G footed flute!

[Jon C.]

This is a beast!
I was working on this for Rick Wilson, you have to use every finger to get to G!

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh. Go on like this and we'll invent the bassoon....

[whistlecollector]

Heh heh. Go on like this and we'll invent the bassoon....

Interesting idea. I wonder if anyone ever tried to make a flute in bassoon shape? It would be trivially easy to get down to G or even F below the usual low C of a flute with a bassoon-like thumb key arrangement.

[tstermitz]

It would be trivially easy to get down to G or even F

It was not trivially easy for me to get down to the low C.

Now however, after working at it for a while, the low C works fairly well for me.

[gorjuswrex]

How strong is the tone / response of the low keys. Maybe they need sorting before you can comment? Anyone who has played similar extra low keyed flutes ?

[flyingparchment]

"The well-known Sedlatzek played on a flute of this kind [with a G-foot] made by Koch.... It is said that on one occasion only, Sedlatzek succeeded in sounding the g, and that he was so delighted at this unexpected success that he stood the flute up in a corner and saluted it with a profound obeisance." - http://www.oldflutes.com/19C-play.htm

i've seen a G footjoint made for a Boehm flute and i wasn't very impressed with the sound: it was weak and quiet and the player seemed to struggle with it. there's also a video on youtube of jemtheflute playing a G footjoint (Rudall, i think) which had a similar issue - so i think the problem is the flute, rather than the player. perhaps the bore on the D flute is just too narrow for these notes to work well.

if you want that range, i would think a much better option is an 8-key A flute, where the last two keys would give G and G#. i don't know if anyone is currently making these in simple system but the Boehm version is widely used and has a nice, strong sound.

[jemtheflute]

I have played 3 Rudall & Rose flutes with footjoints to low Bb (not G!), of which I own 2, and they work remarkably well if the pewter plugs are just right. There are indeed YT videos demonstrating them. On a conical bore flute those very low notes are never going to be as strong as one might wish, comparable to a "hard D", but set up right and with one's embouchure in good shape they are perfectly serviceable. Going on down one would expect the notes to be progressively less satisfactory - including on a Böhm cylinder flute. Bear in mind that bore diameter is a compromise between that ideal for upper (3rd) register and low end fundamental notes. The lower you go, the wider bore (throughout) would be ideal to get any ooomph in those notes, and the necessarily significantly narrower bore literally constricts the notes. Also, any extended mechanism (such as the extra-long Böhm footjoints mentioned) is probably going to be comparatively complex/awkward/weak and less than ideally efficient at achieving a reliable good seal. Build a bigger flute with the mechanism "moved down" to match (think Böhm alto flute) and you get much more satisfactory low end results, but at the expense of the top end. Of course, the bigger you go the harder it is to get a satisfactory input of energy from a human lung-powered air source via a proportionally too small embouchure hole, so very large flutes are inevitably comparatively quiet, the bigger the quieter. Bass reed and lip-reed instruments fare rather better because they have much more efficient wind-to-energy conversion factors than does the transverse flute. Even hyperbass recorders or whistles work better than the huge transverse flutes in that regard, but in the end you need a mechanical air source to drive such things adequately (think organ pipes!). But I digress....

Here's the link to my main demo of the Bb foot R&R I recently restored for its owner, showing use of the low B and Bb in context in tunes: https://youtu.be/Ud9oVwzahRA
More tunes using the foot notes plus scales and specific foot key demo here: https://youtu.be/apRNJnWIr8U

There are older similar demos of my own two long foot R&Rs if you browse my YT channel and Facebook albums.

R&R #5099 foot keys demos: https://youtu.be/cQYyu42DxfY & https://youtu.be/Q5Qy4mA7-60

R&R #2130 foot keys demos: https://www.facebook.com/jemtheflute/vi ... 8965005250 & http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php ... 9380659271

The main problem I find with getting the low notes to sound consistently well is with the R3 finger leaking on the E hole as you move to reach the farther away rollers with R4. That would not be the case on the Austrian type of key arrangement where R4 only operates down to C or B and the lower notes are given to L4 and even the L thumb.

[jemtheflute]

I recently saw this Koch "panaulon" with doubled back foot down to G when I visited the Edinburgh University Collection of Historical Musical Instruments.
https://collections.ed.ac.uk/mimed/reco ... Koch+flute

I also saw this Hannecke with foot to A.
https://collections.ed.ac.uk/mimed/reco ... ecke+flute+