Following instruction from Pete Kosel’s calculator and Doug Tipple’s site I have made my own PVC Flute. However it has some peculiarities and I wonder if these are really like a real wooden flute or I just made a bad flute.
When I play the flute with no holes covered I can easily play the note without much effort, I have to blow a little stronger than a normal exhale. However if I cover all the holes, I have to blow really softly(If I let go of all the holes I hear no tone) and there is just a tiny margin. If I blow just a little to hard with all the holes covered it sounds the same as having no holes covered(up on octave?), to softly results in no tone. Also, I can hear alot of “air”.
Is this normal or is there something I can do to perfect my flute making?
Thanks.
PS: I’d love to buy one of Doug Tipple’s flutes but shipping anything into the country where I’m currently living is a nightmare I would not like to relive.
Having made a few of these now, using Doug’s tutorial, each with some improvement, and finally resulting in a fairly decent flute, I would suspect something is not right with your embouchure hole. Can you post a picture of the embouchure?
Welcome to C&F.
Are you an experienced flute player?
The flute may be fine(although first efforts are a crash and burn exercise with some of us). There is nothing at all automatic about playing a flute. And there is nothing automatic about cookbook flutemaking.
Cutting an embouchure hole is also a bit of a wizard’s act. There is a chicken and egg thing going on there too. You have to know how to play fairly well to be able to assess your cut. And you have to have a good concept of how the tone is generated to get the cut right. A simple drilled hole will work if you know how to play it. But there is so much more that you can do with a well cut embouchure.
So unless yo are an experienced player it all sounds fairly normal.
I’ve made flutes using Doug Tipple’s plans and I have improved on that old design of his by making my own adjustments. But Doug’s plan works.
And I have made more flutes from scratch out of PVC and other tubes. And in making quite a few of those I have used Kosel’s Flutomat. It works too. But you should expect to have to make adjustments based on your skill at making flutes.
Feadoggie
Not much to add here… Just wanted to say that I have made probably 20 or more flutes using Doug’s directions and they all work fine. Even when I had a badly drilled embouchure, they played fairly well (better after I fixed them). You might make sure you are cleaning out the residue from your drilling for all the holes (embouchure included).
I agree with everything said so far. I would add a couple of salient points about embouchures. You haven’t said whether you have a lip plate or not. What the lip plate does is increase the chimney height of the embouchure. Among other things this gives a more forgiving target for octave changes. The target edge of the embouchure should be a clean knife like edge upon observation under magnification with a bright light. This also, among other things, contributes to an easier octave jump. And finally, the wall of the target side of the embouchure should be ve-e-e-ry smooth. You can get tri-mesh of up to 4000 grit from Rockler and use this to polish up the chimney wall.
Best of luck,
Bob
I have made a few pvc flutes in various tunings and scales and I agree with making sure that all burrs are cleared from the underside of all holes. These burrs under the holes can lead to an airy and unclear tone. I use a dowel rod with some finer grit sandpaper attached to it and run it through the bore under the finger holes and embouchure hole. Yes, a lot of players like to have that knife edge on the embouchure hole, but I find that I prefer a slight blunt edge to blow against. I still undercut the blowing edge but I stop when I have about 1mm ~ 1.5mm of straight wall remaining. Every player is a bit different:)
Here is a picture of my embrochure. It is far from where I want it to be but after 10 flutes it is the best I have produced. It is also the easiest flute to produce a tone.
I am not an experienced flute player so I wondered if these where the features of a real flute. I have also thoroughly cleaned the inside to make sure that there are no imperfection inside.
For the next batch of flutes I will wok extra hard on making a very sharp embrochure hole.
https://i.imgur.com/gcz0Aax.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/u7a8ECM.jpg
Thanks for all the advice!
Thanks for that bit of information. This is part of the chicken/egg conundrum. To make a flute and assess the qualities/issues of the flute it helps to be a flute player and have seen and used a fair number of flutes.
Many people want to learn to play the flute. And many of those people will want to save money by making their first flute. But you can see the issue that arises. You need a flute to learn to play. It is hard to make a flute if you do not know how to play.
And under other circumstances I would suggest you look for a second hand Tipple flute or even a Dixon flute with the lip plate as the economical way to get started. But I see where that might not be possible for you. So what to do?
