I noticed many flutes, but also some old recorders and reed instruments–bombardes, chanters–have extra holes close to the end, which are supposed to be constantly left open and drilled for tuning and voicing (i.e. “colour”) advantages.
See this (the two big adjacent holes top right) for instance on this M&E :
Can one explain, and (b) anyone experimented this on whistles ?
[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2003-02-08 09:47 ]
Zoob, I think there’s an explanation on Peter Kosel’s flutomat page for 8-hole flutes.
http://www.cwo.com/~ph_kosel/Flutomat-8.html
serpent
Quite, Bill : vent holes.
Armed with this brilliant terminology I’ll proceed renaming this thread. 
But any further comments nonetheless welcome.
I think one of the stoneage bone flutes found in China recently had small holes at the end - the article said they were for pitch correction.
Richard.
I’d be interested to hear if this has ever been done on a whistle, and if it really makes much difference, but what does WTT stand for? Whistle Tuning topic?
I think they should have called it the Bone Age…
Martin, you’re getting my bend.
Though, it has been tried for weessels in Brussels. Like, play a standard (C) re****er for a D minor whistling, taping the top hole and leaving the pants one buzz alone.
On 2003-02-10 07:33, Martin Milner wrote:
I’d be interested to hear if this has ever been done on a whistle, and if it really makes much difference, but what does WTT stand for? Whistle Tuning topic?I think they should have called it the Bone Age…
WTT == Whistle Tech Talk
coined by the inimitable Serpent! 
serpent
S~< 
~*~
I had always thought the vent holes were there primarily to help the venting on the first and 2nd octave E, which tends to be a weaker and more vieled note on simple system flutes due to the smaller hole it must sound through; also, they may help some 3rd octave notes, but since most Irish music doesn’t go there…
On a whistle, E is usually fine, and on most whistles speaks through a hole close to the size of the rest of the tone holes. I would think this would alleviate the need for the vent holes.
Just my $.02. This isn’t anything I’ve made a study of, just my impressions.
Best,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
Thank for the input, James. You’re one of the people I did hope to get feedback from.
See, one reason I asked the question is Mr Boehm. We tend to simplify him as the “plenty keys” inventor, and only. Now he apparently didn’t start with this. Number one of his revolutions was making the holes bigger. See the pre-Boehm baroque re****er as an example of what he went against. Well, I guess I don’t teach you anything here, just a reminder.
Now, from what I read, his initial goal was to make the flute 1) louder 2) more even-sounding across not only octaves, but also along the length of the tube.
And it seems the Boehm “tone extensions” below C serve mostly as vent holes.
It strikes me, too, that the keys were a side-consequence to making the holes bigger and more even, which in turn made them humanly unmanageable.
Now, since most whistles have the same basic–cylindrical–bore as the Boehm flute, I still wonder what could be ported from the discoveries of the first one to dare a concert-tuned cylindrical flute… with, I’ll dare say, some success.
I see some modern wooden fifes do pay tribute to Boehm’s concepts, even if their higher tone alleviates the necessity of keys.
True, I still don’t see a radical conceptual difference between the vertical flute (aka whistle) and side whistle (aka flute) when it comes to the inside acoustics. Or would the Flutomat work for us here?
All true. Also one major challenge for Boehm was correcting the intonation between octaves. As anyone who’s played a bamboo flute into the 3rd octave knows, a cylindrical bore flute doesn’t have an in-tune 3 octave range that you need for an orchestral flute.
In a simple-system flute, the conical bore corrects the octaves, as well as allowing the right hand finger holes to be smaller and closer together than a cylindrical bore would.
Boehm got around this with a parabolic headjoint. Advantage: does a durn good job of bringing the 3rd octave in tune. Disadvantage: you have lost a lot of compression down the length of the instrument, so the low register, especially the lower end of it, looses much of its power and projection.
This gets worse when you make it longer; the addition of a B foot does extend the range down (and also smooths out the 3rd C above middle C if you have a “gizmo” key) but also tends to veil and reduce the power of the low register just that much more.
You are right in that Boehm wanted each chromatic note of the scale to have its own large, correctly positioned tone hole. His elaborate mechanism is really just a way to let that happen. This has each note venting well (in theory, anyway) and speaking as clearly and openly as it can. This is the equivalent of making a guitar that has an open string for each chromatic note of the scale.
The advantage: all key signatures sound pretty much the same. The disadvantage: all key signatures sound pretty much the same.
On a whistle you have a different world. The fipple and fixed windway go a long way to assure the quantity (and hopefully quality) of the sound. You have a smaller bore and length so the hand has more flexibility in where it can reach.
