How do you know a flute is in tune ?

Irish Flute
1

By playing it.

Apart from that though, I was thinking over how to present tuning on a made flute, and managed to over-complicate the question somehow.


Most obvious is presenting tuning values with flute being played at fullest sound using medium embouchure and only air pressure to jump octaves, and that is the approach I will now use.

…but people don’t always play that way…and what if when played rolled in for tone it goes out of tune… and most people direct airstream to some degree, possibly bringing out of tune, in…or in tune out even…

So is there a sort of standard approach to this, or is it more a question of the flute maker putting the flute in tune a certain way and the player either finds or fits that or doesn’t ?

I think most would agree some flutes are easily in tune and some just cannot be played in tune, but that leaves probably a majority of flutes somewhere in between ?

Also, can boehm flutes be set in a way that they lose tuning ? I haven’t played one and was just wondering how stable their tuning really is.

The questions are simple but at the same time the whole topic seems slightly subjective, so I was just wondering if there is a kind of accepted approach to this.

2

This whole issue is a can of worms really.

The pitch produced by a flute with a given fingering depends on a lot of factors, including the player, environmental conditions such
as temperature and humidity levels, and the position of the tuning slide. The same flute with the same player will have different tuning
when temperature and humidity change. The same flute with different players will have different tuning even if temperature and humidity
do not change. And a given player can play a wide range of pitches for a given fingering on the same flute on any given day. Sometimes
this is deliberate, but sometimes it is due to unintentional changes in embouchure.

When a tuning slide is extended it flattens the pitch of all notes, but not uniformly. So a flute that is in tune with itself at one tuning slide
extension will not be in tune with itself at another, by definition.

Another important question is “in tune with what?” A common answer might be 12-tone, equal temperament, with A=440 hz, but most of the
best flutes out there don’t really match that, and for good reason. For example, you will generally find that, on a D flute, the F# is flat
compared to equal temperament tuning. When you dig into the pros and cons of equal temperament tuning it doesn’t take long to discover
that one of the common complaints is that the musical third interval is much too wide to be harmonious, and offends many a musical ear.
When given a choice, for example when playing solo on non-fixed pitch instruments (such as fiddles, or when singing, say), musicians tend to
be much closer to just intonation than ET, simply because it is more musical. And given how important the third is, musically, it is important
that thirds are not too far out of tune. When playing in the key of D (which is a very common key played on D flutes), the F# is the third, so
it isn’t terribly surprising that a D flute with a slightly flat F# sounds and plays better that one that is strictly ET. There are numerous other
compromised like this, that influence the tuning target for the flute maker. Basically, the flute should sound as good as possible in the keys
it is expected to be played in, and the worst tuning deviations should be relegated to musical keys it is unlikely to be played in. And it is a
matter of choice how to balance the competing concerns of optimizing how a flute plays solo, or together with fiddles etc, as opposed to
how well it plays with fixed tuning 12-TET instruments.

The flexibility of the player to vary the pitch for a given fingering ends up being a feature, rather than a bug, because it allows a given flute that
embodies a given set of tuning choices from its maker, to be played “in tune” in a variety of different musical keys/modes, by a variety of
different players, on a variety of different days. It is not the flute that is in tune or out of tune, it is the player who must be able to play in tune,
and this depends on the player’s ear as much as the flute, so long as the flute is within range and has a suitable pattern of intervals.

So, with those caveats, I’d say that the best approach to tuning a flute is to copy the tuning intervals/patterns of a good one.
Which, of course, begs the question of how to identify a good one. :devil:

3

Indeed.
I can only speak from the player perspective, and what I look for in a flute. I realize this “Irish flute” design is a diatonic instrument and will not be in perfect 12 tone equal temperament. But I still want it to be as close as possible to 12TET*, while still preserving a few idiomatic features like the slightly sharp “Piper’s C” when that note is cross-fingered, and the need to overblow some harmonics to lift up the low D and get that nice hard tone.

