Thanks for your interest. I use an electronic chromatic tuner.
On this flute I like to roll head inward such that the far edge of the embouchure is in line with the centre axis of the finger holes (which are in line finger holes). This is something I learned in this forum and I think it was largely due to Terry McGee’s input.
This flute was examined by a prominent flute maker and the same phenemenon was observed, as I recall. It plays well and when I play it my wife always tells me it is one of her favourite flutes.
I have noticed that on a cold, moist winter’s day the flute requires much less slide extension for to make A440 and hence my earlier question about Irish climate V subtropical East Coast ozzie climate.
(BTW, you can hear my Irish flute on track 2 in my signature. I know thats not Irish Music but Hippy Dippy Lounge stuff but maybe your expertise may detect something. Of course that was two years ago and my tone has decveloped since then - on most days that is!)
The tuning will be flat on the flute when it is cold, and will get sharper when it warms and expands. I would say about 10 cent. But the tuning is normal, when the slide is pushed in. Some makers don’t give as much wiggle room. Perhaps he was copying a antique that normally was about 450 htz when the slide was all the way in. Nothing out of the norm.
Given that your flute could be so seemingly irregular, I’d be willing to bring such a matter up to the attention of the maker, if only to say that such a thing could happen.
Are you sure the cork is in the best/right position? Perhaps it’s too far in? Maybe it dried out at some point and shifted? I have had some experiences where a cork adjustment has dramatically improved a flute’s performance and intonation (not surprisingly).
i used to play a delrin seery, and i also noticed more pitch change as it warmed up than e.g. blackwood flutes.
playing tunes once at a festival, here in ireland, outdoors at 3a.m., it was (just about) at concert pitch when the slide was all the way in (this was “summer” time!). normally, the slide was about half an inch out at a440.
if it plays properly & in tune, i wouldn’t worry to much about the slide position. as akiba said, check the cork position. it should be about the inner diameter of the head/barrel from the middle of the embouchure hole.
If I remember right, (it’s early folks) Delrin etc expands and contracts more w/ temperature than blackwood does…so when cold the flute is sharper due to length and flatter due to air temp…this would naively make one think that the Delrin flute would wander less…
Ahhh, if only things were so simple…my guess is that the wooden flute comes to equilibrium a bit faster due to the better insulating value of the wood…the Delrin has a lot more thermal mass and better conductivity making for a slower adjustment even though the actual shift might be less…
I know about corking and the flute is fine from that angle.
I was curious about the phenomenon I described. I am interested in interesting discussionb about it (the phenomenon). Thanks all the same but itss not so that I need advice because I have got some major issue or problem or something.
I am interested in what Jon C says - that tunable Irish flutes may be deliberately made such that you, generally, need to pull the slide out for to get A440. There is a rationale for that. However I also have heard of, and met, makers who tend towards Irish flutes that are pretty much at A440 without (or with little) slide extension. Comments?
Be it a silver Boehm flute, or be it a modern ITM flute, it seems that modern makers set their flutes up to be played with the head joint pulled out a bit, perhaps at several millimeters, to thereby allow for some tuning compensation, one way or the other.
Ditto to Cork!
There is a variety fo playing styles, and being that a person can vary 20 cents in their playing sharp to flat, it is sensible to leave a little wiggle room for tuning. Just the fact of a cold flute playing flatter, there is a need to have some adjustment. I used to do the tuning with the slide all the way in, and got complaints, that the flute couldn’t be tuned sharper, that I had to cut down the head joint. Now I give a little more room to tune.
OK, so how practical or possible might it be for a maker
to supply two different barrels for the one flute - for normal tuning (A448 - A440) and for lower tuning (say, A440 - A432)?
So, from a low of A=432, to a high of A=448, in two sections, could be done. However, and for instance, a lower pitched flute would normally have a longer body length than a higher pitched flute. That is, you could set a flute up to have two, interchangeable barrels, BUT, on the body the distance between the tone holes would necessarily be a compromise. That is, for the lower pitched barrel the compromise calls for having the tone holes on the body as relatively too close together, while for the higher pitched barrel the same tone holes would then be relatively too far apart. BTW, unless your embouchure is flexible, you might care to have more than two barrels, as three barrels might make your life easier. The advantage to having three barrels is that the “medium” length barrel could be optimized for the tone hole spacing, as right on, while then having a shorter and a longer barrel, to extend the tuning range higher and lower, respectively.
Then there’s the corps de rechange (sp?), which substitutes body sections of different lengths to change pitch, but that’s another matter.
