which temperament?

[Mike Meyerstein]

I just downloaded a tuning app for my Android phone. It allows me to select various temperaments. Does anyone know which temperament is most suitable for an 8-key wooden flute? I have an old flute by Purday and modern ones by Sam Murray and Stephane Morvan

[JackCampin]

It depends on who you're playing with. You need to confer with them about what might be most appropriate for the music you're playing and also technically achievable.

It will take a LOT of rehearsals for a heterogeneous group to get even one tuning system right.

[Feadoggie]

Maybe it's just me and my old age but I always wonder why one would need a tuner for a flute anyway. And I don't mean to be argumentative. I am really curious as to what the tuning app is providing you. The flute(s) is(are) already made and tuned by their makers in what ever temperament scheme they used. As for playing, just tune your first octave A or G to pitch with the players around you and away you go. You can't exactly change the temperament the flute was made to play with.

Apologies for sounding like a curmudgeon.

Feadoggie

[tsackett]

It's very hard to learn to play in tune if you don't know the tuning tendencies of your instrument, particularly if you're playing with other inexperienced players. I've struggled for years with intonation on tenor sax while playing in ensembles. The worst situations happen when I'm trying to adjust my intonation to match another player who is also trying to adjust to match me. We chase each other's intonation, and the result is chaos. I've learned to avoid this by learning which notes on my instrument need to be lipped up or down, and then trying to be consistent.

The best tool I've found for doing this is Flutini, the free computer application that listens to your playing in real time and notes the average tuning of each note you play. For flute, I usually set the temperament to "Just D". If I understand temperaments and flute design, this is the most appropriate temperament.

-Tom

[Akiba]

I think you kinda' have to do both Just and Equal temperaments. Most fiddlers play a combination of the two (tuning their open strings to Just intonation and their finger stops to more of equal temperament). Boxes are equal temperament. Pipes are more Just, but very skilled pipers with good reeds play near Equal in their chanter playing.

I think tuners for conical simple system flutes are dubious because most notes are acoustical/physical compromises that contain many overtones, i.e. not a pure tone which is more of what one gets from a Boehm flute. Thus, readings from tuners may not give the best feedback. I tend to tune more to Just intonation by playing with a drone note and listening to lock in the intervals.

In the end, when playing with others, I have to really listen to them and try to adjust accordingly. I find most folks in ITM don't really play in tune, either Just or Equal no matter what some snobby fiddlers might have you believe.

[jemtheflute]

As some of the other responses have hinted but not really said explicitly, this is a non-question. It doesn't matter a damn what temperament the tuner is set to. Assuming you are simply tuning up to be in tune with others, temperament is utterly irrelevant. All that matters is the pitch standard - A=440Hz or whatever. Yes, different temperaments will produce (very) slightly different pitch values (from each other) for the other notes of the scale, but as long as you tune to a 440Hz A, that's all that matters. Unless you're taking a needle file to the tone-holes of your flutes, you have no fixed-state control over the pitch of them beyond using the tuning slide to tune a reference note - usually/conventionally A. OK, if like I do you tend to tune to a G, use the 12TET setting on the tuner and tune to the G. It won't be quite the same G as in temperament x or y, but really, don't fuss about it. Any squeeze boxes etc. you are playing with will be 12TET anyway (and if they're "wet" tuned, you won't be able to tell! )

The temperament options in your software are of no significant relevance to you as a flute player unless you are actually building a flute and tuning all the tone-holes. Even then, it's not that much help, I suspect. If you have to tune a harp or a hammer dulcimer or a keyboard instrument, or maybe set the frets on a viol, the app may have some performance-preparation use. At a pinch, even a fixed fret instrument might get some benefit from it (doubtful) in specific circumstances (unlikely in folk music).

Otherwise, just forget about it. Even if you try to play JI rather than 12TET, (or historically informed period music with a keyboard set in a particular unequal temperament) the tuner can't help you as you play or even as you prepare - your flute's internal scaling/tuning is set and once you warm and tune up in the normal fashion you can only adjust it with your embouchure control and alternative fingerings.

This is a classic instance of technology making something simple look difficult by bringing a complicated issue with limited application into general awareness without proper explanation of what it is for or when and how to use it. It's fine if you happen to know (still no use for flutes!), but if you don't know you may think it is giving you choices where in fact you have none.

