What would you call it?

[tin_tin]

@jim stone

…does the wood surrounding the whole of a standard silver-lined wooden headjoint make a difference to the sound?

To hazard a guess, I’d say wall thickness is the name of the game. On silver flutes, there’s an appreciable difference in sound/feel between .014, .016, and .018 thick tubes. We’re talking hundredths of an inch here. A wooden head’s wall thickness can be measured with a ruler, so I’d imagine the difference between a ‘lining only’ head and a lined wooden head to be pretty noticeable.

[Calum_Stewart]

@jim stone

I have a question, if I may interject it.

Suppose we strip off the wood of your standard silver lined wooden headjoint, leaving only a wooden ‘lip-plate.’
Would this sound the same as the original wooden headjoint?

That is, does the wood surrounding the whole of a standard silver-lined wooden headjoint make a difference
to the sound? If so, so. If not, why are we bothering with wooden headjoints, which are more expensive
in the first place and also susceptible to cracking?

Anyhow does the wood of your standard fully-lined headjoint affect the sound?

It’s hard to say - but I would guess there would be more resonance. One might hear this as more volume, or perhaps more presence etc… Again it’s all very subjective.

Although there have been tests done about flutes and thickness and resonance: everyone has their own take on this - I’m currently of the opinion that if (and it’s very hard to have two identical heads) one had two heads, and one of these was much thinner walled, there would be a bit more ‘push’ available. Less resistance perhaps, and less prone to seize up or overblow when really putting a lot of air inside. This also would be to do with the air escape from the embouchure (another subject which I find interesting) : so if there was less material (wood or metal) on the far side of the blowing edge, it could be that this would again add more tools to the flautist to ‘push’ the sound, and perhaps enable certain volumes vs tone that were not previously possible.

I can only talk from personal experience here: I’ve found that a great thick walled head will give you everything you need. A similar cut/wood head, that has been thinned or has an air escape cutaway or contour (not always easy to tell), will to my findings give more volume, more colour, more resonance, more attack, more freedom & more punch.

[Calum_Stewart]

@apossibleworld

Indeed, can we even call a fully lined headjoint a wooden headjoint?!

There are so many combinations, and everything is “okay”, every version of an idea on how to build a flute will create its own interesting sound… and we just choose what we want for ourselves. Am I off on a relativist tangent again?

I recently bought a Reform-ish Monnig flute from the early 20th century – conical simple system with many extra trill keys, and only a plated metal headjoint with a modern style lip plate. Great sounding flute! I also play on a 19th century french boehm-system metal flute by Rive that has a much smaller and more interesting sound than the modern versions, and it’s wonderful for traditional music. It can really sound like a conical wooden flute if you play it with that in mind.

Another interesting little-seen variant is the early Rudall Rose and Carte silver flute, circa 1860s, a cylinder flute with a barrel embouchure, that has wood filled in between the layers of silver, so the actual wall you’re blowing against is cocus or something. I guess you’d say that the edge is silver but the wall is wood. These headjoints have basically the same oval embouchure cut as their conical wooden flutes, and they have an enchanting sweet wooden sound that’s really unique in the world of silver flutes.

I think there are still tremendous possibilities left to be explored with combinations of new materials.

Yes! Exactly all of that

[Calum_Stewart]

@jim stone

I have a question, if I may interject it.

Suppose we strip off the wood of your standard silver lined wooden headjoint, leaving only a wooden ‘lip-plate.’
Would this sound the same as the original wooden headjoint?

That is, does the wood surrounding the whole of a standard silver-lined wooden headjoint make a difference
to the sound? If so, so. If not, why are we bothering with wooden headjoints, which are more expensive
in the first place and also susceptible to cracking?

Anyhow does the wood of your standard fully-lined headjoint affect the sound?

I don’t think it would sound the same. That is to say, the core of the sound will be the same, because we all know this is produced by the cut of the embouchure and perhaps the sharpness / angle of the blowing edge, as discussed before. I don’t think we are talking night and day - if you have a bad headjoint, I don’t think it’s going to make it sound amazing by cutting away all the excess wood. However, if it’s the sound you are going for, having the absolute essentials on the head and no more, in my mind can only assist the sound.
Rudall & Carte offered their flutes thinned and unthinned. I think unthinned as a standard at one point - but if customers wanted thinned, but couldn’t afford the whole flute being thinned (it was more expensive), they were recommended to have the head only thinned. This would greatly improve the sound, but at a smaller cost. Of course having the whole flute thinned would be ideal, but not everyone could afford that.
Sorry havn’t got the R+C flyers / brochures at hand, but I’ve definately read this recently.

I guess the customers were a little sheepish to get busy with a file and sandpaper themselves! A little bad habit I have to be careful of myself!!

[Calum_Stewart]

@apossibleworld

We shouldn’t forget that all this is about making music, not about conforming to somebody else’s convention.

Voila. Well said.

@Tintin

@jim stone

…does the wood surrounding the whole of a standard silver-lined wooden headjoint make a difference to the sound?

To hazard a guess, I’d say wall thickness is the name of the game. On silver flutes, there’s an appreciable difference in sound/feel between .014, .016, and .018 thick tubes. We’re talking hundredths of an inch here. A wooden head’s wall thickness can be measured with a ruler, so I’d imagine the difference between a ‘lining only’ head and a lined wooden head to be pretty noticeable.

I agree with this completely.

[Calum_Stewart]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HioMMqydxho&list=UUONarRhfMVdFELiUWV10KrA&index=1&feature=plcp

Short promo video, but using the all wood flute, without silver head!

[waltsweet]

Getting back to the original question, I would call such a flute, “a flute with a diatonic scale, tapered bore, high tonehole chimneys, and a blowhole cut for harmonics.” To me, that’s the essence of the flute otherwise dubbed, wooden/Irish/classic/simple-system. You’ll notice I haven’t said anything about the materials. And about swapable wooden heads for Boehm flutes, most of these are cut for the Boehm player (to me, they sounded like a Boehm flute when I tried them). In contrast to this experience, I took an old student Boehm flute, unsoldered the lip plate, glued-on a permali barrel and gave it an Irish-cut blowhole. I then made a cylindrically-bored body where the toneholes were high with profiled sidewalls. The resulting tone was very much that of a “wooden flute” and not a “Boehm flute.”

Walt Sweet
http://wdsweetflutes.com/shannon.php

[apossibleworld]

I agree completely. The embouchure cut and the architecture of the holes have more to do with the sound than anything else. Material makes a difference, but it doesn’t determine what kind of flute it is. I would say that the material changes the way a flute plays, and its fine nuances, more than the basic most fundamental sound. That goes for the headjoint in addition to the body.

Calum, I’d love to see a video of the wooden cylindrical flute with a tapered metal head!