You could have a flute made for each pitch you play at. You could save money, by using a common head joint and foot joint, while using various bodies. You could save even more money by only using various barrels. However, the more money you save, the trickier the flute is to play, in tune.
Thanks for your comment Cork.
I think its a bit rich to have two different length bodies for the one flute if one intends that to be a fully keyed flute.
[I think I’m gonna have to convene an Indian harmonium convention
and use it to cull any harmonium radically outside the A440 ambit.
Maybe some ITMers might like to do the same with certain types of concertina!]
I had assumed you were speaking of a simple system flute, with no keys. Even then, however, perhaps having an extra barrel or two could be worthwhile, even if only of modest extent of range, seeing as how you already have the keys. That is, I wouldn’t rule a barrel or two out.
Sorry Cork, my brain is bouncing all over the place (as usual). I DO have a keyless Irish flute, the subject of this topic, BUT I am thinking to get keys on it because I play non ITM as well, probably more and the sort of musicians that want my accompaniment tend to play a range of current concert and current non concert pitch instruments. A lot of them are women, some red headed, and there is no way to convince them to A440 their act!
JonC my harmonium is also like that - its A448 but very very nice.
OKAY, so how about low barrel 436 to 444 and normal barrel as it already is 448 to 440. That would diminish the need to have another body, wouldn’t it? (Notice I have brought the low barrel UP from my previous 432)
Cork!!! A “simple system flute” is, by definition, (if not by common current MIS-usage) a 4+ keyed flute with a cylindrical head and conoid body with 6 open finger-holes (and anything up to 20-ish keys on the late Austrian types). A keyless flute is not one. It is a keyless, non “system” flute. Flutes which stick close to the “old” (i.e. pre-Boehm) style fingering but which have keys covering some or all of the basic 6 fingerholes etc. and/or having Boehm type bores are “hybrid” systems or actually have their own name, like Siccama, Schwedler, etc. Other systems which depart from the “old” system of fingering also have their own names, e.g. Giorgi, Boehm, Carte, Radcliff etc.
A keyless flute is a keyless flute. The (pre-existing, long established) convention is to refer only to flutes with more then one key as belonging to a “system”. The modern keyless ITM flute is derived from simple system flutes with the keys retrogressively removed, sure, and is rather different from Renaissance keyless or Baroque 1-keyed flutes, not a reversion to them, so deserves its own label. I know I’ve been on a hobby-horse on this topic lately, but I think it is really unhelpful to misleadingly use a verbal label with an established meaning by attaching it to something else! That’s not a personal attack, Cork, lots of folk do it, unfortunately. I think it is significantly unhelpful! It also does not reflect the historical, typological sequence.
Perhaps we should term these recently developed keyless flutes “Irish” (a term that I think is too often wrongly and equally unhelpfully/undesirably applied to real “simple system” keyed flutes which already have their own label, in ignorance of their history and original use), or at least “folk” flutes, though I’d prefer something like “modern keyless” if I could impose a usage. I suppose I’m following in Rob Sharer’s footsteps here over jargon and terminology (“Irish Hold” [NOT “Grip” please!] debate???).
You have said this sort of thing before in a vain attempt to be pedantic
but I am choosing to challenge you in my topic.
A simple system flute is
a flute that can articulate a diatonic major scale from 6 toneholes
by a SIMPLE SYSTEM of fingering, and includes
any keyed flute, whose arrangement of keys, DOES NOT DISTURB the simple system of fingering for to articute the major scale that the flute would provide without the keys.
And that is why the Boehm flute is not a simple system flute and why a recorder is, unlike the tin whistle, not a simple system fipple flute either.
That is the broad meaning of a simple system flute IN THIS TOPIC and in many other fora where the word “system” does not only connote “mechanism” but also “organised way”.
May we now continue with the topic at hand?
Indulge me.
Oh, being pedantic again, I don’t think my attempt to be pedantic was vain at all! Total success on that score! My attempt to promote my preferred (pedantic) usage may well be vain - almost certainly, in fact. Just p***ing in the wind, really. I like your counter argument, however - nicely made.
Thankyou for indulging me.
To be quite honest, Jem, I hadn’t thought of an ordinary, six-holed flute as being anything other than simple system, and here I include six-holed “Renaissance” flutes, modern “Irish” flutes, one-key flutes, and all other keyed, six-holed flutes. That is, if a flute with only six tone holes and no keys could not be a simple system flute, then by what name could such a flute otherwise be known!?!
Let me add, that I have no objection to otherwise correcting my apparent ignorance, please. That is, I simply am not aware of any alternative name for such a flute.
