A New Instrument... the Pianoflute! (Anyone want to make it?)

[Cyberknight]

@palewine

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.

Keep in mind that I have absolutely zero experience or knowledge when it comes to designing or building instruments! My only experience comes from being a player.

Well, I guess it could do more than an octave, now that I think about it. You’d have two options, the way I see it. One option would be to have the keyboard itself only cover one octave, and then have the player “overblow” to play an octave higher. My only concern with that would be getting the two octaves in tune with each other. I have a vague idea that this would be difficult given the “closed hole” design (i.e., the fact that only one hole is generally open at any given moment). But someone who actually makes woodwinds should chime in here.

The other option would be making the thing longer and just adding more and more holes so that it can access two octaves. This would allow you to have a full two-octave keyboard, and you’d never have to overblow to the second harmonic. I think that would be problematic, though, because you’d need an extremely long tube, I would think, or else you’d run out of room for extra holes at the top to make the thing go higher.

@palewine

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.

I’m sure you could make something that would allow slides, yes. But that’s further complexity added to an already complex design.

When I talked about “sacrificing open holes,” I was talking about the ornamentation advantages they afford. They’re better for slides, as I mentioned. I also think (and I’ve heard disagreement on this point) that open holes are better for certain other ornaments, particularly taps (also known as strikes). But admittedly, the advantages you gain from open holes over a keyboard design that somehow allowed for sliding would be minimal. And anyway, there’s nothing wrong with an ITM instrument that can’t slide or do woodwind-like ornaments; concertinas and accordions are incapable of exactly imitating woodwind-like ornaments, but they’re extremely popular for ITM and have their own unique styles of ornamentation. So I don’t want to overstate my point here. The point is simply that the design wouldn’t be quite as good for the “ITM woodwind sound” as flute and whistle are, particularly if it was unable to slide.

Regarding the advantages of keys, I’m not sure the analogy between a harmonica and a melodica is the best. The harmonica is extremely difficult to play well because of the exact precision it requires of your lips and (I believe) your tongue. The melodica is much easier to differentiate individual notes, so I’d argue it’s naturally more intuitive for playing melodies than the harmonica is, even for someone who has no experience with keyboards whatsoever. Contrastingly, while the finger system of the Boehm flute may be initially more counterintuitive than the piano’s finger system, the flute’s design, if anything, makes it easier to play quickly and precisely. Thus, a person who has no experience with flutes or keyboards, after a few weeks of practice with both designs, would probably find the flute’s design much easier and more ergonomic than the keyboard layout on your instrument. Of course, things are totally different if the player already plays a keyboard instrument, as you mentioned. So if your audience is people who play piano and want an easy woodwind instrument to learn, I guess your instrument would fill that particular niche.

I think a better analogy would be the melodica/piano accordion vs. the concertina/button accordion. The concertina/button accordion layout is, I think, a bit more ergonomic and better for extremely fast playing than a keyboard is. Yet, piano accordions and melodicas abound, perhaps because people just want something slightly more intuitive for a beginner, and more familiar to someone who plays keyboard. Then again, the counterpoint to this would be that the piano accordion is easier and more flexible than the button accordion in numerous ways that are totally unrelated to its keyboard layout, and the melodica is super inexpensive; these facts could account for the two instruments’ popularities.

Finally, your point about clarinets raises an interesting problem, which is that a keyboard layout isn’t just going to make embouchure difficulties vanish. Clarinet embouchure is very difficult, but you wouldn’t be able to get an instrument with a keyboard layout that sounds like a clarinet while ALSO making those embouchure difficulties go away. You’d have three options: 1) make it have the same headjoint as the clarinet, but with a keyboard layout (thus making it just as difficult, embouchure-wise, as the clarinet); 2) make it a single, free-blown reed instrument like a hulusi, but with a keyboard layout (thus completely changing the sound of the instrument and possibly ruining its ability to switch octaves); or 3) make it a multi-reed free blown instrument (congrats, you’ve just reinvented the melodica!). Now, with the pianoflute design that you propose, this same principle rings true, but to a lesser extent. What you’re proposing is basically a large low whistle with a keyboard layout. This means that all the same things you need to do embouchure-wise on the low whistle, you’d still have to do on the pianoflute. The good news is that low whistle already requires relatively simple embouchure compared to pretty much any other instrument in that octave (the only things you have to worry about are breath control and, to a very minor extent, blowing angle and airstream thickness). So the embouchure wouldn’t be THAT hard, but it would still be a concern. The only way you could eliminate all embouchure requirements is if you completely redesigned the instrument so that it had a separate whistle for every note. But then it would sound a bit different from a low whistle.

[david_h]

@palewine

Another interesting advantage here is that Pianoflute could also be done with other instruments, like Clarinet.

