Beer and a Wooden Flute

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Terry McGee
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Terry McGee »

Stuporman wrote:Terry, did you ever try treating your pine Pratten with tung oil or any other penetrating coating that wouldn't change tbe bore dimensions?
Indeed I had to! When I first made it, it wouldn't play below low octave A, and even that note was weak and difficult. The wood, being so light and thin, was so porous I found I could breath quite well through it, with all the other holes covered! Oiling it (and letting it dry) solved the porosity problem and enabled me to get to the bottom note, but even so, the low notes remained weak. I attribute that to lack of stiffness and smoothness in the walls, robbing the vibrating air column of its energy. It proved my point that the material a flute is made of can and does affect the sound. And that a good vessel for the vibrating air column needs to be dense, fine and airtight, everything pine isn't.
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Terry McGee
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Terry McGee »

Matt_Paris wrote: I would love to see that Pine Prattens... Is there a picture on your website?
Urk, it would appear not! At least until now. Here we go....

Image

As you can see, it's pretty minimalist. I wasn't going to waste effort on rings, corked tenons, cap, etc. But it is faithful to my normal Prattens model in all the important dimensions.

I'll knock up an article on it, as I think it has quite a bit to tell us.
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Terry McGee
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Terry McGee »

Ah, I thought I had written something on it, and was right. So I've cobbled it together at:

http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/pine_prattens.htm

Hmmm, maybe (in the spirit of this thread) I should have died it black?
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by irishmuse »

Terry McGee wrote:Ah, I thought I had written something on it, and was right. So I've cobbled it together at:

http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/pine_prattens.htm

Hmmm, maybe (in the spirit of this thread) I should have died it black?
Nah, I think it's been established you should have dipped it in a pint of Guinness or Beamish overnight. Job done.
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by hpinson »

Footnotes:

1. I oiled yesterday, and the wood today has darkened up. Looks more black than brown now.

2. The lost silver ring was found by the bar owner, and placed on the bar, where it disappeared again a few hours later before I was able to retrieve it.

Terry - fascinating about your pine flute. I have been listening a lot to Delrin Pratton flutes by various makers lately and swear I can distinguish a very characteristic timbre for that material. I don't find it particularly pleasant to my ear. I would describe it as a slightly 'ringing" overtone. Thoughts on that?
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by AaronFW »

Terry McGee wrote:Ah, I thought I had written something on it, and was right. So I've cobbled it together at:

http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/pine_prattens.htm

Hmmm, maybe (in the spirit of this thread) I should have died it black?
In case you are interested, I think the article by John Coltman mentioned in your article is this one: Effect Of Material On Flute Tone Quality. It seems to include the details that you described. I have heard other people cite the article and was always disappointed since the article points out that the headjoints--which in my perception, are the most important parts--were all made of Delrin and were made to be identical.

(It looks like John Coltman had other articles and written exchanges on the topic, but it looks like it would probably require me to go to actual libraries or have particular library/periodical memberships to get access to most of them.)
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Matt_Paris »

Terry McGee wrote:Rather like my "Pine Prattens" - a very bad instrument I made to disprove the theory that the material a flute is made from doesn't influence the tone. If it's bad enough, it will. Reductio ad absurdum.
There is also a lot of discussion in the saxophone world about material. Some brands offer sterling silver saxophones that are insanely expensive. Some guys will always tell you that two instruments with the same bore and tone holes sound exactly the same whatever the material.

In my experience it is very different... People may not hear a lot of difference between a regular brass sax and a sterling silver one, but I do feel a very big difference when I play them. And I hate silver FWIW
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Terry McGee »

hpinson wrote:Footnotes:

1. I oiled yesterday, and the wood today has darkened up. Looks more black than brown now.

2. The lost silver ring was found by the bar owner, and placed on the bar, where it disappeared again a few hours later before I was able to retrieve it.
So somewhere around town there is a drunk on the lookout for a really big girl to wear his ring?
Terry - fascinating about your pine flute. I have been listening a lot to Delrin Pratton flutes by various makers lately and swear I can distinguish a very characteristic timbre for that material. I don't find it particularly pleasant to my ear. I would describe it as a slightly 'ringing" overtone. Thoughts on that?
I think I know the tone you're referring to and can think of two possibilities, either or both of which might apply.

Delrin might be "too good" a container for the vibrating air column for our tastes. Blackwood is around 1.2 (where the density of water is 1.0), while Delrin is around 1.4. Boxwood is around 1.00. So the difference between box and blackwood is about the same as that between blackwood and Delrin. Delrin is also less porous, smoother and finer than any timber, so you'd imagine less losses. All this sounds great, but maybe we don't perceive "perfection" as better than "character"? We often prefer characterful voices to pure voices in singing, why not flutes?

