I have (half-heartedly) been playing the flute since last summer, but have decided to start focusing more on learning the flute.
I have read that drone playing is good for the intonation. But how would one make a Just Intonation drone?
Equal temperament instruments won’t work for that, unless one makes an A drone (which would be hard to play on Eb flute anyway).
How do you people do it?
I’m not clear what you are trying to do here. Are you looking at building an instrument to provide a drone note, or just would like to get a note generated at a particular pitch to play against? I agree that practicing against a drone can be very helpful in learning proper intonation on the flute, particularly if you’re going to be playing with pipers.
There are several standalone tuners on the market that support both tuning and tone generation using just intonation with a selectable root pitch, the Peterson VSAM is an example.
I’m quite certain that there are also on-line tone generators that you can use to provide a drone to play against.
What exactly are you wanting to achieve?
Michael
My electronic tuner/metronome has a setting where you can play a note and even adjust it to the cent you want it. For practice, that has worked for me.
Some useful free tools for just intonation here:
Not building an instrument. Just generating or recording a Just Intonation drone.
Equal Temperament drones are no problem, since I have a synth. But it’s harder with Just Intonation because I don’t have any Just Intonation instrument (except the flute, but it’s hard to maintain a stable and precise pitch long enough for recording).
A tuner/metronome with a pitch sound should work… didn’t know it existed such models.
I tried the tuning fork on the webpage, but it doesn’t work (not on my computer at least).
I guess I’ll just buy one of those metronomes.
I bookmarked this after it appeared in an earlier discussion. Can’t remember who posted it.
http://www.idrs.org/multimedia/MIDI/PUB/Drones.htm
The idea is that you just play over the drone, your ears and lips do the rest. Its a sort of magic. Then the ET folks grumble that your F#s are all flat. 
But does a synth really produce notes that don’t have harmonics at the ‘normal’ frequencies. Can’t you just put a brick on the D key and play with that ?
I can’t answer your synth question. I don’t have much knowledge in harmonics.
But putting a brick on the D key would (except for the hassle of having to break a larger brick into a smaller piece) sound a bit wrong with a flute in Eb.
But of course, I could record my synth and then modulate the pitch with computer software.
That’s something I came up with now, just in the process of discussing this.
So I’m pretty clear on the options I have to make a Just Intonation drone note now.
Which leads unavoidably (for someone lacking proper musical theory schooling) to: How many Hz are F, G# and Bb in Just Intonation for the lower octave of the flute? So that I can configure pitch in the software correctly.
I don’t think that means what you think it means (inconceivable!)… Please tell me what is the difference between an equal temperament and a just intonation drone. Because my understanding is that tuning system (ie equal temperament) or the lack thereof (ie just intonation) applies only to a scale or chord. A single note is just a note.
As I understand it, going from A=440, there are different changes in frequency between notes depending on the intonation system.
But maybe one doesn’t necessarily count from A=440, and JI varies depending on the note one counts from?
Precisely. Tuning is relative. Tuning is always relative!
Those are nine letters that changes everything. The power of the alphabet.
I’m going to make me some EQUAL TEMPERAMENT drones… or maybe I should just call them drones.
Heh heh. My reaction, too. 
Pick a drone note, say the tonic of the key or mode of your tune, or a D drone. The exact pitch of the chosen note doesn’t matter. It could be the standard ET pitch relative to A440. Tune your flute to that note, then play in Just Intonation against it.
When people talk about frequencies on a D flute they most often, so far as I recall, work down from A=440 using ET and get D of 293.7Hz. If they treat A440 as a just fifth they get 293.3 Hz. So no-one is going to lose any sleep over it. (with both at the same time the beats might keep you awake though)
Coming down in ET to Eb would give 311.1Hz. It probably makes no sense to come down to Eb using any ratio, but if you did you would probably chose 32/45 and get 312.9 .
Edit: crossed with MTGuru. What he said - and the real experts don’t need the numbers you see. His “tune your flute to that note” will cover the difference in the two routes to Eb.
Right, a JI fifth is (only) about 2 cents wider than an ET fifth. So to simulate the situation of playing with a piper who tunes to exactly A = 440 Hz and plays a JI D drone relative to that, a fifth below … Set your drone to D = 293.3 Hz* (2 cents flatter than ET D = 293.7 Hz). Then tune and play your flute in Just intervals relative to the D, regardless of the key or mode of the tune.
I think for the magic to work best the drone needs to be an octave or two lower though. What pitch are UP drones ?
The tenor drone matches the chanter D. The baritone drone is 1 octave below, the bass drone 2 octaves below.
Well you could use this http://www.kmbagpipes.com/vid.html for C drones
David
In my opinion, for flute, I would suggest that rather than look for drones in all possible notes, just use the equal temperament D and G as your root tones, and play against them and try to achieve a consonant sound.
Unless you have perfect pitch (I don’t), the skill is to adjust your intonation to be consonant with a scale root, not to play a correct frequency for a specific root pitch. In reality, you will have to adjust to the intonation of your fellow players, so picking a fixed pitch reference may not serve any real benefit.
If you’re playing with a set of well designed concert pitch Uilleann pipes that is in tune, everything is going to be on a D just intonation scale, so you might want to practice G tunes against a D drone to see how that feels compared to practicing against a G drone.
ack, with an Eb flute he might be better lookin’ for a piano player 
Thanks, that answers a question I have asked several times and never got an answer to. The follow on question is for confirmation that that includes tunes in E dorian, for which a D drone and a just intoned D scale are not the most obvious. I like playing them over an E drone but wonder if that encourages an ‘un-irish’ sounding intonation.