How does the traverso compare to the keyless Irish flute that we’re primarily concerned with here?
I’ve never played a traverso, but know from reading that they’re patterened after or maybe direct copies of 17th century flutes. Can Loren or someone else here educate me on what the differences are, and how those differences affect playability, tone, tuning, etc?
I have for reference points the two flutes I own: a Tipple and a McGee GLP keyless.
Thanks!
Loaded question! Loaded question!!! 
Somebody must have a link to a good article on this subject - it helps to know the history and understand how wooden flutes evolved, and why. I’m in the middle of doing a worksearch at the moment, so i can’t write in-depth about it right now.
Perhaps there’s a bit on Terry’s website?
Loren
…and Rick Wilson’s site.
There are huge differences, although you can definitely apply some of what you’ve learned playing the Irish flute. The fingerings for the non-chromatic notes are the same, but there are cross-fingerings for all the notes on a traverso except Eflat, for which there’s a key. (There’s a definite tradeoff in the pitch of the F and F#, but let’s leave that for a whole 'nother discussion.) I’m comfortable playing in Bflat and Eflat, C, D, G, and A, that’s after several months and never having played a recorder.
The most difficult transition other than stylistic is in the embouchure. I think the embouchure holes on my Grenser copies are maybe 5 by 8 or 6 by 9 mm2. So after playing on a Rudall-type embouchure, it kind of seems like the embouchure has been removed and replaced by one of the toneholes. I can’t switch from the Olwell to the von Huene in the same day and get any remotely decent sound out of it, although the reverse works.
In terms of sound, the most striking difference is the lack of volume in the traverso. It increases with time and practice, but you’ll just never get as much sound out of a half-sized embouchure hole. Probably the biggest leap in my progress came when I stopped trying to get more sound out of the damn thing – I had been overblowing and got an airy, kind of dirty sound, which isn’t what one wants. After backing off a lot, my tone improved immensely.
I absolutely have a blast with the thing, although I have a keyed footjoint for my Noy, which will make it fully chromatic, taking lots of time away from the traverso. There’s still something appealing about the delicate sound, though, that no other flute will ever replace.
Is this something Peter offers ?..and is this the regular Noy keyless w/ larger holes than the traverso ?
Some keyless Irish flutes are patterned after Pratten, and could therefore be described as prattened. Traversos aren’t, ipso facto they must not be session cannons and by extension could likely be considered very quiet by some (but loud enough for orchestral work).
There’s a school of thought that suggests the tuning of Traversos was pretty much ratpoop and so great skill on behalf of the player was needed when performing with other musicians ensemble, not just to blend in with the other instruments, but to play in tune with everybody else. According to a great body of opinion here, none of that seems to be a requirement where the playing of Irish flutes is concerned.
When Traversos were contemporary instruments, those poor players really only had one tutorial to work with, a sizeable tome containing too few pages on flute-playing, written by a bloke called Quantz. Not only did Quantz write appalling English, full of chuddy ƒpelling mistakes, but he would inƒiƒt on such naffitudes as tonguing, and practice. Whereas for the Irish flute today, there are a great many tutorials available, tonguing isn’t necessary, and usually after about the first three pages you’re into “500 tunes”, so the emphasis is more on learning tunes than practice, which is cool.
You can see a picture of Quantz and buy his book here (for although he’s been brown bread for a while now he has a pretty good web presence): http://www.flutehistory.com/Players/Johann_Joachim_Quantz/index.php3#Quantzbook
Of course it doesn’t help that Traversos were made and invented back before modern concert pitch was standardised at A=440. So the whacky tuning of a Traverso is made even whackier by it being made to a pitch of A=415. Or thereabouts. Depending on who plays in your local session though, maybe no-one would notice if you took a Traverso along to join in on The Tarbolton set. But if you took your Tipple or McGee to a Traverso session (where they still have fiddlers but fewer bodhrans) they’d definitely notice.
How does the traverso compare to the keyless Irish flute that we’re primarily concerned with here? Well, given the foregoing, apart from having the same number of finger-holes, it probably doesn’t. I’d buy one, but then I’d feel obliged to learn that cromagnetic classical music for it and I have enough trouble with the diatronic stuff and not-tonguing.
Is this something Peter offers ?..and is this the regular Noy keyless w/ larger holes than the traverso ?
Jack…Peter…looks like!
Hey Dow,
I’m with Denny read through Rick Wilson’s treatise on flutes. It contains a wealth of information and does a good job of disseminating it.
If you think of playing the Irish flute as blowing out candles on a cake.
Then traversos are like trying to make a burning match flicker, but not extinguish. 
I didn’t give the traverso much of a chance. It hurt to be constantly using my RH pinkie. I also didn’t attempt to procure proper music for it and playing ITM didn’t really work well. The traverso is soft voiced (I didn’t regard this as a problem), but the difference in the volume of the notes left me disgrunteled (namely weak E’s and F’s).
But, Chas obviously has more perseverance than I!
Enjoy the flute Odyssey!
Jordan
Peter, in addition to making historical flutes, makes two different models of “Irish flute”, one large-holed and one small-holed. Each of these can be gotten with four different headjoints (Rudall, Pratten, Modern, Modern thinned). I have a small-holed flute with a Rudall-cut embouchure. The holes are toward the small end of Rudall-style flutes – possibly a little smaller than Olwell’s small-holed flute, bigger than Bleazey’s Rudall-type flute. I posted a few days ago how I had picked this flute up one day thinking it was the Olwell, and tooted on it for a good 15 minutes, sounding like the Olwell, before I realized it wasn’t. I usually play English music rather than Irish music on the Noy, so I really hadn’t tried to get an Irish sound out of it.
Thanks, everybody for all of the help and direction for more reading. My head will surely explode once I’ve read all there is about these blasted holey sticks, lol.