Of Baroque Flutes and Irish Flutes

Irish Flute
1

In the "Baroque Flutes’ thread ( http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=28626 ) I was requested to make and post comparison recordings of my Baroque flute and of an Irish flute of roughly equivalent price.

At this time I am not posting links to recordings directly to the message boards, but I figure putting it up on flutesite and then putting a link to the page here should hopefully be an alternative everyone finds acceptable.

Here, at the top of the page, you can find the comparison I have recorded:

http://www.flutesite.com/comparison_recordings.htm

The Baroque flute is a Ralph Sweet maple played at A=415, the Irish flute is the M&E “Rudall & Rose” model also played at A=415–due to its tuning slide, it can handle playing at this pitch easily. I wanted to have both flutes at the same pitch, because in comparisons often the “brighter” (or higher-pitched) instrument comes across as sounding better even when all other things are equal.

The air is Fath mo Bhuartha, the reel is Anderson’s. I hope these are enjoyable or at least not offensive to anyone.

–James

P.S. On listening myself, I find I didn’t quite have the M&E’s pitch down as far as I thought I did. Oops.

2

Jaaa…415 is a bit of a stretch for the M&E R&R…

Jack

3

James, I have refreshed that link several times and I still cannot see this comparison at the top or anywhere else. Please advise.

And who told you you cannot post your music directly to the discussion board?

4

Hi, it’s out there, try going back to the page and either hitting refresh or F5 (if Windows).

It’s right at the top of the page, a section entitled “Irish Flute vs Baroque Flute”. I would think you might have a DNS propagation issue, but this is isn’t a new page, it’s been out there. This is only new content.

It’s possible there may be a cache server somewhere between you and flutesite that has the old page cached. If that’s it, you may have to just wait it out till it refreshes. Sometimes misconfigured cache servers don’t behave well–if you’ve ever read RFC 2616 you’ll know it’s no wonder.

Anyhow, no one told me I can’t post links to the board; it’s entirely a voluntary change on my part, at attempt to avoid irritating anyone, and also a kind of personal project I have going on, that’s a bit outside the scope of the boards.

Anyhow, since you’re having trouble, here are the links:

http://www.flutesite.com/comparison/fath_baroque.mp3
http://www.flutesite.com/comparison/fath_mnernr.mp3

and

http://www.flutesite.com/comparison/anderson_bar415.mp3
http://www.flutesite.com/comparison/anderson_mnernr.mp3

Just as a self-imposed general rule, I’m going to try to avoid posting links directly to recordings; instead, the plan is to post links to flutesite pages where the recordings are available. A small but significant (I think, anyway) change.

–James

P.S. Jack, yep, you’re right, and the recordings show it. Tuning for A=415 with a tuner doesn’t mean when you actually pick up the flute to record you’re still on pitch. Also, there’s a lesson there worth taking home, I think: setting the slide with a tuner not enough to ever guarantee the flute will be in tune. It’s the tuner between your ears that really has that job.

5

Thanks. Well played and the baroque flute sounds lovely