Delrin is capable of a sharper edge (at the embouchure hole and fingerholes). Indeed, because it prefers to "flow" rather than be cut, the edges can become pronounced. Air whooshing over edges cause turbulence - remember the banshee? Air whooshing back and forward over edges (as it does in an oscillatory air column) can cause modulated noise. I don't think that's something we have to put up with. I find when dealing with such materials, you need to treat the edges very seriously.
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Terry McGee
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Terry McGee »

AaronFW wrote: In case you are interested, I think the article by John Coltman mentioned in your article is this one: Effect Of Material On Flute Tone Quality. It seems to include the details that you described. I have heard other people cite the article and was always disappointed since the article points out that the headjoints--which in my perception, are the most important parts--were all made of Delrin and were made to be identical.

(It looks like John Coltman had other articles and written exchanges on the topic, but it looks like it would probably require me to go to actual libraries or have particular library/periodical memberships to get access to most of them.)
I think that's certainly one of them, Aaron. I think he did another involving a concrete flute contrasted with some other materials.

And yes, his approach was, in order to focus just on the material of the flute wall, to make the other parts - head and embouchure - from easily reproducible plastics. So that immediately sets his experiment apart from our interests.

Also the fact that the three flutes played only one note (G4 - lower octave G to us) doesn't give the player or the listener much to go on.

And interesting that he chose silver, copper and blackwood. He would have had a very different result if he had chosen pine. But that just goes to show he's not stupid....

Looks around for anyone stupid enough to make a flute out of pine. Gulp!
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by AaronFW »

Terry McGee wrote:
Delrin might be "too good" a container for the vibrating air column for our tastes. Blackwood is around 1.2 (where the density of water is 1.0), while Delrin is around 1.4. Boxwood is around 1.00. So the difference between box and blackwood is about the same as that between blackwood and Delrin. Delrin is also less porous, smoother and finer than any timber, so you'd imagine less losses. All this sounds great, but maybe we don't perceive "perfection" as better than "character"? We often prefer characterful voices to pure voices in singing, why not flutes?

Delrin is capable of a sharper edge (at the embouchure hole and fingerholes). Indeed, because it prefers to "flow" rather than be cut, the edges can become pronounced. Air whooshing over edges cause turbulence - remember the banshee? Air whooshing back and forward over edges (as it does in an oscillatory air column) can cause modulated noise. I don't think that's something we have to put up with. I find when dealing with such materials, you need to treat the edges very seriously.
:o Thanks for posting those details, my background is not scientific so it is helpful (and now I am googling for the density of everything).

So, if I understand... since Delrin is less porous and there are less "losses"... would that include less loss of the higher harmonics and that is what gives Delrin its timbre?
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Terry McGee »

AaronFW wrote: :o Thanks for posting those details, my background is not scientific so it is helpful (and now I am googling for the density of everything).
Heh heh, google the density of the average flute maker....

Density is only one parameter, of course, but it is an important and useful one in terms of flute materials. Let's consider a short list:
- Delrin, 1.4
- Blackwood 1.27 (modern wooden flutes)
- Australian Gidgee, approaching 1.15 (I've done a few)
- Mopane 1.08 (increasingly popular)
- Boxwood 1.0 (baroque flutes)
- Water 1.0 (our reference)
- fruitwoods, eg plum 0.8 (renaissance flutes)
- furniture hardwoods, eg mahogany 0.65 (Dr Burney of Camden Town made some mahogany flutes in the 19th century)
- luthier bellywoods, construction softwoods, eg sitka spruce, radiata pine 0.4
- balsa wood, 0.16
So, if I understand... since Delrin is less porous and there are less "losses"... would that include less loss of the higher harmonics and that is what gives Delrin its timbre?
It's part of my speculation, the second part being the thoughts on edges. There may be other issues. We really ought to do some experiments to try to pin this stuff down....
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by an seanduine »

Terry, I would postulate that since Delrin can take a variety of surface finishes, what the aeronautic wallahs call boundary effects need looking into. I would guess they are what account for the 'freshly oiled bore' effect.

Bob
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Terry McGee
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Re: Beer and a Wooden Flute

Post by Terry McGee »

Yes, an seanduine, I think you are right. I think there is still a lot of work to be done to understand our flutes adequately, and then to exploit that new knowledge to make even better flutes.

Back in 2009, I made a short list of issues I could see then were still requiring attention. Sigh, I doubt if it has got much shorter!

http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/FluteTone-P ... ations.htm
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