I’ve enjoyed listening to some music and when I’ve gone and looked up the web sites of some of these folks, I quite often see the flute player playing a silver flute, not a wooden Irish one. So is a wooden Irish flute really necessary? Or is it possible to get a good Irish sound from a regular concert flute?
Of course it’s possible…just be prepared to work a lot harder at it…just as its possible to get a concertina sound out of an accordian…tough!
a boehm is less intuitive, but much easier. my boehm flute is much easier to buzz with harmonics and a barky tone than my antique flute. but then again, i got a wonderful, dave copley headjoint to help me out!
I think it really isn’t necessary to play a wooden simple system flute to play irish music. Just as you don’t need to play a whistle made from tin to play irish tin whistle music. But for me, it worked best. I tried it on silver flute, and found it to be $#@!%#. Getting “that” tone on a wooden flute isn’t that easy, but it feels better for me.
Joanie Madden plays a silver flute with ITM speed, and what a tone she has… 
Boehm flutes took off for a couple of decades in mid-20th century Irish music because there was a limited supply of simple system flutes in playable condition and at the time, there weren’t any people making new ones. A number of players, particularly East Galway players, switched over to Boehm flutes at the time. It’s not so common these days now that there is such an abundance of high-quality wooden flutes available. You can certainly play Irish music on a Boehm flute and it can sound just fine, but be prepared to go about completely re-approaching the way that you play the instrument and, if you wind up going to many sessions, some wary glances from people who might not be so accepting of Boehm flutes being suitable for Irish trad. (Not necessarily without reason: here in the US, I’ve seen a number of people show up at sessions over the years with silver flutes who either tend to come from a rigid classical background or the burgeoning “jam band community”; in both cases, the people involved were remarkably unencumbered with any ability to play Irish music…).
If anyone here has heard Santa Cruz flute player Lars Johannesson, he is one of the few people I’ve heard able to play tunes on either wooden flute or Boehm flute with equal skill.
Other than three I can think of (and I’m fleshing out the list with one whom others here would say doesn’t count), for my experience the opposite’s been true. You’ve piqued my curiosity.
There’s Irish music, and there’s Irish flute playing. A modern flute is a flute; in order for a flute to have an Irish sound, it needs to be played for ITM, and not played the way most modern flute players play. It’s ultimately the music that matter. A silver flute can play ITM to great effect, and it sounds fine; not quite like a wooden flute, but just as “Irish.”
But then, this is true with wooden flutes, too – as we were saying on the embouchure thread, you can play a wooden flute in a non-ITM style, and sound remarkably not Irish. You can even sound classical… Hey, chiranga (sp?) is Latin music played on (predominantly) wooden French flutes – totally different sound than the French intended (romantic and classical music, of course), but not wrong, and not ITM, either.
Of course, with modern Boehms, there’s that infernal clacking…
Gordon
Speaking of clacking… I got so used to the clacking and leaky bellows on Noel Hill’s (concertina) album that I sighed, thinking that no matter how good I will get, my buttons will not clack nor my bellows wheeze.
i think it would be easier if you use a wooden boehm-style flute.
No. the headline proposition of this thread is NOT true ! Not in my experience, at any rate. Certainly there is a handful of talented ITM players who use Boehm flute effectively, and of course the great Paddy Carty notoriously used a Radcliffe or 1867 - post Boehm cylindrical bore, fully platter-keyed/rod-axled systems. Even pre Sam Murray/Chris Wilkes/Hammy Hamilton one rarely saw Irish players using Boehm, at least not out and about abroad - I have no experience of Ireland in the 1960s to 80s, so I can’t speak as to what the kids etc. played, but I doubt many played Boehm.
Of course one can play ITM satisfactorily on Boehm - as has been said, to do so is more a question of style and approach than of the technical capabilities of the instrument. Tone wise, Boehm flutes of wood or metal are capable of a wide variety of tone, and when originally I played Boehm, I produced a rather woody sound on my student metal flute, probably because that was my “mind’s ear’s” ideal??? They are certainly MORE capable than simple system flutes of the kind of stonking power in the low range that most of us strive to achieve, for all the obvious technical reasons. However, ultimately, to my ear one can always tell that it is a Boehm flute being played. I substantially agree with Gordon, including about the clacking!
That brings me to what I think is an important difference in technical capabilities between Boehm and simple systems, and is indeed an major reason why simple system remained dominant in ITM even when instruments were hard to find - the ornamentation. One can certainly do more-or-less all the traditional ornamentation on Boehm, but it doesn’t sound the same - it lacks crispness (despite the added percussion!), even on “French” type pierced keys, and of course glissandi and finger vibrato are impossible, or at least much harder to achieve and then by partially different methods. There is also a subtle difference in tone quality between the conical and cylindrical bores - more I think than between a Boehm flute in wood and one in metal.