What if there was a flute / whistle that could be played using a keyboard layout, and was chromatic?
I created the design for such an instrument - I call it the Pianoflute! - and I’m curious what you think of it, and whether any Maker would be interested in trying to make it.
Here’s an overview of it:
The tube allows you to be perpendicular to the body of the flute, so that the keyboard can be in a traditional layout in front of you.
Here’s a sideview of how the key / hammer action could work.
The spring tension would need to be balanced to be strong enough to cover the hole up quickly for fast note runs, yet also not be too strong such that it’s difficult to press down.
For myself, I love the sound of wind instruments (but don’t play any), and have a background playing piano. So I designed the Pianoflute for myself and many others out there with my background. I personally like that with it you can:
play in every key / mode / scale
can play very low notes + high notes (depending on how long you make the body)
you don’t have to learn special fingering patterns for it, you can play it as easily as you play a piano
Some challenges that I foresee would be:
The holes would be in slightly different places than a traditional flute, since it is made with a one key = one hole = one note. As far as I know, no other flute/whistle does this, due to humans being limited to 10 fingers. So some experimentation would be required to find proper placement.
It has more moving parts due to the keys. Fortunately they don’t need to be too complex, just levers with springs and pads.
Getting the air hitting the fipple / hole correctly coming out of the tube to produce a clean tone.
What do you all think? Interesting? Would you play it? And, would anyone be up to the challenge of making it?
What you need is a synthesiser - that’ll save you a whole lot of trouble.
How many notes will your mechanical piano-flute be able to play at the same time? Only one? How many keys are you going to have to hold down at once to get some of the notes? If you’re imagining pressing just one key for each note, each key needs to be mechanically connected to all the holes of lower notes to hold them open while all the ones above need to be closed. You’re also going to have a very narrow range of notes unless you have some way of forcing it into the second octave. It’s a lot of trouble to go to, trying to get around all the mechanical complications to make a severely disabled flute, when a synthesiser will do the job better with existing hardware.
I like the chromatic aspect of it. One tube can only produce one note at a time, so this would seem to
want to gravitate towards either a Calliope steam whistle sort of thing, with multiple pipes and a keyboard,
or some alternative to a South American pan pipe setup, or I’m not sure what, as any improvement over using one’s own fingers.
If you’re a whistle player and suddenly lose two fingers in a gardening accident, what do you do? You use the ____________ at the next session.
It may become some kind of wind-version of a kalimba.
I often wonder why there’s no such thing as “fipple bagpipes.” If attaching multiple reed instruments to a bag works so well, why not attach multiple fipple flutes to a bag? I bet that would sound cool.
It’s a matter of pressure and flow volume. Bags work well for high pressure (relatively speaking) and moderate flow. Whistles are low pressure, higher flow. Your bag would need a very delicate touch, and would empty out quickly, if it was driving a whistle.
Because bagpipes were invented as a weapon of war, to scare the wits out of the enemy before unshaven Scotsmen in dresses ran at them swinging 5-foot broadswords. It’s a scary sight and a lousy weekend.
A fipple wind instrument sounds too pleasant to scare Caesar’s generals back to Rome. Ask Boudicca. Then again, luring Roman soldiers into huts where they can be trapped for processing, is an idea.
That would cause a lot of weird sounding notes that sound muffled, and the higher up you go, the more they’ll misfire. Having one flute tube per piano key is likely the most workable solution if it needs to be mechanical rather than electronic.
…Unless, maybe each key could displace a section of tube rather then just opening a hole, thereby opening it up much more than lifting a finger off a hole can. Alternate ones would be displaced to opposite sides so that the seals are always lifting away from the adjacent sections.
Heh heh, I’ve already invented it and displayed it at the Boxwood flute festival in 2002. I noticed that they had some cardboard wine casks in the kitchen during dinner, and begged the kitchen staff for an empty one. Pulled the poly bladder out of it, and drank the small amount of wine left trapped inside. Then went up on stage during a break, solemnly called the audience to attention and made the announcement about the debut of the newly invented instrument, the bag-whistle. Then blew the bag up, poked the beak of my Generation D whistle into the spout, tucked the bag under the right arm and just got through the A parts of popular jig, to the general amusement of all.
At that point, the issue Tunborough raises kicked in - the flute family are flow driven, not pressure driven like the rest of the woodwinds. And I was out of flow. And no blow pipe to refresh the bag. The bag-whistle had enjoyed a brief but popular career.
That invention is termed a “kist [chest] o’ whistles” in Scotland, with a list of attested uses here. The oldest of them ties directly into traditional music and is juxtaposed with bagpiping in the text where it appears, published in the 1729 volume of Ramsey’s Tea-Table Miscellany, online here.
The song and a tune to which it was set are discussed in broader detail in a TTA article here. It may also be worth noting that one of the speculative explanations for the origin of bagpipes that pops up now and again is that they were inspired by the pipes and bellows of the organ.
There’s a scene in the 1937 Disney animation of Snow White where everyone is dancing to a small organ with pipes that have keys flapping merrily open and closed. I can’t access the video stream but if memory from an earlier viewing serves, these are labial pipes. If so, it can’t be called a pump organ without risk of its being taken to have reed pipes. If instead we follow the nomenclatural principal that labeled the uilleann pipes by the part of the body that operates the bellows, this contraption would have as colorful a name as the thing is, itself.