From looking at your embouchure hole photo I can see that is a rather smooth hole. I would guess it would behave just as you have described. It needs an edge to create turbulence.
I would suggest that you start by looking for as many detailed photos of an embouchure cut on the Internet. Good photos are unfortunately difficult to find. Look at flute maker’s sites. You’ll gather some ideas on what the shape of the blowing edge might need to be. You’ll see a lot of variations as well.
So next you might read as much as you can find on what makes the flute “sound” How is the oscillation of the air jet created and maintained. Google “flute physics” and similar terms. Like here.
You can also search through the archives here using the forum’s search function at the top of each page. We have discussed embouchure holes regularly. You can pick up a lot of hints from those threads. And listen to what an seanduine and others here have described.
Ten flutes? You really want to do this. Keep at it. If you can fashion a tuning slide or at least a coupler to make a two piece flute you can limit the number of flutes you make or the amount of pipe that you go through. That way you can leave the finger hole section and replace the head joint as you develop your embouchure cutting skill. You can also make several test embouchure holes around the head and tape over all but the most current one as you go forward. Once you have a winner you can then make a new head with a similar cut.
If you use a lip plate, and I would suggest that you do, that can complicate things a bit but think it through and you’ll be able to do it.
Feadoggie
I did make a flute with sort of a makeshift tuning slide(shrunk 1/2" pipe with a heatgun to fit in the 3/4" flute pieces) but unfortunately the holes are messed up badly so its not so easy to make a tone. I will works towards improving it.
What I will have trouble creating is a lip plate. Any tips on making one? I could cut a pipe and bend it around with heat but I cant think of any other methods.
Short of finding another pipe that your original slides into I can suggest two methods to make a lip plate.
Method one works for PVC and CPVC. You take a piece of the pipe you are using, shape it like a lip plate using a saw, grinder and/or files. Then soak it in acetone. It will soften so that it can flex and conform to the outside shape of the original pipe. You have to be careful with acetone. Not good stuff to breath in. You just want to soften the plastic enough to shape it. If you leave it in too long it will turn to paste, which can be useful but not so much for a lip plate.
Method two is to use your heat gun to soften a similar piece of plastic as above. Work out of doors or in a well ventilated place - fumes and such. And don’t burn the pipe.
As for the tuning slide or coupler, you do not want to reduce the bore of the flute at the coupler. You want to maintain the the flute’s bore. Constrictions and expansions in the wrong places in the bore can create tuning issues. An external coupler can work work.
For both the lip plate and coupler look to see if the pipe you are using has some sort of commercial coupler made to join two pieces of the pipe available. Plumbing pipe has to be pieced together and the couplers make good material for joining two pieces of the flute. Again you want to avoid a big gap between the two pieces if the flute which would create an expansion in the bore
In some cases the coupler will be thin enough to also work out as a lip plate material and it will have an inside diameter that matches the outside diameter of your pipe. So no hoops to jump through to get it to fit the pipe of the flute body.
Have fun.
Feadoggie
Based on your pictures, yes the lower close blowing edge of the embouchure needs to be sharp, not rounded. 90 degrees from the tangent is a good place to start. No chamfering on top or bottom of that edge. You get this if you drill the hole well on center. Then you can experiment with undercutting with a flat file to some degree, and you may or may not get improvement, and at some point you will go to far, and things will get worse. Whatever you do, make changes very slowly in tiny increments.
Most of the wood flute embouchures that I have been looking at lately are quite sharp and near vertical at the blowing edge. The opposite edge seems more undercut - 10-15 degrees? Casey burns Folk Flute embouchure is notable softer and more rounded on the sides, both top and bottom, than some of the other flutes I’ve been looking at. In my experience it is more forgiving for a beginner than the ones with sharper edges (it’s a fantastically good flute). Look (and better yet measure) at as many flute embouchures as you can.
Some other things that come to mind:
A build based on Doug’s tutorial (at least the one I used) does not need a lip plate to work. Not saying that adding it it would help or hurt, but given his tutorial and good results achieved by many, it’s not needed.
Chimney height in his design is that of the PVC tube wall - no more or less, and given that, the design works well enough.
You might have a great embouchure and not know it because your technique for blowing is not so great. Can you make a good tone on some known flute?
Terry McGee’s website has a lot of information about embouchure design and many different approaches.