I can see no reason NOT to use CNC machines or synthetic materials. There’s nothing “natural” about a music instrument–they don’t exist in nature. I’m not sure why a cast metal flute key gets to be understood as more natural than a rod of Delrin stock. If I had access to a facility like that I’d be teaching myself CAD software
I know that I like working with my hands and having to solve problems in 3d in real time. And it’s a good thing, because I cause myself a lot of problems. I more or less invented my own electric guitar design after many experiments. If I wanted to produce it for sale, I’d be all over the CNC machinery. The hard part was building prototypes that worked the right way.
I imagine with flutes–be they wood or synthetic–it’s all about the last mile of production, similar to the way with a guitar, it’s all about the setup
Ugh, isn’t this the damn truth! My first product is a pennywhistle, but flutes and pipes are not far behind. After four and a half years of working on this project, I’m finally almost ready to release them “into the wild.” But that last 5% of the way, man, it’s the hardest. Perfect is the enemy of done, but mediocrity is the enemy of success. I won’t get a chance to make a second first impression, and I know of some makers with great products that are not as popular as they perhaps deserve because they rushed an instrument line to market.
For production, I think I’m going to be able to pressure-cast these in two pieces, polish out any flashing, and do the final voicing by hand if needed. I’m planning to have a whole variety of fun embellishments for the body tubes, like soldered rings, etching, and patina-ing for those who like that sort of thing. One-off art projects, really, offered in addition to my standard plain tubes.
In most ways, the Essential Flutes can’t really be compared to conical bore flutes in an apples-to-apples way because they are simply a different thing. They blow differently and have different characteristics. So far the feedback I’ve gotten from players of all skill levels is that while it might take some getting used to (if you have only played conical bore instruments), they are an enjoyable alternative. They are very powerful and free-blowing and so might take different air-management technique, but the intonation is every bit as good as a conical bore flute and that was really important to me. Hats off to Theobald Boehm He was a clever fellow.
I’ve encountered this interesting phenomena in the world of the silver flute: most players don’t like plastic. They are fine with metal and they like wood, but the majority don’t go for plastic. There are plenty enough exceptions to make this a loose generality, because Guo flutes have a following, and his stuff is 100% plastic. Metal flutes are pretty “processed”, but players love them. Maybe because ore is considered a “natural” substance? Not sure.
My own modest efforts to educate silver flute players about ebonite (I use it a lot for headjoints) has proven a challenge at times because players conflate ebonite and plastic. They see the shiny finish (which takes a ton of effort to achieve) and the cool colors and they quite understandably think it’s some synthetic material. And I may have mentioned this before, but the funny thing is that whereas classical flute players tend to question the ebonite, jazz players seem to love it. Funny, eh?
Heh heh, the jazz players loving ebonite. Perhaps remembering when they had that day-job fixing tyres before they made it on the jazz circuit?
But, jokes apart, let’s scotch any suggestion that any materials or any processes are less “authentic” than others. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If you can find a better, easier, faster, safer way to make a good flute, go for it. It not only makes sense, it’s your responsibility!
Looking at this image of Rudall Carte (Berners St) in 1922, we can see that lathes should be pedal-driven. I trust you are all using pedal-driven lathes out there! (Confession time, I’m not.)
If we don’t deal with climate change soon, we may be forced down that path, Casey. The grid will have melted.
I see Europe’s current heatwave is starting to impact on the US too. Here in Australia we suffered our hottest summer on record last year. We’re now enjoying a wonderfully mild winter. But given that and the powerful heat waves in the northern hemisphere, we can only wonder what our next summer will bring.
Amen. Authenticity is only a valid concept in a very narrow window of time. Same with “tradition” as a concept. There are cultural traditions that can be tracked through short bits of human history, but if you pull far enough back for the “big picture” view, they reveal themselves to be the product of various cultural “mash-ups” (human migrations, conquests, assimilation, trading, sharing, etc.). No culture or tradition is static over time, so choosing a narrow window and declaring that it frames some sort of authenticity it not accurate. It is common practice among humans to do just that, but I also suspect it is a failing of imagination. The “big picture” is not easy for many people to see, and in my experience most people don’t try beyond a certain very limited frontier. Maybe it’s too scary? Not sure.
