Does a weak embouchure lead to a flat first octave?

[paddler]

Given enough time you guys will probably come up with a single tone "perfect temperament" pitched at A = B = C = D = E = F = G = whatever Hz you like.
All notes, including their sharps and flats will be declared enharmonic, and all intervals will be perfect. In fact, all frequencies will be declared enharmonic.
This would solve all your problems! Maybe Greenwood could even try to patent it!

Just think how perfect it would be. Everyone would be blissfully in tune, whether playing solo or together. Even your electronic tuner wouldn't need a battery.
It could just have a picture of a needle pointing to the perfect spot on the dial. People on fretted instruments and keyboards could play whatever notes they like
and they would all be in tune, by definition.

Terry could come up with the n'th generation tuning slide that had no moving parts and did nothing at all, because it wouldn't be necessary. Flutes could be
any size you like, and wouldn't even need tone holes, which would save your fingers for typing nonsense.

Eventually, some people's ears would become accustomed to the beats of arbitrary frequencies played simultaneously, and would grow to consider them a desirable
feature of the music, kind of like a Scottish accordion with arbitrarily wide wet tuning.

[Terry McGee]

I had been wondering about a mechanised tuning slide combined with a microphone and an AI, which would work constantly to keep your flute in perfect tune. We'd need to tell the AI about the Greek Modes, or you'd never be able to play in mixolydian again.

But then I fantasized about a new material, let's call it Terranium(TM) for the moment, which would have a co-efficient of expansion just right so that as the flute warms up and sharpens, it gets a little bit longer, just enough to flatten it back to normal pitch...

[Conical bore]

I had been wondering about a mechanised tuning slide combined with a microphone and an AI, which would work constantly to keep your flute in perfect tune. We'd need to tell the AI about the Greek Modes, or you'd never be able to play in mixolydian again.

You know, all these shortcuts have already been invented with things like the WARBL Midi controller. I have one just for fun, and for pretending I can play Uilleann pipes with whistle breath and fingering. Perfect pitch, and I'd have to even mess with the custom parameters to get something like a "Piper's C."

Needs external amplification though, the bane of electronic instruments.

[Terry McGee]

Hmmm, the session pub of the future? 16 channels of bluetooth feeding the house sound system. [Peep, clunk, squawk] "Ah, that you connected, Conical?"

Plus Internet Streaming and Home Delivery of foaming pints of Guinness for those older patrons finding getting out at night a bit challenging?

[GreenWood]

I remember one site (no link and cannot find) that had devised a scale where all notes were harmonic, without interference . If I remember, octaves could not be a multiple of first for that to work. The music they played sounded "unusual".

What I think is that if you just stick to one note then all these kind of arguments can be avoided, it is really that simple. Think of the benefits of only one string on a guitar and no fretboard, for example.

The trouble is wind instruments, they have flexible tuning and rarely keep perfect time. So we come from the opposite end of the universe, as flute players, I think. If I remember it was Matt Molloy who described flutes as solo instruments, and I think that would be right. As backing or ensemble they are there, sort of and in a nice way, but you cannot really pinpoint them unless they are enough in the foreground to be solo.

So, well we don't really have a scale, we have the basis of a scale and then what we actually play. Classical flautists keep closest to convention, but that is their problem, and I just don't picture this

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=64vuv2a7PRA

down at the pub either, much as I appreciate the music.

"Maybe Greenwood could even try to patent it!" That is a kind offer Paddler, but you thought it up and so it is a duty of your own, and one to be proud of. I'll chip in a few cents towards it all if you like, just a couple.