Conical bore wrote:
Not to knock Terry's opening premise, but it seems to me that this is less about climate change than about flute care in general.
I'd say it's an extension to flute care in general. The physics is the same, but the difference in humidity levels at both ends is widening (unless we resolve only to buy flutes from makers in a similar local environment, and never to move house!)
Quote:
Climate change may make the outdoors drier over the years in some places, but it can be equally dry indoors with central heating if you're in a wet or moderate climate where it gets very cold in Winter, like north-central USA and Canada. Even in my nominally "wet" climate in northwestern Washington State, the forced air heating system during a cold snap can bring the inside of our house into the danger zone below 30% rh on a few days of the year, when it's down into the 20's F at night.
But these things are cumulative. The air conditioning or central heating reduces the humidity of the outside air. If climate change also reduces the humidity, then it plunges even lower. I observed this problem with our National Carillon's practice clavier. It uses glockenspiel tone bars to make the sound, and these are hung from wide boards of oak. The practice instrument was made in 1969 in Loughborough in midlands England, then shipped to dry Canberra. It struggled over the years but in 2002, they decided to install air conditioning. They should have asked me first, but they didn't. I'd have said, fine, as long as it has humidification built in. Well, it didn't and haven't I had fun since trying to maintain it. The problem is that each of the bars is hung from two bolts, spaced
across the boards. As the boards shrink in width with the onset of dry weather, the bolt holes and therefore the bolts move together, pinning the bars so they can't speak. The bass bars are much longer than the treble bars, so the silence creeps up from the left hand end of the keyboard. Then we went into drought a few years back and it all went haywire. I finally had to bite the bullet, and mill the holes of the longest bars into slots, to allow for the timber movement. And of course, as we move further into climate change, the temperatures are rising, so the air conditioning is used more, and that dries the air more, and.....
Quote:
I use one large room humidifier in the main dining room, and a smaller room humidifer in our music room, where I can maintain 38-45% rh in the colder months. It's not just for the flute... I have a few nice guitars and mandolins, and my S.O. has a very nice fiddle and grand piano. In addition, it's just not comfortable to live in house that's at 20% rh or lower. Your skin dries out, you get static shocks touching things... the cats hate getting zapped. There is more than one reason to control the indoor humidity.
Yep, none of us wants Grumpy Cat!
Quote:
This is still somewhat related to the climate change issue, because many of us will take our carefully humidified musical instruments out of the house into the untamed wilds of outdoor venues and indoor heated sessions where the air can be dry. As the climate changes, that delta in humidity will grow larger. But how significant is it? How quickly can a wooden musical instrument be damaged, when moving from controlled 40%+ indoor climate to a much lower outdoor climate? Or a venue with heating that drives it that low in Winter?
Somewhere on my website, I did an experiment putting flute heads into freezers and so on. I don't think we are at that much risk of thermal shock. I think humidity change is the issue. And even humidity change has no fear for unlined sections - the worst that will happen is your rings will come loose, and that's easily fixed with "the old handkerchief trick". It's the conjunction of metal linings and shrinkage that is the problem.
Quote:
Anecdotally, I haven't seen a problem playing my instruments at a heated venue, but we don't have the severely cold Winters here in the PNW that you get in the central Midwest USA and Canada. And I've never lived in a severely dry area like a desert. In these generally moderate conditions, my impression over the years is that while wooden instruments don't like drastic change in humidity, it still takes more than a few hours exposure to cause damage. Maybe your mileage varies, depending on where you live.
Agreed. Moisture level change inside wood, especially such dense woods, takes quite a while. It's not going to happen during an event.
Quote:
At least there are flute options for the most severe arid locations, and for people who for one reason or another can't control indoor humidity. There are the non-wood Delrin and Ebonite, and wooden flutes that are epoxy-impregnated or "torrified" for stability. Another option we may eventually see more of, is an extended wooden tenon for tuning like the Casey Burns Folk Flute. A flute designed for A440 shouldn't need the length of metal slide used in 19th Century designs. My Aebi flute in cocus has a typical long metal slide, but because it's well-optimized for A440, I never have to pull out the slide more than 1/4". A wooden tenon might have worked there.
There is the issue that a thicker wooden tenon when pulled out leaves a more significant cavity which tends to introduce disruptions probably of both an acoustic and an aerodynamic type, hence my MDT (Minimum Disruption Tenon) approach which seeks to minimise the thickness of the wooden tenon. But yes, we should continue to seek out alternative tuning approaches. And again, yes, we may need to look to materials other than wood if we cannot find adequate solutions involving wood. But just convince me I don't like wood....