So what I look for is a flute that hits every note reasonably close to 12TET when playing of a full tune into a RTTA app like TTTuner for android phone. It’s the only way to know what pitches I’m actually playing, compared to “chasing” the pitch blowing steady notes and looking at a digital tuner display. An RTTA analysis doesn’t lie. See Terry’s page about this (thanks Terry!): Reel Time Tuning Analysis

Now, it’s true that we all blow flutes slightly differently, we all have different embouchures and so on. But I believe that if I can blow a flute within reasonably close approximation to 12TET note pitch in the first two octaves when analyzed with a RTTA app, then other flute players would be able to as well. Maybe with a micro adjustment of the tuning slide if they tend to blow a hair sharper or flatter than I do.

This reinforces the idea of “find a good flute and copy it” if you’re a maker, because it appears that many of the current crop of flute makers have figured out how to do this with modern interpretations of 19th Century flute designs. I’m very happy with the close-to-12TET pitch I can get on my current Aebi and Noy flutes.

*P.S. Expanding a bit on why I care so much about 12TET because I know that may be controversial here. :slight_smile: One reason is that it’s a good baseline for playing along with recordings. Older recordings or modern solo recordings can sometimes be squirrely regarding pitch, but most Irish/Scottish trad band recordings in the last 30 years are generally within the realm of 12TET intonation. Blame guitar and piano (for Cape Breton style) accompaniment for that, I guess.

The other reason is that most of my flute playing these days is along with my fiddler Significant Other at home, and she has very good intonation. Her open G, D, and E strings may be tuned in 5ths from her A string at 440 Hz, but her pitch on fingered notes is near-as-dammit 12TET because that’s how her ears were trained over the years. I like the way we can sometimes sound like a single instrument when playing together, and I can only do that on a flute that gets close to 12TET.

4

(Disambiguation, when I write tone = sound/timbre pitch= frequency scale

Also here I am talking basically about two straight octaves on a simple system flute, without ignoring that harmonics contributing to the tone might be pure. On say rennaisance flutes second octave might be harmonics for certain notes and so the scale nescessarily different etc. … it is a large topic… after posting a clip earlier of a harmonic scale, I was dreaming about quarter notes that night and I don’t even know what they are, had not heard of them as far as I remember !.. and next day I’m reading about Buffardin or Quantz having mapped them !! )


Thanks Paddler, that is very appreciated. When making or designing a flute, it often feels like all the responsibility is on the builder to provide an instrument that is acceptably tuned…at least that is how I feel about it…but sometimes it feels like being asked the impossible. For myself, and cylindrical flutes have an advantage I think of being more stable (but maybe the Pratten or newer design is good also), I tend to try for equal temperament but then will not fuss if certain notes tend to play slightly flat as long as they sound ok while playing various tunes, and as long as I am able to push them to near equal temperament at choice. I think there is “out of tune” and then in capitals “out of tune”. Some good playing I have listened to sounds just fine and with a certain character to the tuning, but if I focus just on the tuning while listening I start hearing the “errors” more than the music. So I think there is a limit to how in tune a flute can be presented as , and really it is a question of if the flute sounds dissonant, whether to the player or listener. I think custom temperament is a bonus if a certain music is to be played, and it definitely affects how the flute or music is played. To me, certain flutes just invite being played a certain way or style. Equal temperament “should” be an acceptable compromise and by and large works well, but just isn’t there in certain settings. I notice this also on guitar, sometimes certain notes simply aren’t right when tuned to equal, for certain tunes or in certain chords. So far though I haven’t aimed for different tuning on a flute, it is just allowed as long as the music sounds ok.

So the way I look at it (which is not nescessarily the right way) is that for any particular style of flute being able to play 2nd octave in tune with 1st easily is a priority. From there any different temperament might be chosen and work. At one point I considered building a flute with each tonehole tuneable, but octaves would have to be good for that to work.

The broader design of the particular style of flute chosen can then be adjusted to further approach whatever ideal of sound is sought. That is a very careful process where any new tuning error between octaves needs correcting if it occurs, before continuing again. The existing designs that are praised though, I think they have something more, I think they must have a comfort or fluidity across the whole range in various combinations, and that is such a complex design factor that either some builders were geniuses or else they just landed on right combinations and were able to recognise them.

