Hello everyone!
About a week ago I have received some flutes in the key of A made by Martin Niethammer that I saw on his youtube channel and I would like to share my impressions. And please excuse my clumsy English.
The flutes are called Zouveia (The Fun Flute) and are intended to be used for Blues, Jazz, Latin along with other instruments particularly guitars.
So I contacted the maker and asked about the material and fingering.
They are made with a thumb hole that lies between the two top finger holes. And the material is called Paperwood.
He offered to send me four of these flutes to try them and purchase the one I like best. A week later I received the flutes.
Here are my impressions:
(to avoid confusions I name every note as for a flute in D!)
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fingering: The thumb hole works in the same way as a thumb key meaning that the hole is at the acoustically exact place to produce a perfect c-nat in both octaves. Very convenient for players of keyed flutes. So you have a perfect c-nat in both octaves with the same fingering. But since I am more used to play c-nat with cross fingering I wanted to see what happens if I close the thumb hole with tape.
And Ta-Da! The Zouveia played with standard tin whistle fingering! -
Material and appearance: The Paperwood feels like dense hardwood. The flutes are very well made. I think they are turned on a CNC lathe. The finger holes are not in-line as you can see on the photos. The black flute has a matt finish and some well made and neat red bindings. The brown flute is clear lacquered. The two other flutes had a thinner wall but I have already returned them. They sounded and played as well as the two flutes I will describe here.
Thumb hole position
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tuning: Perfect. Octaves are all in tune. The flute is pitched A = 440 Hz and not tunable. But I was able to play this flute in tune from a pitch-range between 435 to 445 Hz.
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cross fingering / half holing (with taped thumb hole): c-nat (oxxooo) is spot-on as well as Bb (xoxxxx), G# (xxoxxx) is circa 20 cents sharp. Second octave c-nat (with taped thumb hole) is in tune with this fingering (oxoxxx), the 2th and 5th finger holes are bigger than the other holes making it very easy to half cover f-nat and Bb or to slide up or down.
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sound: just nice. Well balanced between the octaves. As with every flute there is quite a range to modulate the sound with the embouchure.
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playing characteristics / embouchure: Great and easy. I don’t know how to describe it better. The flutes just do what I want them to do. I can play them a bit longer than my irish flute in D without signs of fatigue.
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volume: they can get rather loud without sounding shrill. OK, the notes above the second octave are a bit piercing. But that’s normal for a flute in A
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summary:
I love these flutes and had a lot of fun playing them as you can hopefully hear on my recordings below. If you are used to play keyed flutes, keep the thumb hole, If, like me you are used to cross fingering c-nat, I am sure Martin can make a flute to your needs. -
sample recordings: I had the opportunity to make couple of recordings with the two flutes. Some improvisations and some traditional tunes. I can practice every now and then in a church so the reverb is natural. All recordings are unedited and made with a handheld audio recorder in a distance between 50 cm to 3 meters and in mp3-format. The recording with the Djembé was made in a practice room with rather damped and dry acoustics. Some of the tunes are work in progress and still need some practice.
Here you can find the recordings:
https://www.box.com/s/94a5648f6b6e154024a5
You can contact Martin via his youtube channel where you can see and hear all the instruments he is making.
Cheers,
Timo