If you wanted to try it with a double reed instrument I think you might find that for the acoustic side of things (rather than the key system) a Northumbrian pipe chanter is ready to go.

I think David Cooper was concerned about the closed fingering notes being veiled as they are when you open a single hole on a normal whistle.

[Cyberknight]

@david_h

@palewine

Another interesting advantage here is that Pianoflute could also be done with other instruments, like Clarinet.

If you wanted to try it with a double reed instrument I think you might find that for the acoustic side of things (rather than the key system) a Northumbrian pipe chanter is ready to go.

I think David Cooper was concerned about the closed fingering notes being veiled as they are when you open a single hole on a normal whistle.

Indeed, a keyboard-layout Northumbrian pipe chanter would be a very, very cool idea. That’s probably the closest you’d ever get to a 2-octave clarinet you could just “sit down and play.” Still wouldn’t really sound that much like a clarinet, but it would capture that “cane reed” sound of the pipes, unlike a melodica. And the layout would make much more sense (for chromatic playing, at least) than the cumbersome key system of the Northumbrian pipes. I’d buy one.

[David_Cooper]

@palewine

David Cooper - can you explain how this would result in weird sounding notes? And how higher notes would tend to “misfire” more?

Well, I may be wrong as I’ve never made the holes big enough to produce correct notes without the lower notes being open too, but when I open just one hole on a whistle/flute and keep all the ones below it closed, the notes produced can crackle or jump to and fro between two different notes, and this is caused by resonance in the lower closed part of the tube interfering with the resonance in the upper closed part of the tube, so you ideally want the lower part to disappear, while the standard solution is to keep all the holes in it open to minimise the damage it does or to use a separate tube for each note. Every hole you close in that lower part of the tube degrades the quality of the higher note you’re trying to play. This problem would lessen a bit if you make each hole bigger than normal to tune them on the basis that all lower holes will be closed, but I doubt the problem would go away. It could be avoided though by having all the lower holes open, but that means switching a lot of them in one go when changing between low and high notes, and all those changes would have to be mechanically powered by a single finger pressing or releasing a key instead of having a different finger open or close each hole. That’s why I’d recommend you just use a synthesiser - you’ll get better results straight away and have more scope to improve it beyond making bland notes.

[Cyberknight]

@David_Cooper

@david_h

Looking at the drawing I assumed it was tuned for one hole open at a time. (Is that ‘closed fingering’?)

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.

I’m not sure this is what you’re saying, but what if each key actually lifted an entire section of tube, so that the tube became shorter? So the tube is split into a ton of pieces, and every time you lift a key, a chunk of tube is removed from the whole?

[david_h]

For the lower octave with the end of the tube open (so not fully closed fingering) except part from the top hole (C#) I just get a veiled and flat version of the note that would normally sound with the lower holes open. On flute it’s a “useable at a pinch” Bb and Ab and I can blow the G and F# up to pitch so I assumed bigger and better positioned holes would work.

On a D whistle the C# is a problem because the hole is dual purpose, but on a D+ whistle with the seventh hole closed it’s a reasonable C#. However, I wonder if another hole could be linked to kill the harmonics.

[David_Cooper]

@Cyberknight

I’m not sure this is what you’re saying, but what if each key actually lifted an entire section of tube, so that the tube became shorter? So the tube is split into a ton of pieces, and every time you lift a key, a chunk of tube is removed from the whole?

Yes, that’s the idea. Of course, it might be sufficient for each key to open the hole for its note plus the hole below it to wipe out most of the influence of the rest of the tube beyond, and that might be the route to minimising the amount of force needed to press each key.

[David_Cooper]

@David_Cooper

@Cyberknight

I’m not sure this is what you’re saying, but what if each key actually lifted an entire section of tube, so that the tube became shorter? So the tube is split into a ton of pieces, and every time you lift a key, a chunk of tube is removed from the whole?

Yes, that’s the idea, though they can’t stay open without a whole lot needing to close at once when going from a high to a low note. Of course, it might be sufficient for each key to open the hole for its note plus the hole below it to wipe out most of the influence of the rest of the tube beyond, and that might be the route to minimising the amount of force needed to press each key.

[David_Cooper]

@David_Cooper

@Cyberknight

I’m not sure this is what you’re saying, but what if each key actually lifted an entire section of tube, so that the tube became shorter? So the tube is split into a ton of pieces, and every time you lift a key, a chunk of tube is removed from the whole?

Yes, that’s the idea, though they can’t stay open without a whole lot needing to close at once when going from a high to a low note. Of course, it might be sufficient for each key to open the hole for its note plus the hole below it to wipe out most of the influence of the rest of the tube beyond, and that might be the route to minimising the amount of force needed to press each key.