For a good flute, we mostly only have hearsay from other players to go by, which can be very honest but is always somewhat subjective. In reality we would have to do more than play every flute, we would have to also learn different playing and embouchure styles, be familiar with different kinds of music, and so on… which is I expect why top makers deserve their place. They have a wide experience of different flutes, usually understand and are attentive to particular demands of the client and so on.

That aside, I think finding a design that sounds good tonewise and is not too difficult to play with that tone, and then going directly to assure well tuned octaves, then to overall tuning while trying to maintain the tone, is possibly a way. It will also depend how the builder sets about their tuning. If just via tonehole shape and placement any flute might keep most of its tone qualities, but if you start adjusting the bore for tuning then the tone is more likely to change… at least that is what I notice so far. So a good flute for basing the design on would be one that also has small octave discrepancy into the bargain…those tend to sound “better” anyway I think in terms of having a complex sound because more harmonics are present on low notes I think. I’m just rambling a bit for what sort of orientates my view.

The better a design being started from the easier it will be to acceptably copy, or improve even, but I don’t take it as a given that any existing flute is perfect, and I don’t think a copy of a perfect flute would come out exactly the same either when using wood.

So for me it is all an adventure in sound, I don’t mind if flutes play more one way or another and it is always fascinating what tones appear. Being too far out of tune is a kind of fail though, a single octave flute if you like…which is ok also but not the idea. Even with the basic design I have been presenting, I think I would have to make many tens of them to properly understand how the differences between any occur.


So that is my approach at least, and I have a strong aversion to (non-constructive) criticism or long and tedious complaint for not getting something as expected… which is one reason I don’t plan on ever selling a flute…but that also allows me freedom to explore design and to present what I find relatively accurately, within my ability to … other makers have different paths but it is a similar pursuit all the same :slight_smile: … still it is good to know if there is some kind of bar to it all, and if other makers find themselves in a similar boat.


Conical Bore, I’m also fine with equal temperament and think that unless someone knows exactly what other kind of tuning they are after and why, or have decided to tune by ear alone, it is plenty good enough for most playing. On guitar that is pretty much standard also. That said, other forms of tuning definitely change the mood and sound of any music, and I know that that subtlety can mean a great deal to some. I thought I had read just about all of Terry’s site but managed to skip the RTTA page somehow… had even searched online to find similar at one point but it was all paid, so thanks. At the same time I’m hesitant to apply any programming to making flutes, Luddite and all that… and I tend to like to focus on slow fine detail so for now have taken to recording a tune then slowing it down about four times and playing it with the tuner on… and that sort of explains to me closely. It looks like a good program though, so will have to try it out.

5

If you really want to go further down the rabbit hole on issues of tuning, temperaments and the
subtleties of tone/timbre etc, I found the following two books to be highly informative, and quite
entertaining (in a geeky, music theory kind of way). Neither are flute-specific, but they go a long
way toward addressing the underlying reasons and rationale for a lot of the issues that underly those
that you touched upon.

“How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and why you should care)” by Ross W. Duffin

and

“On the Sensations of Tone” by Hermann Helmholtz.

The latter being a translation of Helmholtz’s original masterpiece on musical acoustics from the
mid 1800s, but still a fascinating read today. It is not light reading, but is great if you really want to get
to grips with the underlying reasons – the ground truth of it all, if you like. And I really enjoyed getting
this first-hand, so to speak, from the great man himself. Both books are available fairly inexpensively online
via various sources such as Amazon, eBay, etc.