Forgive the philosophical digression, but this is something I’ve run into a lot in my flute-making journey, and these days “cultural appropriation” is really on people’s minds, and it does get applied to flutes. I have a friend who is a performer on world flutes and he was asked to do a gig recently, but the person hiring him was very concerned about cultural appropriation in regard to his playing flutes from various cultures. Because he was not a native to Japan, Ireland, Peru, etc. they weren’t sure it was okay for him to play flutes from these countries! He had to explain a bit about the origins of these various flutes and traditions, illustrating how they evolved and how different groups came to play them. In the end, they let it pass and hired him, but he did have to engage in a couple of frustrating conversations to justify his art.
But it harks back a bit to the thread that was running here a while back on the origin of the “Irish” flute and what that really is.
“Authenticity” is nearly always related to nationalism. It’s part of a claim to difference. Sometimes the colonizer describes the colonized as authentically inferior and therefore worthy of colonization. Sometimes the colonized use a claim of authentic difference to support their right to independence. Sometimes it used to image an alternative set of values within a nation, for example “folk authenticity” often serves to imagine and alternative nation with presumably better values.
“Authenticity” is nearly always related to nationalism. It’s part of a claim to difference. Sometimes the colonizer describes the colonized as authentically inferior and therefore worthy of colonization. Sometimes the colonized use a claim of authentic difference to support their right to independence. Sometimes it used to image an alternative set of values within a nation, for example “folk authenticity” often serves to imagine and alternative nation with presumably better values.
Authenticity and nationalism are closely related
You will be hard pressed though to find players in Ireland calling either the flute or the whistle ‘Irish’. That is american usage, and post Riverdance at that, that has spread on the internet.
It’s true that I’ve become more attuned to the question of cultural appropriation than I ever was, and I think it’s a good thing to be aware of. I also think that music introduces grey areas that a white man wearing a war bonnet does not. My question when it comes to music is, at what point is the issue of cultural appropriation valid or invalid? I know a fellow who studies Persian music and plays the rabab, and he’s no more Iranian than a chili dog. There’s a group of Minnesotans - mostly white, from what I could tell - studying the Okinawan sanshin. By that token, is it cultural appropriation when East Asians play Western Classical music, or when Czechs play jazz? Why not?
Just tossing a fox into the chicken coop, here. I will go so far as to say that I think people can go overboard when they accuse others of cultural appropriation for playing musics not ethnically their “own”. IMO there is a weaker case for cultural appropriation if I take up Mongolian throat singing and playing the morin khuur, than if I parade around in traditional Mongolian attire.
The main thing is not to be bogged down by these considerations if you are a maker, or even a player. Simply enjoy the music!
I wish we had vacuum impregnated Acrylic technology back when I started out. The best we could do usually was lining bores with sealers ranging from polyurethane, liquid waxes, epoxy and superglue with various degrees of success. Or we simply didn’t worry about it. In terms of data many of us had to search far and wide, grabbing the data off actual instruments in collections and in the players’ hands. Many of us were self taught, or learned techniques from fellow makers (Rod Cameron has always been a big influence on me). Now in Internet makes abundant data including measurements available and our wood technology is expanding as some woods become rare. Wood rarity is nothing new - witness what happened to Cocus in the early 20th century as it was harvested to commercial extinction.
In terms of cultural appropriation I do have some personal limits. I will never do anything with Native American flutes. I used to get asked by so and so to teach them flute making and in many cases they wanted to make these. Really, they all wanted to be Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves. I always turned these people away. I don’t have a single bit of French DNA in me yet I love making the pipes and playing the music. Same with Galician though if the 23 and Me results are to be trusted (I don’t) I do have a little bit of Iberian blood in me. These also said I was more Irish than Scottish and they totally missed the 1/8th Czechoslovakian. I knew my great grandmother from Prague and she taught me some rather shocking phrases. I would like to investigate some of the rural flutes from that country and my friend Radim Zenkle knows a bunch about them. He unfortunately lost most of his extensive collection in the Paradise fire last year.
You’ll also be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of the united states complaining about ‘cultural appropriation.’ There are some funny videos out there of US “identity zealots” showing people from Japan, China, Africa, and Latin America people in the 'states doing or wearing something from their culture. They were expecting the viewers to respond negatively, but pretty universally they were thrilled someone outside their country took an interest in their culture, even if the execution wasn’t great.
Now, that’s not to say that people in a majority-anglo country can’t produce some pretty tasteless, offensive, or racist stuff, or that the better visibility of white musicians and artists could lead to them profiting more from cultural art than descendants of said culture. But that’s just racism and poor taste. There’s nothing inherently wrong about exploring the culture, art, and music of another society. In fact, it’s a very positive thing.
Casey - I’d concur with that. I think it would fall in to the “poor taste” category to make native instruments on what’s essentially stolen land, especially when there are native artisans who could make those.