I have seen key systems though I can’t remember what on (possible a contrabass something or other) where the key is a section of tube with a slightly larger diameter than the main bore and covering a huge hole. The OPs idea would probably permit quite a strong spring to seal it.
Not quite what the OP was proposing but Sarah Jeffery (Team Recorder) did a video last year about the Hellcorder, the recorder-based guitar amplifier ..
David_h - you are correct - all holes are covered by default. If you push a key, it opens that hole and allows that note to sound. The spring under each key pushes it closed again after you let up on it.
David Cooper - can you explain how this would result in weird sounding notes? And how higher notes would tend to “misfire” more?
My take on this instrument is that it would be quite interesting, and I’m sure a lot of people would find it fun to play as a novelty, but it doesn’t seem like it would be particularly useful overall. You’d only get a 1 octave range out of it, so it wouldn’t be useful for classical music. You also would have trouble doing Irish ornamentation on it that other woodwinds can do with ease (particularly slides), so it wouldn’t work THAT well for Irish music either.
I also don’t really see the advantage of having a keyboard to begin with. I mean, sure, if you’re a pianist who wants a very intuitive woodwind instrument, it might be helpful. But for anyone else, it doesn’t seem like it would be any better than the (much simpler) flute. The keys can’t play more than one note at once, so self-accompaniment is off the table. And the design of a keyboard is (I think) less ergonomically efficient than that of a flute, because it requires your hand to travel around in order to play all the notes. Sure, chromatics are cool, but you can already play a full chromatic scale on a 6-key flute, on a recorder, or even on certain chromatic whistles. And if you’re willing to sacrifice open holes for keys to make chromatic playing easier, you could just buy a (relatively cheap) Boehm flute, which does exactly that. So what’s the point?
I suppose one other benefit of this design is that it would allow you to jump quickly back and forth from a lower drone note to some higher note. You could do this (I presume) by holding down the lower key and tapping the higher key. This could give a cool “electric guitar” sort of effect. But this strikes me as a bit of a gimmick. And given that skilled flute or whistle players can get a similar effect from their instruments, this effect alone probably wouldn’t be enough to make this instrument truly useful.
I’d be much more interested in a mini-organ. Basically, a piano accordion with flue pipes instead of reeds. That would probably sound really cool and would actually allow you to play chords with the timbre of a whistle. Sadly, it would probably be too large to be practical; but perhaps it would be doable if you used closed-end tubes, which take up less space.
Cyberknight - thanks for your thoughts. Quick question: you mentioned the current design I posted above wouldn’t be able to do more than an octave. Is there a physical limiting factor that is the reason for that?
I was imagining that you could get as low as you wanted, depending on the length of the flute. Granted, the holes get further apart as you go lower, so the key arms may need to be angled (almost like a typewriter). I can’t think of any reason why this wouldn’t work. But then that’s one of the reasons I’m posting here - I don’t know what I don’t know! So I appreciate those who know more than me offering ideas / critique.
I was thinking this could be an advantage of the instrument - that it could play both very low (the tube’s length, however long you make it) and very high notes (holes close to the fipple) within the same instrument.
Cyberknight - responding to some of your other thoughts:
“It can’t do slides” - you’re right. I wonder if there’s a smart modification that could be made where slides become possible? For example, on a traditional piano, one of the foot pedals shifts all the hammer heads over slightly, so it changes the timbre. I could imagine on the Pianoflute, some mechanism that shifts the pad of the desired note forward slightly (half uncovering the hole, like you would with your finger doing a slide on a normal whistle). Then lifting all the way off. In theory, do you think that would work?
“If you’re willing to sacrifice open holes” - that’s an interesting statement. Can you explain this more? Is there an advantage to having more open holes as you play notes, over fewer?
“I don’t see the advantage of having a keyboard” - there may not be much of one for experienced players such as yourself It’s a lot like the difference between harmonica and melodica. A really good player can bend notes and play chromatically on a harmonica. And harmonica isn’t even that hard to learn! But even so, the melodica has its own niche in that sound-space (i.e. metal vibrating from blown air, with that distinctive sound). I think this is because, sometimes, people just want to pick up something and have the familiarity of a keyboard to use.
Another interesting advantage here is that Pianoflute could also be done with other instruments, like Clarinet. Perhaps you’re a great whistle player, but don’t want to learn the new fingerings and embouchure technique required to play Clarinet. Pianoflute (err…at that point it’d be called Pianoclarinet? Claripiano?) could have a version that has a reed head and bell-shaped end, like a Clarinet does. You could just sit down and play clean notes immediately. There’s a certain appeal to that.
It’s a lot like the difference between harmonica and melodica. A really good player can bend notes and play chromatically on a harmonica. And harmonica isn’t even that hard to learn! But even so, the melodica has its own niche in that sound-space (i.e. metal vibrating from blown air, with that distinctive sound). I think this is because, sometimes, people just want to pick up something and have the familiarity of a keyboard to use.