The size of the tone holes of the whistle are proportionally larger than a flute, so a lot of these venting issues don’t apply. Also you don’t really need (or want, probably!) a third and fourth octave on a whistle. (The Boehm flute has a range of 3 and one half chromatic octaves.)
Now I have read that at one time a very few Boehm-system recorders were built. There is your Boehm-system whistle, probably with close to the range of the orchestral flute.
But really, at that point, you have an entirely different instrument than we think of when we say “whistle,” and you have all the problems of the Boehm system flute: key noise, pad and mechanism adjustments, and complexity.
Best,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
On 2003-02-10 09:18, peeplj wrote:
The advantage: all key signatures sound pretty much the same. The disadvantage: all key signatures sound pretty much the same.
Rhaa… lovely!
Well thank James for precisely the input I was looking for!
Just one element, for the sake of the argument (?) : you say on a whistle “You have a smaller bore and length”; here I disagree. Comparable tone whistles (i.e. low whistles) have bigger bores (>10%) than the (few) Boehm’s I had a chance to measure.
I still believe that (low) whistles are at the begining of their technical development. They went already further than recorders with big bores, big holes (though I wonder when I see some like Adri’s Dream block-Flute)…
I think I’ll try it when I get home from work… what do I have to lose other than a little time and $.25 worth of PVC…
I’ll post clips and let you compare
On 2003-02-10 12:50, Zubivka wrote:
On 2003-02-10 09:18, peeplj wrote:
The advantage: all key signatures sound pretty much the same. The disadvantage: all key signatures sound pretty much the same.Rhaa… lovely!
Well thank James for precisely the input I was looking for!
Just one element, for the sake of the argument (?) : you say on a whistle “You have a smaller bore and length”; here I disagree. Comparable tone whistles (i.e. low whistles) have bigger bores (>10%) than the (few) Boehm’s I had a chance to measure.
I still believe that (low) whistles are at the begining of their technical development. They went already further than recorders with big bores, big holes (though I wonder when I see some like Adri’s Dream block-Flute)…
You are welcome! 
On the whistle, I just meant the thing is smaller than a flute in comparison to your hands, and I wasn’t thinking low whistle, so you are right.
I hope I don’t get fried for this, but there is already a species of evolved whistle: the recorder, with its two chromatic octaves.
However, I do think the recorder does not fit Irish music nearly so well as just the plain old whistle does; also, good recorders are quite expensive, whereas even the most expensive whistles are only a few hundred dollars. Good recorders can easily run over a thousand.
Best,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
Just hoping I followed all this…
I recall a flutemaker saying that the vent holes, even if unkeyed and apparently superfluous, give the lowest notes more sonority. Then again, maybe he was just hoping to get more “jing” out of me!
N, w/ my $.02 of jing
From what I understand, I believe from Benade’s work, The vent holes are there to make the E sound more like the rest of the notes, an idea he refers to as tone hole filtering. So, in essence, what James stated much more clearly than I could have done.
Bryan
The extra holes on the very end of the instrument causes the “bell note” to behave like another note that has a tonehole.
If an instrument is built with small toneholes, it will affect the local cutoff frequency which makes the notes slightly weaker and different sounding than the bell note (all holes closed) which will sound powerfull - in order to make this note uniform with the rest of the notes, unused toneholes are made below it so that the bell note is really no longer a bell note. And then it will sound uniform with the other notes.
I can vouch for that from experience now. I just built a low D pipe with two vent holes. Can’t post a clip now because everyone’s in bed asleep, but I can report that it does in fact make the lower register stronger and even out the upper octave. I couldn’t put it to the test on a tuner because of the family sleeping thing (how dare they sleep when I want to play!!! 
)
I’ll post a clip tomorrow evening and you can compare for yourself. I think I like the version with vent holes better. It’s really big though…
Hi, Mike.
For the sake of science…
Are you using two different tubes, one with vent holes and one without, on the same mouthpiece so we can be sure it’s the toneholes that are the only difference?
Great work!
Jerry
On 2003-02-10 22:29, Groovehead wrote:
I can vouch for that from experience now. I just built a low D pipe with two vent holes. Can’t post a clip now because everyone’s in bed asleep, but I can report that it does in fact make the lower register stronger and even out the upper octave. I couldn’t put it to the test on a tuner because of the family sleeping thing (how dare they sleep when I want to play!!! >I’ll post a clip tomorrow evening and you can compare for yourself. I think I like the version with vent holes better. It’s really big though…
Well, thanks for turning this “thought experiment” thread into a real experience !
Hey, no problem! Like I said, I got nothing to lose except a little time and a quarters worth of PVC
Jerry, I am using two tubes in the same mouthpiece. I agree, it would be quite worthless to compare otherwise.