WIDesigner instrument design software now supports flutes

Irish Flute
1

I’m pleased to announce the release of WIDesigner v1.1.0, which now includes support for transverse flutes.

WIDesigner is a Java application to assist woodwind instrument designers; the current version supports whistles, Native American Flutes, and keyless transverse flutes. WIDesigner is an open-source program hosted on GitHub, available for free under the GNU Public License. As a stand-alone Java application, it should run under Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and more, with a suitable JRE installed.

Although WIDesigner brings more complexity to whistle and flute design than other tuning calculators, it offers a number of advantages:

  • It models notes over the full range of an instrument, including arbitrary cross-fingerings, and notes in higher registers.
  • It supports tapered bores, including multiple tapered sections.
  • It uses multivariate optimization, varying multiple instrument dimensions to get accurate tuning across the full range of notes.
  • It can predict the minimum and maximum frequencies that varying breath pressure will produce for each note, as well as a “nominal” playing frequency.

The tuning model for transverse flutes is still a prototype, derived from the whistle tuning model. We would appreciate any feedback from flute makers and players regarding the prototype implementation in this release.

For an introduction to WIDesigner and how to use it, read Using WIDesigner, or watch the video tutorial WIDesigner Introduction. You can download the WIDesigner zip file from https://github.com/edwardkort/WWIDesigner/releases/latest, and watch WIDesigner Installation for an explanation of how to install it.

If you try WIDesigner, please let me know how it works out.

2

I will try to have a look at this sometime soon - but I am usually too busy making flutes the old analog and iterative way using my brain as the computer! My guess is that most other flute makers are in the same boat.

I did once run through the zillions of calculations described in Nederveen’s book “Acoustics of Wind Instruments”. About all it could do was model the effects of tone hole positions and other parameters on the resulting pitches. It did nothing to suggest what makes a flute great and what doesn’t. These are characteristics that can be determined only by cutting wood and being willing to waste a fair bit of it, experimenting with subtle changes in bore profile, embouchure cuts, undercutting, etc. This is still the daily activity in my flute making and even after thousands of flutes, I still waste a fair bit of wood from experimenting.

I’ll try to get to it later this week or month…

Casey

3

Thanks, Casey. Anything you have to say will count for a lot.

True enough. At this point, we’re happy if we can say what makes a flute in-tune.

If there are any calculations or measurements that help you know how good a flute is, I’d be happy to try to add them to WIDesigner.