Is this a piccolo or a fife?

Irish Flute
21

I had wondered if you had changed the hole size with your knife comment and the photo.
The thing was that I really wanted to like the thing. The tapered bore and strange fingering I could live with, but the embouchure seemed really strange to me. No matter what I tried it sounded “muffled” and sluggish. I remembered wondering how many kids tried to play one of these things and decided to learn the spoons instead. Perhaps if I see one again I’ll give it another blow, it has been a while. (The above is not meant to be a review)

Interesting to note that Yamaha calls the thing a fife.

PS. Sorry for the hijack.

22

Just confirming, yes, it is an F piccolo, ie an octave above the F band flute. Baines mentions them in passing, giving the length variously at 10.2" or 10.5". He refers to the “old” F piccolo, suggesting it went out of fashion some time back.

Bate mentions a G piccolo, found at the Birmingham School of Music. If you think this is silly, check out DCM 0610 at the Dayton C Miller collection. A super-piccolo one octave above the C piccolo; ie 2 octaves above the flute! It’s worth a look.

Terry

23

For those too lazy to search, I did. Here it is:

c++ piccolo

What a truly bizarro beastie that thing is!!

24

And the closeup.
Um, wow!

25

Now, that’s just scary!

26

Hah, what a monster is it for giving concerts to bats I wonder, the third octave would be too high to heard I should think.
Anyhow the little F piccolo is a blast to play, though I’d best leave off it a bit as my nextdoors are giving me ‘looks’.

27

That’s just WRONG. It reminds me of the forerunner of one of those modern MIDI/Breath Controller things some folks use these days.

Trees, at least your neighbors are only giving you looks. You should see what poor old Floyd the cat left on the carpet after my last session.

OK, kidding aside, thanks for all the info, everyone! Here in the USA the Db piccolo was fairly popular for a while; popular enough that many old Sousa band marches, etc. often had a Db piccolo part included in the set.

But that’s neither here nor there, I suppose … just more useless maunderings from yrs truly (who got firsthand experience by sorting about 100 years worth of band music from her old high school (founded mid 1800’s) archives one summer!) …

cat.