Back to your specific post, my personal take is that flute tuning and voicing is highly specific to the music that the flute
is intended for. The voicing aspect is kind of a second-order tuning issue, in that it is about the mix of harmonic components
rather than simply the primary pitch of notes. That harmonic mix is influenced by the fine details of a flute’s bore
profile, and while it may not directly affect the primary pitch of each note, it has a subtle impact on how the
flute sounds, which, although subtle, can make all the difference for certain people in certain musical contexts. So, there
is no single “right” tuning, or “right” voicing for all flutes. But there are commonly preferred target regions of tuning and
voicing for flutes that are intended for specific musical purposes. I think these have tended to either be discovered by trial and
error, for example, by trying various different flutes in a particular musical context and selecting the ones that sound best,
or historically have evolved into being during the codependent evolution of musical instrument designs and the music itself.

6

Flutes like most wind instruments are not rigidly tuned. They do require being ´blown into tune´. A flute with a good, well thought out and well executed design can still be played ´out of tune´ through poor musicianship and operator error. Good wind music requires good musicianship.
If you really are uncertain of your ear, play against a good drone. This will force you to ´sweeten´ your intervals and encourage you to make good music.
If this is a flute new to you, and you are unsure, find a flute player you trust, who is more advanced than you, and whose music making skills you admire and have them evaluate the flute.

Bob

7

@ConicalBore.

The other reason is that most of my flute playing these days is along with my fiddler Significant Other at home, and she has very good intonation. Her open G, D, and E strings may be tuned in 5ths from her A string at 440 Hz, but her pitch on fingered notes is near-as-dammit 12TET because that’s how her ears were trained over the years.

So if she tunes her strings in 5ths: G, D, A, E, doesn’t that take those strings into just intonation?

I’m thinking of barbershop quartets who sing in “perfect harmony”, which would be different from 12TET. Does your SO fiddler play imperfect harmony? I believe you, but it seems to me that she would need to work really hard to avoid the clean fifths.

Beyond that, I’ve always wondered about just intonation, when we are not playing in A440. The “just-ness” must be related to the fundamental of the scale.

I’ve taken to working extensively with the iPhone app “Just Drones”, because I’m struggling to match my playing with correct intonation… especially when my embouchure gets tired.

8

Have you never played with fiddlers who tune their A strings to A=440 Hz and then tune their other three strings by ear, listening for “beats” (interference modes) to tune those strings along with an adjacent string as a double stop? My S.O. uses a shortcut with a digital tuner set to “fiddle mode perfect 5ths” but she knows how to tune by using perfect 5th beats as well.

Every good fiddler in my area playing Irish or Scottish trad tunes their fiddle in 5ths relative to the A string, not 12TET. It’s just what they do, and somehow it still works out when everyone is playing together. Maybe because they’re compensating to follow the crowd with subtle movements of the finger according to each tune in a different key or mode.

9

Keep in mind that a perfect fifth (ie one tuned by beats) is only 2 cents (OK, 1.955 cents) different from a Equal Temperament fifth. So whether tuned Just or ET, they are effectively identical.

10

As Terry said, the fifths are pretty good in ET, as are the fourths, but other intervals are not good at all. Some
are off by more than 15 cents, which is very noticeable.

FYI, here is the difference, in cents, between just intervals and those in ET. 0 means they are the same size.

  • means that the interval in ET is too wide i.e., the note is sharp by that number of cents.

Unison: 0
Minor third: -15.6
Major third: +13.7
Perfect fourth = +1.96
Perfect fifth = -1.96
Minor sixth = -13.7
Major sixth = +15.6
Major seventh = +11.7
Octave = 0

11

We also have to keep in mind that the instruments that tend to define our tonal landscape - the pianos, guitars, bouzoukis, accordions, concertinas, banjos, mandos etc - are stuck firmly in ET. And the fiddles’ open strings effectively ditto. We ain’t got much room to move!

I have, over the years, wondered about trying to devise a special “Irish music tuning” that would come up with a temperament that best fitted our traditional narrow range of keys and instruments. If successful, we could probably convince some other instruments to join us. (Accordions and concas could sound sweeter in such a temperament.) But young folk keep pressing the boundaries of what our range of keys include! I suspect my cause is lost…

Breandan Breathnach’s words (interview 1974) come back to haunt me. “…good Christian keys…”

12

Thanks, Terry, Paddler and Conical.

