipes or fiddle. Different fingerings, shadings, breath, embouchure all play a part and if you have a cnat key, there’s that option too when the situation or desired effect calls for it.
[edit] Just to clarify this: You can’t say 'C nat on the pipes is.. '. It is one of those notes you have to humour. If you play it like a fingering chart tells you, it may well come out sharp and awful (listen to any beginner/inexperienced player) so you work to get it where you want it. Use different fingerings, shadings, chanter on/off the knee etc. And yes ideally you want it flat-ish to harmonise with the drones but it is not formulaic but context dependent.
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I’m sure paddler will correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think any unkeyed simple system flute in D that’s not built for someone with hands like a pro basketball player will produce an in-tune scale without embouchure changes.
If you changed the hole sizes in a small handed flute so that all the notes were in tune with the same embouchure then the volume and tonal character would change (even more than it does now) from note to note - so embouchure changes would still be needed to play nice music.
For an unkeyed flute I suggest that the test should be how easily can you manage the embouchure gymnastics required to play good sounding D and G major scales over a range of volumes. As an experienced flute player you will have the embouchure control to do it.
If you don’t want to do that then play the Boehm - it was invented for a reason. Or maybe try a flute with Siccama keys.
I have simple system flute in F which has the same hole spacing for each hand as the small-handed Burns but not the huge gap between the hands. It’s much easier and more fun to play.
Other makers make small-handed flutes that make different compromises. I briefly played a Tony Millyard flute that reduced the hole spacing by slanting the holes the way it’s done for some recorders. Burns doesn’t do that and my first impression was that the scale was better on the Millyard.
Paddler beat me to it- many “trad Irish” players rotate the head-joint so the blow-hole isn’t in-line with the imagined centre-line of the top of the flute, but rather aimed a bit towards the player.
I’m a mild version of this, with the front edge of the blow-hole more or less at the centre-line.
I’ve seen some really good players who, when they try my flute, the first thing they do is rotate the head to put the blow-hole at around a 30 degree angle, and the second thing they do is shove the head all they way in. (The third thing they do is rotate the foot so the keys are facing down, but that’s another story.)
So all things being equal these people are playing the flute a lot flatter than you would do.
I have to disagree with the idea that conical-bore wood “old system” flutes are inherently out of tune. I’ve played hundreds of them over a 35 year period, hundreds of original 19th century instruments and hundreds of Folk Music Revival “Irish flutes” made since the 1970s.
It’s true that the originals were designed to be optimised for intonation in the 2nd and 3rd registers, where the 19th century orchestral literature mostly had flutes dwell, meaning that the low-register tuning was compromised a bit. Also certain open-hole notes were intended to be “vented” by opening one or more keys, which aspect is lost with “trad Irish” players who don’t use the keys in that way.
But modern copies of those old flutes designed to dwell in the low registers and designed to be played without “venting” should have, and usually do have, perfect intonation from Bottom D up to B in the 2nd octave, this being the range of the vast majority of the trad Irish flute repertoire.
However one must be aware that many “trad Irish” fluteplayers want their flutes built to Just Intonation, not Equal Temperament. Thinking that a flute is out of tune because it’s not ET might be a matter of misunderstanding that instrument’s intention.
A common issue with people coming from other traditions is expecting the open C# to be at the ET location. I don’t think I’ve ever played a 19th century flute or a great-playing modern “Irish” flute where the open C# wasn’t a bit flat. On the other hand I’ve tried a couple bad modern flutes where the maker made Hole 1 too big and/or too high in a misguided effort to get open C# ET, in the process spoiling two other important functions of Hole 1: venting Middle D, and being the tone-hole for the crossfingered C natural. (I’ve tried flutes where vented Middle D wouldn’t sound at all, and I could only get C natural using some cockamamy fingering.)
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I wasn’t suggesting that they were out of tune. I was suggesting that playing a series of adjacent notes so that they are in tune and have similar volume and character requires embouchure adjustment.
For me that is quite definitely the case for the small handed Burns folk-flute, much less so for my mid 19th century flute with Siccama keys and negligible on the Boehm flute I borrowed for a couple of months when deciding on a route to a chromatic instrument. The Boehm flute was a revelation to me. I think the OP has experienced the difference coming in the other direction.
Yes, its not just tuning thats at issue, there is also the matter of player expectations about tone and volume. The design of the Boehm flute is such that notes are generally vented by tone holes of equal size, so the volume and tonal quality of all notes is fairly even. But on our flutes the size of tone holes varies a lot from one note to another. So even if all notes are in tune, they have different tonal qualities and volume, all other things being equal … which they typically are not.
When we play our flutes we tend to try to do whatever is necessary to produce the sound that we intend to produce. For good players the feedback loop between ears and lips is so efficient that they will naturally play in tune (where in tune is defined by whatever context they are in) and at the volume level they want. And what they have to do in order to achieve this will be pretty much the same on a lot of high quality antique flutes and good modern replicas of such. If you play a lot of those flutes, you will naturally expect the characteristic pattern of tonal variation across notes. Its only when you play a flute whose design starts to deviate significantly from that familiar pattern that you start to notice you have to do something different to get the sound you expect. And even if you can do it, you might not like having to play that way.
A pro player coming from a classical/Boehm flute background is going to encounter this from the other side though, and some extra levels of adaptation are going to be required to account for the fundamentally different flute design. If they expect the uniformity of volume and tone that they get from their Boehm flute, they aren’t going to get it easily from the veiled notes on our flutes, like E, say, which is vented by a tiny hole. Pushing it hard in order to try to gain that volume and tone is likely to drive it sharp. Not saying you are doing this. This is just an illustrative example of how carrying Boehm flute expectations about equal volume might lead to pushing some notes sharp.
Hi ! For what it’s worth, I have two Casey Burns folkflutes, small hands model, one made of boxwood the other of blackwood. They’re in tune at A=440 with the head pulled 5 mm out. One is in tune with itself apart from a flat high B, the second one shows a sharp E ( both octaves ) by more than 10 %. I play them with the blowhole rolled in a bit, blowing down, and I tend to play them loud. So if the OP has to pull the tenon way out and lipping, it sounds to me there’s a problem , assuming his model is the same as mine ( which are two years old, among the last ones CB made btw ).
As others have said, an interesting test would be to borrow someone else’s flute, but after the owner has set the tuning slide for himself. And let someone else try his folkflute after he has set it for himself. This would allow to compare the influence of blowing methods on the tuning.
I might be wrong, but weren’t Casey’s Folk Flutes designed for the beginner in mind? edit; (tuning slide design) Don’t most beginners blow flat too? At least that was how it was for me, and I got along fine with the Folk Flutes that I had; I loved the Boxwood FF he made, and his Bb Boxwood too. Some of his flutes I did not get along with though, so often times that is how it is depending on your embouchure and its development. A pro Boehm fluter probably isn’t the one who should be teamed up with a Folk Flute to begin with, given all that has been offered here by people far more knowledgeable than me. Though I do think Abbey, that you will need to adapt your embouchure to a higher end Irish flute with a full tuning slide, or the likes of, like an MDT of Terry McGee’s or similar tuning collar at the least. But a flute that is designed to be played by more serious musicians, not one that is aimed at beginners. There are so many good makers of flutes to be found here on Chiff that you will have a hard decision picking just one to try out for your next flute, I am sure. Good luck with that, and listen to the great advice you have been given above by those serious fluters and session musicians in this genre. They know what it’s all about!