How do you know a flute is in tune ?

[Conical bore]

To show what my flute is actually doing and not just yammering about it, here is a screen shot from the TTTuner app on my phone. It's an analysis of a recording of me playing "The Tarbolton reel" twice through (AABB, AABB) on a Peter Noy flute. The first octave is the column on the left, second octave in the middle. Pitches read from low at the top to higher as you go down each column.



A few notes:

As a statistical analysis it's showing the *averaged* pitch for each note played during the tune, not single notes. Around 240 notes in all (rough guess).

I edited out the intermediate note pitches that weren't in the tune like C#, Eb, Bb etc. because this RTTA app will pick up harmonics outside the notes in the tune. It will also pick up ornaments as extraneous notes. I tried to play this without ornaments but a few probably slipped in there.

I'm not venting with the Eb key, these are all just the open tone holes.

The F# is characteristically flat, as with most flutes of this type. Usually a passing note in ITM so not a big deal.

The Cnat is is characteristically sharp which usually happens with a cross-fingered C. It's a "Piper's C" or "C Supernatural" and I like that. I've heard fiddlers hit the C a bit sharp too in Irish tunes.

I'm not a very good flute player, but at least this particular flute is easy to play without any special "lipping" to bring notes into tune. The low D in particular doesn't require any major effort. It's just right there and feels solid.

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh, pretty stunning when I think of some of the flutes I've had to deal with over the ages. Some with foot notes so flat, I had to tune A = +30 to fit the low D in above -50 cent mark. Otherwise it registered as a C#! I finally ended up cooking up a specially biased variant of the RTTA Polygraph for flat-footed flutes. We've come a long way!

So, looking closely, we see the F# is the greatest deviation, at -18 and -23 for the bottom and second octaves. My inner meddler would have me wondering about a bit of undercutting hole 5 to sharpen these. That would also benefit the slightly flat G notes, currently -7 and -10. But you'd want to watch that second octave A, which is already trending a little sharp. Heh heh, pull out the stopper a little more to squish any uprisings at the top of the second octave, thus also strengthening the low octave a little more? I'm not normally one for emojis, but I'll make an exception here....

You mentioned that F# is usually a passing note in ITM , but that really only applies to its position in G, doesn't it? It's the Third in D, so quite influential in that key?

For those not familiar with RTTA, there's an introduction, some history and links to downloading at: http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/RTTA.htm

And it's an opportunity to thank again the four flute-playing programmers who gave us such useful software, Graeme Roxburgh, Scott Turner, Dan Gorden and Shane O'Dwyer.

[david_h]

By playing it.

I don't.

When I got my flute I had trouble playing it in tune. Being new to flute I had trouble playing it at all. I practised over a drone and noticed how that magically (i.e. subconsciously) made me play more in tune. This being before RTTA I would close my eyes play a long tone then open my eyes and look at the tuner.

Now when I play with other people I seem tolerably in tune. I sometimes hear my C naturals being sharp but can adjust and think that's because when playing alone my ears tolerate it being sharp. I suspect other people hear my F#s being flat of ET but I sing in an acapella choir and am used to them sounding like that.

So I don't know if my flute is in tune. Playing jigs and reels through RTTA hints that it not and that I am tolerant if the notes go past too fast for my embouchure to adjust.

What do makers do about the uneven venting on a simple system flute in D? Initially I blew my As and Es sharp because they were weaker and I was trying to make as loud as the other notes. Aiming the jet down pulls the pitch down and improves their tone. So does having to do that mean those notes are sharp on my flute?

I recently got an F flute which, being smaller, seems to have the holes in better places. It requires much less work on the embouchure that the D flute to play a fairly even scale. Is it more in tune?

[paddler]

Conical bore, your flute tuning looks pretty good to me, and much better than I expected given what you said earlier about playing
strictly in ET. I suspect that you are happy with it, and that you play in tune with your SO on the fiddle, because you both have good
ears that lead you to play "in tune" rather than in ET. The data you show is quite consistent with data I have collected over the years.
"In tune" and "in ET" are two different concepts.

I definitely wouldn't advise taking a file to your flute to make it play "in tune" with an electronic tuner set to ET. That would be
one way to wreck a good flute. I have a Boehm flute that has an F# tuned close to ET. I occasionally pick it up to play a tune, and its
tuning really throws me off. It is hard to play it "in tune", and it just doesn't sound right, to me, for ITM.

I also think it is worth noting that RTTA is not a definitive test of a flute's tuning. It is still measuring the pitches YOU play on your
flute. It would be quite expected to see the same player, playing the same flute, generating slightly different pitches for the same
notes when playing tunes in different keys, especially if they are a good player with a refined ear. As Bob said earlier, a flute is not rigidly
tuned. Good flute players play their flutes in tune, and what the ear tells you about being in tune differs depending on the key/mode of the
tune you are playing. This is really similar to what happens when you play notes while watching a tuner. It is very easy to let your observations of
the needle lead your embouchure. When playing music, you ear leads your embouchure to some extent, and the better player your are
the more this happens. The goal of playing along with a drone is to train this process. So, RTTA is providing an approximate
quantification of the end result of that whole feedback loop, not some objective measure of the flute in isolation.

[an seanduine]

To further the discussion Paddler has made regarding the difference between ´playing in tune´ and ´playing to a tuner, a short digression: I began my musical journey by taking up the Boehm flute at about age ten. The first few years I was in school instructional programs in the US. This meant playing in bands, surrounded by other flute players, in what amounted to ´flute choirs´. At that time entry level flutes were wildly variant in their success at achieving a successful realization of the A=440 Hz. standard. Many were more suited to A=435 Hz, and I suppose some might have been closer to A=432 Hz. To get a more harmonious sound. we had to come to more or less ad hoc consensus tuning, especially for the more exposed passages. This really brings weight to the phrase ´playing in consort´. I also had the ´pleasure´ of playing with a few individuals who ´just didn´t get it´.

Bob

[GreenWood]

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.

[david_h]

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.

[GreenWood]

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"

[GreenWood]

Variable aperture fingerholes could also be put into wind instruments, again enabling instant and precise adjustments to be made while playing.

I think this already exists... It's called embouchure!

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...