It then makes mathematical sense that the 4ths & 5ths are in tune, while playing a major scale the 3rd, 6th and 7th would be slightly sharp. If A440 is the base, then on the piano, the problematic sharpish notes would be C#, F# and G#.

I’ve interpreted Conical Bore to say two opposite things, that his SO has perfect pitch so she plays to the ET on A piano tuning, or else she plays to the JUST tuning, and that she wants him to blow his flute to match her.

As Terry points out, if we’re all matching the piano (ET in A), then in our preferred keys of choice the flaws would show up on different intervals from the base. I’ve taken to playing with drones so that my ears have a good reference base and fifth. I’m not sure what my ears are doing to fill in the 3rd, 6th & 7th, but I would suspect if I am any good at all (not a guaranteed thing), that I would TRY to play them “just so”.

I’m trying to figure out what D-major scale would be on my D-flute, but it’s easy to get lost…

D and A are still good. the 7th C# and maj-3rd F# would be sharpish. In D, then my JUST ears would be trying to play C# and F# flatter than the piano.

Hmm. On my flute C# is a bit flat, and on many 19th C flutes F# is flat.

13

Exactly. And that is a pattern you see on nearly all flutes used for ITM, old and new. At least nearly all the ones I have studied.

It is also worth bearing in mind that when we play in less common keys, such as F, say, people often play an F flute.
One of the advantages of small, relatively inexpensive instruments, such as flutes and whistles, is that you can have
several, tuned to different keys. In this way you can stay closer to just intonation without losing the ability to play in quite
a lot of different keys. I think these tuning/temperament issues are also one of the reasons why tunes played on flutes
in different keys sound different to the same tune played in the same key on a keyed D flute.

14

There might be ways to get away from ET while retaining the ability to switch key without it all sounding out of tune. Rapid robotic tuning adjustments could be built into all string instruments (including pianos). Variable aperture fingerholes could also be put into wind instruments, again enabling instant and precise adjustments to be made while playing. The technology for this will doubtless exist in the future.

15

Variable aperture fingerholes could also be put into wind instruments, again enabling instant and precise adjustments to be made while playing.

I think this already exists… It’s called embouchure!

16

To show what my flute is actually doing and not just yammering about it, here is a screen shot from the TTTuner app on my phone. It’s an analysis of a recording of me playing “The Tarbolton reel” twice through (AABB, AABB) on a Peter Noy flute. The first octave is the column on the left, second octave in the middle. Pitches read from low at the top to higher as you go down each column.

A few notes:

As a statistical analysis it’s showing the averaged pitch for each note played during the tune, not single notes. Around 240 notes in all (rough guess).

I edited out the intermediate note pitches that weren’t in the tune like C#, Eb, Bb etc. because this RTTA app will pick up harmonics outside the notes in the tune. It will also pick up ornaments as extraneous notes. I tried to play this without ornaments but a few probably slipped in there.

I’m not venting with the Eb key, these are all just the open tone holes.

The F# is characteristically flat, as with most flutes of this type. Usually a passing note in ITM so not a big deal.

The Cnat is is characteristically sharp which usually happens with a cross-fingered C. It’s a “Piper’s C” or “C Supernatural” and I like that. I’ve heard fiddlers hit the C a bit sharp too in Irish tunes.

I’m not a very good flute player, but at least this particular flute is easy to play without any special “lipping” to bring notes into tune. The low D in particular doesn’t require any major effort. It’s just right there and feels solid.

17

Heh heh, pretty stunning when I think of some of the flutes I’ve had to deal with over the ages. Some with foot notes so flat, I had to tune A = +30 to fit the low D in above -50 cent mark. Otherwise it registered as a C#! I finally ended up cooking up a specially biased variant of the RTTA Polygraph for flat-footed flutes. We’ve come a long way!