I spent years making Native American style flutes and running a forum that was (initially) dedicated to them. I stopped making them many years ago from a combination of dissatisfaction with the murky issues around non-natives making these flutes, and more commercial reasons. I’ve been deeply engaged in many discussions (and outright arguments) on this topic and have a certain degree of insider perspective from many talks with hardcore native activists, flute historians, and non-native enthusiasts. My immersion even led me to an illuminating conversation with some folks at the Indian Arts and Crafts Board.
I will go so far as to say that this is not a clear-cut issue in many ways. The number of native tribes that had a flute culture was very limited in both scope and history (time). And according to some historians, it was dying out. It was (allegedly) the enthusiasm of a few non-native historians and amateur researchers that actually brought the tradition back to a great extent and which is responsible for the massive surge of interest in these flutes that has spread globally. When they became a hot commodity from a commercial perspective, then suddenly the issue of appropriation became a big thing. Before the commercial boom it was a non-issue and many natives expressed pleasure that anyone was interested in them and that the flute tradition was being kept alive. As famous Native flute player R. Carlos Nakai said at one point (and I paraphrase): “When the flute became popular in recorded music and had commercial potential, suddenly every tribe had a flute tradition!” There is strong evidence that this style of block flute that we call the Native American flute has a very short history and was actually simply a native take on European flagolet and whistles that the natives got in trade from early settlers. This is a controversial subject and many natives would angrily refute this. I don’t have a position on it because I honestly don’t know what the truth is. But when in doubt I’m inclined to side with the Native view. They have plenty of grounds for being angry at their ongoing treatment, and I’m leery of history that is written by the “conquerors”.
But Native American art is a billion dollar a year industry now, and understandably the many Native artisans are conscious of not wanting non-Natives exploiting it (which happens a LOT). There are laws to prevent this, and while they may limit the degree to which non-natives can profit by native culture, they are not what I would call culturally sensitive laws. For example, it was perfectly fine for me to make and sell this style of flute so long as I called them “Native American style flutes” and not “Native American flutes”.
And I agree that our modern U.S. is built on stolen land, but I would also take note of that big picture view. From that long-range view, is there any land that has not been stolen? Don’t imagine that I’m making any excuse for the brutal colonialism (genocide) that took place in this country such a short while ago. To what degree are the modern descendants of the original settlers of this continent accountable for history? We can’t undo history, so what is the best position to take about the present and future? Is loving the Native culture and wanting to connect with it a bad thing? Where is the line?
The line was never clear for me and it eventually led to me abandoning that part of my craft and moving on to less murky waters. But the question still remains every time I run across one of these conversations.
As a player, that’s my take on this. I play NAF and whistle in very non-traditional ways and have gotten some flack from traditionalists in both camps like “OMG, is he trying to play jazz on that thing?”
I don’t consider what I’m doing to be “cultural appropriation” at all. I’m not trying to pass myself off as Native American or Irish or whatever. I’m just making music.
To Geoffrey, I do find it sad that these issues led to you having to stop making those instruments. As I understand, the Ellis NAFs were very well received, and I would have liked to have played them, I’m sure.
Were similar issues behind the dropping of wooden whistles from your catalog? I was fortunate to have acquired a used low F whistle in buying a (I think) from C&F somewhat recently and it is very nice. I wouldn’t hesitate to acquire others if they were available.
If you look at the long span of Native American history in North America it’s awful to contemplate in so many ways, but at any single point in the long history you get a very different view. You often see different tribes competing against each other, or some Native cultural groups bargaining for real advantage of better circumstances at one point only to lose a generation later. It’s not simply a narrative of steady victimization. And of course Native societies frequently and often eagerly make use of non-native things like the horse, metal implements guns etc. I would avoid playing native American flutes because the subject is too highly charged. I’d have to approach it with a lot of care and self- education. it’s be a lot of work.
In general though the idea that you can’t do X unless you are X is pretty dumb. But so is the idea that you can do it without learning something besides the notes. In my exerience musicians tend to be drawn to the history and culture of the musicians they admire and emulate.
My first product is a pennywhistle, but flutes and pipes are not far behind. After four and a half years of working on this project, I’m finally almost ready to release them “into the wild.” But that last 5% of the way, man, it’s the hardest. Perfect is the enemy of done, but mediocrity is the enemy of success. I won’t get a chance to make a second first impression, and I know of some makers with great products that are not as popular as they perhaps deserve because they rushed an instrument line to market.
He was a clever fellow.
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