Giorgi flute

[Tunborough]

If you look carefully, I think you'll find the end is about 3" off the floor, in line with his toecaps.

some information on the "Albisiphon Baritono" here; apparently it had a neck strap which allowed it to be held off the floor. i don't see any obvious strap in the picture, though.

I see the thin black line of a neck strap extending down from his collar across his right lapel (viewer's left).

[Tunborough]

I wonder if it is just the bore size that is making the instrument hard to blow, or if it's another symptom of the difficulty of blowing a Giorgi-type flute?

In this case, my first suspect would be the difficulty of channeling the air. For a bass flute, the air needs to travel across a proportionally longer "window" over the embouchure hole; I'd suspect that it would be hard for human lips to focus the air enough that it didn't disperse across that distance.

Maybe if we added a windway to channel the air ... https://youtube.com/watch?v=9eeGLGXxwGs

[oleorezinator]

Woah, oleorezinator, that's a big flute, or yer man is a leprechaun. And certainly looks like the Giorgi in principle. I wonder how it blows.

He appears to be resting the end of the instrument on the floor. He'd need to lift it for the bottom note...

I'll see you and raise you....

It’s Dayton Miller playing an Albisiphone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelardo_Albisi

[tracer33]

[Thread revival. - Mod]

Hi Terry,

Sorry, I had lost this link for a while.

What I'm saying is that the end blown style does not work with this fingering system--regardless of acoustic issues. You cannot support the instrument for the higher notes. The transverse side pressure is perfect for this. I am playing this flute very well and intend to start manufacturing cheap ones with PVC or CPVC and later some real hardwood models.

I am seriously enraptured by this fingering system.

I plan to try (by bending the tube for correct angle) fipple, quena style, and a soprano sax mouthpiece.

If I can get some help, I want to see this system incorporated into the electronic wind controllers. Don't know where to start with this.

I would like to verify that Giorgi really discovered this 11-holed system (the 'Leven). I guess if no older examples appear, he gets the credit. But I still say it seems too natural and obvious to warrant patent (that's what they would tell me if I had tried). Maybe it was the inclusion of the unique mouthpiece that warranted the issuance of these patents.

Tres Longwell
Orlando Fla

Very interesting, tracer33.

I've played the Giorgi in the Bate Collection at Oxford, back in the days when Anthony Baines was curator. I found it very difficult too, not just because of the fingering, but because of the end-blown nature of it. Our transverse flutes work well because the returning wave front can "grab" the jet from the side and waft it in and out of the embouchure hole very efficiently. I suspect that when the returning wave front runs into the end of the jet and not the side of the jet, problems happen. I've tried to emulate the Giorgi embouchure using poly pipe, and came to the same conclusion.

Giorgi's patent is available here: http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Giorgi-flute-patent.htm

And images here: http://www.oldflutes.com/articles/giorgi.htm

[tracer33]

That's my whole point. The Giorgi flute is impossible to play higher notes because of the sideways pressure needed in the hands.

I am promoting the 11-holed finger system as being brilliant and perfect, with the added sideways pressure from the transverse position.

I am using PVC for my experiments (sound great) so it will be easy to bend the tube to get the correct pressure angle with different mouthpieces (fipple quena, sax mp)

Tres Longwell
Orlando, Fla

It could just be that there is a special trick to blowing the Giorgi that my short experience with it wasn't enough to uncover. But against that, I have tried to make a poly version of it and found that very unsatisfactory too. Yet I have no trouble making poly transverse flutes using the same materials.

Contrary to the diagram in the patent, the Willis Giorgi flute on oldflutes.com has the "splitting edge" of its embouchure hole at the level of the top of the bore, not curved down lower. That might help. For starters, though, I'd want a much straighter edge there, a more rectangular embouchure hole, maybe even like the rim-blown hole in the Wesley patent.

With the "natural" fingering, it looks utterly impossible to hold when playing C or C#. It would be easier to hold if the upper LH notes were fingered with some of the RH fingers down.

[jemtheflute]

There are 10 or 11 hole chromatic keyless fifes, have been for a good while. I don't know how far back they go, though. Probably not as far as Georgi. But didn't Tromlitz try to do something similar well before Georgi? It's too obvious an idea not to have been tried. But that sort of fingering system has never seriously caught on because, unless perhaps you learn it as your very first venture on a wind instrument, it is both too utterly mind-boggling to those accustomed to a diatonic core and far too awkward to play compared to advanced fully keyed systems.

[jemtheflute]

I long ago did some experiments with Giorgi style embouchures on the ends of PVC conduit tube instruments with normal 6-hole diatonic fingering. They've been discussed and illustrated here of old, I seem to recall, although I'm not easily finding any old threads/posts to link here....

[jemtheflute]

OK, found 'em....
These old threads are relevant and useful:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=103571
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=61131 - alas lacking useful images due to the old image hosting debacle.
This post has links to videos I made of my old experiments for the discussion in the second thread above: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=61131&p=801712&hili ... ed#p801712

Worth reading those two threads in full, I think.

[tracer33]

Yes, there is a chart somewhere but I can't find it now. I think I googled "giorgi flute" and found it , I thought it was on the Library of Congress site, but now I don't see it. I even emailed it to a friend and none of us can find it. I'm playing mine up to the third "E". The chart goes to F.

Let me know if you find it.

I have been told here before that the tone is awful in this style of flute. Since then I have learned about end blown flutes from other traditions and I wonder. Maybe the concept of the Giorgi is good but it needs tweaking?

Can somebody expand on the fingering system? Is there a chart somewhere, perhaps?