About the only practical use I can think one might find for it as a fluter is in assessing the scale tuning of a particular flute - normally one would check against 12TET through the scale, but maybe JI or another temperament (or at least matching what the flute actually does to one of them) might prove closer and at least you could easily establish that. It still wouldn't directly help you play in tune in an ensemble, though.

[benhall.1]

I love that phrase "historically informed". It's so much truer than the older "historically accurate".

[Peter Duggan]

And so much cooler to be HIP than HAP!

[benhall.1]

See me, I'm a historically orthopaedic performer ...

[jemtheflute]

See me, I'm a historically orthopaedic performer ...

Is that authentic? It'd account for your temperament! (Hops are bitter )

[Denny]

I was gonna vote for more of an uneven temperament, meself

[Doug_Tipple]

Equal temperment is the current accepted standard. However, Just intonation is what a musically sensitive person hears because the intervals are based on rational numbers, which humans are innately tuned to hear and play. Flute embouchure is much like the fretless violin. Both require the player to hear the pitch that is appropriate for the musical setting. You don't just toot and hope for the best. You listen and with enough experience and practice play an acceptable note.

[Mike Meyerstein]

wow, what a flurry of replies!

I should have explained what I am trying to do here. Of the three flutes that I have and play regularly (a Pratten copy by Stephane Morvan, an old flute of the "R&R" style by Z.T. Purday and an Eb R&R-style by Sam Murray) the intonation is very different. To my ear/mind/mouth the A and B on an R&R style flute are sharp, when using simple whistle fingering. Of course, one learns to compensate for the intonation of any particular flute, but I have particular trouble swapping between the SM and the Purday. I decided to use a tuner to get an objective measurement of the actual difference in intonation of the 3 flutes. When one is laid up due to recent surgery, one's mind turns to such things!

But the tuner (Cleartune) offers a wide choice of just temperaments (Pythagorean etc). I suppose if I select the same temperament for all 3, then it will be ok. I am too ignorant to know what 12TET is.

But of course I never use a tuner when playing in a session. One has to use listen to the other instruments to get the tuning slide set at the right setting and then one's muscle memory adjusts the embouchure to compensate for the idiosyncracies in intonation. As was pointed out, one can never get into tune with some instruments, notably those annoying wet-tuned tremeloe accordians.

I will probably end up selling the Purday, due to the problems in swapping between that and the Stephane Morvan. BTW, the good things people say about his flutes are all true. The Eb Murray is indispensible, as I play it in a Pogues-tribute band called Waxies (Waxy's?) Dargle. Also, we often have a couple of sets in Eb at my local session, much to the annoyance of some musicians. Live and let live, I say.

[hans]

Equal temperament is the current accepted standard.

Standard for what? Musical instruments are made in all kinds of tunings. ET may be the standard for orchestral Böhm flutes, but it is not for conical bore wooden flutes, and never was. As you say, just intoned intervals were always the aim for these woodwinds. Long may it be!

@Mike: 12TET stands for twelve tone equal tempered, in other words what we call ET or equal tempered (in twelve semi-tones per octave).

[jemtheflute]

Equal temperment is the current accepted standard. However, Just intonation is what a musically sensitive person hears because the intervals are based on rational numbers, which humans are innately tuned to hear and play. Flute embouchure is much like the fretless violin. Both require the player to hear the pitch that is appropriate for the musical setting. You don't just toot and hope for the best. You listen and with enough experience and practice play an acceptable note.

Aaaaagh. Doug, that is (kinda) true, but just as irrelevant (unhelpful, really, though well-meant) to the OP as the other similar posts above. As I tried to explain before, the player (by using the normal mechanisms of the tuning slide and stopper adjustment) CANNOT alter or 'tune' the flute's scaling or temperament. Those are built in. S/he can ONLY adjust octave width and set the overall pitch to a reference pitch. The last can be done by ear to a reference tone or by gadget by measuring an output tone from the instrument. But it doesn't matter a tuppenny cuss what tuning scheme or temperament the gadget is set to (so long as it is calibrated on A=440). You can set it to 12TET, JI, 6th comma meantone, Werckmeister III or Bitter & Twisted (too young to be an ex-) Hippy 52. Doesn't matter a damn. You can't tune your flute to the scale selected. Sure, you can try to play in such a tuning by lipping in according to what your ears tell you, but that's as far as it goes. We all do that (or should!) as we listen to ourselves and those around us.