How do you know a flute is in tune ?

Irish Flute
21

Thanks Paddler and I agree on all you are saying there. Those books are tempting… I try to keep everything as simple as possible and just go by intuition and anything practical learned along the way.

I had read up a little here and there about temperament, and it really makes you question what is being done by forcing a scale into a standard format. On the other hand it is just practical in many ways, but I think eventually most musicians notice it is not quite right in certain ways, and I think that it affects the music we are presented, and ultimately that must include people also. I don’t know how far modern bands or studios go to correct for this. Especially it is noticeable with the trend of heavily formatted modern music, because the emphasis seems to be to produce “technically perfect” presentation, and that I think ends up overriding much of the nuance any musician might naturally be inclined to provide.

I think that is good advice Seanduine. I take a proxy to “rigidly tuned” as of a flute being played open with learner embouchure and just blowing harder to reach 2nd octave. They tend to be pretty reliable in values that way… but that doesn’t mean a different placement with refined style of embouchure will be the same, whether better or not, in terms of tuning.

“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!” that is definitely true from my own experience Terry. What is more, actually moving out of established scale is somehow [taken as] like putting others at fault.

david_h "Now when I play with other people I seem tolerably in tune " but are they in tune ? This is really what I meant when I said “by playing it”, if it sounds good to you then that is good, if you are able to play it to a specific scale, so much the better, if when played with others they don’t complain even more so. The same goes for when trying to compare if one flute is more in tune than another, i.e it might depend on what temperament you are using, or just the tune itself, otherwise we are just saying that they don’t have the same tuning.

In other words playing the flute will tell you if it is in or out of tune to whatever you choose as reference , but it will not tell you if that is because of embouchure, or anything else .

It is good to know others are aware of questions about tuning, as a relative outsider to it all sometimes you think everyone else just has it pat and that you are supposed to know all about intervals, modes, temperaments and so on.

22

For me “how do you know a flute is in tune” is the wrong question. The question for me is “How easy is a flute to play in tune with others, with a good range of volume and tone, in the situations in which I might play it”.

The situations in which I might play it include with fixed pitch ET tuned instruments (fretted strings and free-reeds) or with non-fixed pitch instruments (other woodwinds and non-fretted strings). The most frequent times I notice some notes are near their (or my) limits of flexibility is during the first 20 seconds or so after I have taken a ten-minute break in a coolish room.

23

That is a fair question also david_h , and possibly the original question answered as when it is “easy to play in tune with others, with a good range of volume and tone, in the situations in which I might play it” :wink:

24

I think so also, except there is a difference where a note rests naturally. This is one thing that amazed me a little, how it is possible to adapt to a different flute. For example I make a flute that is out if tune and leave it out of tune (the example in mind is a cylindrical flute with bass notes about 40 cents or more sharp). I play it all the same for the space of a week, because I am figuring out other things about it, and by the end of the week I am playing it just about in tune. If I put it aside for a week and then play it, I am playing out of tune again for ten minutes, until I remember or find again how I was playing it before. So in that case it would agree with what you are saying, except to play it in tune I have to have it rolled in a fair bit to be able to sound lower notes in tune. This means not playing the flute any other way, and I definitely could not lower those notes more from very slightly sharp. So I add a piece of cane to the end, and I am then playing in a different manner to previously. Now, I like that each flute has its own character, and so the idea of adjustable toneholes might detract from that, might even confuse the player somehow.

On the other hand, they would allow a player to experiment a bit with slightly different tuning setups, to find which suits best for example ? I don’t know, but anyway the idea I had in mind was to make something like this …

where pink is finger pad, and in the tonehole is set a rotatable disc, sprung in like a circlip. It won’t give as perfect venting profile as nicely rounded, but should be more than acceptable.

And if no one thought of this before (would surprise me but who knows), well then it’s another free idea courtesy of Greenwood…