So, looking closely, we see the F# is the greatest deviation, at -18 and -23 for the bottom and second octaves. My inner meddler would have me wondering about a bit of undercutting hole 5 to sharpen these. That would also benefit the slightly flat G notes, currently -7 and -10. But you’d want to watch that second octave A, which is already trending a little sharp. Heh heh, pull out the stopper a little more to squish any uprisings at the top of the second octave, thus also strengthening the low octave a little more? I’m not normally one for emojis, but I’ll make an exception here… :devil:

You mentioned that F# is usually a passing note in ITM , but that really only applies to its position in G, doesn’t it? It’s the Third in D, so quite influential in that key?

For those not familiar with RTTA, there’s an introduction, some history and links to downloading at: Reel Time Tuning Analysis

And it’s an opportunity to thank again the four flute-playing programmers who gave us such useful software, Graeme Roxburgh, Scott Turner, Dan Gorden and Shane O’Dwyer.

18

I don’t.

When I got my flute I had trouble playing it in tune. Being new to flute I had trouble playing it at all. I practised over a drone and noticed how that magically (i.e. subconsciously) made me play more in tune. This being before RTTA I would close my eyes play a long tone then open my eyes and look at the tuner.

Now when I play with other people I seem tolerably in tune. I sometimes hear my C naturals being sharp but can adjust and think that’s because when playing alone my ears tolerate it being sharp. I suspect other people hear my F#s being flat of ET but I sing in an acapella choir and am used to them sounding like that.

So I don’t know if my flute is in tune. Playing jigs and reels through RTTA hints that it not and that I am tolerant if the notes go past too fast for my embouchure to adjust.

What do makers do about the uneven venting on a simple system flute in D? Initially I blew my As and Es sharp because they were weaker and I was trying to make as loud as the other notes. Aiming the jet down pulls the pitch down and improves their tone. So does having to do that mean those notes are sharp on my flute?

I recently got an F flute which, being smaller, seems to have the holes in better places. It requires much less work on the embouchure that the D flute to play a fairly even scale. Is it more in tune?

19

Conical bore, your flute tuning looks pretty good to me, and much better than I expected given what you said earlier about playing
strictly in ET. I suspect that you are happy with it, and that you play in tune with your SO on the fiddle, because you both have good
ears that lead you to play “in tune” rather than in ET. The data you show is quite consistent with data I have collected over the years.
“In tune” and “in ET” are two different concepts.

I definitely wouldn’t advise taking a file to your flute to make it play “in tune” with an electronic tuner set to ET. That would be
one way to wreck a good flute. I have a Boehm flute that has an F# tuned close to ET. I occasionally pick it up to play a tune, and its
tuning really throws me off. It is hard to play it “in tune”, and it just doesn’t sound right, to me, for ITM.

I also think it is worth noting that RTTA is not a definitive test of a flute’s tuning. It is still measuring the pitches YOU play on your
flute. It would be quite expected to see the same player, playing the same flute, generating slightly different pitches for the same
notes when playing tunes in different keys, especially if they are a good player with a refined ear. As Bob said earlier, a flute is not rigidly
tuned. Good flute players play their flutes in tune, and what the ear tells you about being in tune differs depending on the key/mode of the
tune you are playing. This is really similar to what happens when you play notes while watching a tuner. It is very easy to let your observations of
the needle lead your embouchure. When playing music, you ear leads your embouchure to some extent, and the better player your are
the more this happens. The goal of playing along with a drone is to train this process. So, RTTA is providing an approximate
quantification of the end result of that whole feedback loop, not some objective measure of the flute in isolation.

20

To further the discussion Paddler has made regarding the difference between ´playing in tune´ and ´playing to a tuner, a short digression: I began my musical journey by taking up the Boehm flute at about age ten. The first few years I was in school instructional programs in the US. This meant playing in bands, surrounded by other flute players, in what amounted to ´flute choirs´. At that time entry level flutes were wildly variant in their success at achieving a successful realization of the A=440 Hz. standard. Many were more suited to A=435 Hz, and I suppose some might have been closer to A=432 Hz. To get a more harmonious sound. we had to come to more or less ad hoc consensus tuning, especially for the more exposed passages. This really brings weight to the phrase ´playing in consort´. I also had the ´pleasure´ of playing with a few individuals who ´just didn´t get it´.

Bob