[/quote]

[David_Cooper]

@Cyberknight

I’m not sure this is what you’re saying, but what if each key actually lifted an entire section of tube, so that the tube became shorter? So the tube is split into a ton of pieces, and every time you lift a key, a chunk of tube is removed from the whole?

Yes, that’s the idea, though they can’t stay open without a whole lot needing to close at once when going from a high to a low note. Of course, it might be sufficient for each key to open the hole for its note plus the hole below it to wipe out most of the influence of the rest of the tube beyond, and that might be the route to minimising the amount of force needed to press each key.

[David_Cooper]

Sorry about that - the edit function’s creating new posts instead of just editing, and I can’t find a delete.

[Nanohedron]

@David_Cooper

Sorry about that - the edit function’s creating new posts instead of just editing, and I can’t find a delete.

Once someone has posted after you, or your post times out after 72 hours, the delete function stops. In which case, only a mod can do that for you.

[palewine]

@David_Cooper

@Cyberknight

I’m not sure this is what you’re saying, but what if each key actually lifted an entire section of tube, so that the tube became shorter? So the tube is split into a ton of pieces, and every time you lift a key, a chunk of tube is removed from the whole?

Yes, that’s the idea, though they can’t stay open without a whole lot needing to close at once when going from a high to a low note. Of course, it might be sufficient for each key to open the hole for its note plus the hole below it to wipe out most of the influence of the rest of the tube beyond, and that might be the route to minimising the amount of force needed to press each key.

That was actually an idea I had at one point! Instead of keys opening / closing holes, they would be connected to a chunk of tube and effectively shorten the length of the body when raised. Although I didn’t test it, I suspected that it would be hard to make a suitably airtight seal when all these disconnected chunks were closed, while also allowing them to move up and down. And, as you pointed out, there’s an agility factor - fast notes seem like they would be hard to do with how much “stuff” is physically moving around.

Do you think this idea is worth pursuing further though?

[palewine]

@Cyberknight

Finally, your point about clarinets raises an interesting problem, which is that a keyboard layout isn’t just going to make embouchure difficulties vanish.

I’m imagining that you would connect the air tube to the headpiece (whether that be a sideblown hole, a fipple, or reed like Clarinet) in a way that produces a clean note. Approximating an optimal embouchure. This would be an advantage because the hardware would take care of embouchure difficulties.

With Clarinet, some experimentation would be needed to see if just one setting would works for high / low notes. But with sideblown / fipple heads I think it’s a pretty safe bet that just one “setting” could work up and down the register. (By “setting” I mean the size, shape, and angle of the tube’s end as it meets the hole / fipple).

Then again, maybe that’s a naive assumption on my part. Leaving aside the Clarinet question for the time being, do you change mouth shapes very much when playing flute / whistle?

[Cyberknight]

@palewine

@Cyberknight

Finally, your point about clarinets raises an interesting problem, which is that a keyboard layout isn’t just going to make embouchure difficulties vanish.

I’m imagining that you would connect the air tube to the headpiece (whether that be a sideblown hole, a fipple, or reed like Clarinet) in a way that produces a clean note. Approximating an optimal embouchure. This would be an advantage because the hardware would take care of embouchure difficulties.

With Clarinet, some experimentation would be needed to see if just one setting would works for high / low notes. But with sideblown / fipple heads I think it’s a pretty safe bet that just one “setting” could work up and down the register. (By “setting” I mean the size, shape, and angle of the tube’s end as it meets the hole / fipple).

Then again, maybe that’s a naive assumption on my part. Leaving aside the Clarinet question for the time being, do you change mouth shapes very much when playing flute / whistle?

Someone who plays reed instruments should chime in here, but I don’t think that would work for clarinet. I’m pretty sure the clarinet only works if there’s constant pressure change on the reed, accomplished by the lips. Reeds in free-blown instruments are configured differently, I think, so they don’t need the change of pressure (but this also makes them sound different). Again, could be mistaken. All I know is that there are hundreds of free blown reed instruments out there, including many with cane reeds and cylindrical bores, and I’ve never heard any of them that sound much like a clarinet.

But you’re 100% correct that this would be far less of an issue on a whistle, because there’s so little you have to do embouchure-wise on a whistle. Having a tube you blow into that’s separated from the fipple by a great distance would mean you have no control over embouchure at all. But whistle requires so little embouchure control in the first place that this might not really matter that much. I’d be interested to hear the opinions of other low whistle players about this. In my experience, switching octaves and getting the whistle in tune is about 90% breath control and 10% embouchure (controlled by your tongue, how much your throat is constricted, your angle of blowing, etc.). But others may disagree and think that embouchure is less (or perhaps more) important than that.

[David_Cooper]

@palewine

Do you think this idea is worth pursuing further though?

I think the resulting instrument would be disappointing no matter how it’s built mechanically - lots of clunking and thumping to generate bland notes. A synthesiser is the way to go with this one.