Those Danged Overtones

[OnTheMoor]

Hi again,
Just got my Grey Larsen book, and I have to admit that it is all pretty beyond me.
Nonetheless, I'm trying to work through it.
When he gets into changing octaves, Mr. Larsen writes about an exercise where you start on low D and go through all five higher overtones. Questions:
1)In this exercise, do you raise you're top finger when you switch to the higher octave as you usually do
2) Is there a difference between an octave and an overtone?
3) Where on earth can I find five of them? All I get above the second octave is one, really screechy third octave.

[Lambchop]

Excellent questions! I'm looking forward to the answers, as well!

[Dana]

You keep all your fingers down to blow overtones. The notes you can get from the low D fingering include D4 (the lowest note), D5, A5, D6, F#6 and A6. (Theoretically, you can actually go on from there, but what's the point? )

To get the higher overtones, you need to blow harder, with a smaller aperture, that aims more across the hole (rather than down). Avoid clenching the lips, because this often forces the airstream down, which makes the higher overtones nearly impossible to get.

Dana

[Doug_Tipple]

I can blow the five notes that dhigbee mentions, but I can't go any further. I think that I takes a pretty good flute to play those 5 overtones, however. I have a an attactive wooden flute that doesn't perform very well in the upper overtone notes. By the way, I think that it was clear from dhigbee's comments that the octave is an overtone as well as fifths and other intervals, to answer the question that was posed.

[G.Ycas]

About octaves/overtones-the first overtone in the case of a flute is an octave. This is partly because of physics and partly because of how an octave is heard. An octave is, in physical terms, a doubling of frequency: if we have A440, then the second octave A will be A880.

Now comes in the physics of the flute. The simplest model of a flute is a tube with both ends open (yeah, this is high school physics.) For the flute to produce a strong tone, a standing wave must be created inside of the flute's bore--in this model, inside of the tube. Take my word for it that the waves will be sinusoidal. Because the tube is open at both ends, there is a condition on the wavelengths of the waves--the first overtone (in this case the low D) has a wavelength of twice the tube's length, the second overtone has a wavelength equal to the length, the third has wavelength 2/3 the length, and so on. Formulatically, the nth overtone has a wavelength proportional to 2/n; when 2/n is an integer the interval with the first overtone is an octave, everything else is a different overtone.

So there you go, completely straight forward, right? This is why you don't want to vent after the second octave, and means that you're probably skipping over the overtones altogether. Of course, having not actually played the flute yet I'm hardly a definative resource, just a physicist .

[treeshark]

I've been doing this exercise for a few months now and can just get the 5th note. It's learning to slide up and down through them cleanly that's really tricky. It's great for strengthening your emboucher and making friends with bats. Another exercise that helps is playing tunes you know in the 2nd and 3rd octaves rather than the 1st and 2nd (Choose simple ones!)
After this playing it as normal will feel easy. These exercises are best done when everybody else is out of the house though...
I'm never sure how many overtones you should get on the other notes
I get (from the bottom) D...5 E....4(on a good day!) F...3 G...4 A....3 B...2

[OnTheMoor]

Thanks everyone,
So these overtones should be fairly easy to recognize?

[peeplj]

One benefit of doing this exercise is that you develop a strong, well-centered embouchure, which allows you to play with good volume and projection on only a modest amount of air.

Having a strong and centered embouchure is what lets Irish flutists throw in those strong pulsings without going out of tune. It's also what lets them give the "hard D" effect.

--James

[Doug_Tipple]

Thanks everyone,
So these overtones should be fairly easy to recognize?

Yes, they are easy to recognize. We are talking about individual notes that are overtones of the fundamental. Notes also have accompanying overtones that are hidden in the matrix of the note, and those are tricky to hear. I have Tibetan singing bowls that are made of bell metal. When you strike the surface of the bowl with a soft mallet, you can hear the fundamental and a number of the overtones all at the same time. In addition to the overtones that are present, you can detect a pulsing or beat frequency oscillation that result from sounding notes being very close to each other. Flute tones, on the other hand, are purer tones with less accompanying overtones.

[Nelson]

When you hear a note from a flute, or bagpipe, or sax, viola, or piano, or a harmonica, or any instrument, you can usually tell what instrument made the note, right. The difference between them is the amount of the overtones, e.g. a D at 440 Hz. has some 880, and some 1760 Hz, and some 2200 Hz, and some 2640, and some 3080Hz and on up higher, maybe. The differences in instruments also depends on how quickly the overtones get started. For example, bagpipes artifically do this by having drones with pipe-size-jumpes inside the drones. They also get a louded sound partly because they put a lot of energy into a lot of extra harmonics (an other word for overtones). The chanter on a bagpipe is designed to not have any overtones, therefore you can blow very hard and geto a loud sound without breaking into overtones, like a flute.

You can think of a flute as an open pipe with (springie) air squezing and stretching in and out, just as you think of a stretched string as vibrating back and forth.

Hopes this helps, too.

[Doug_Tipple]

Talking about standing waves inside the flute body is a little hard for most people to visualize. As mentioned before, with all fingers covered and the note D as the fundamental, five overtones or harmonics can be played. Even though I am able to play the five overtone notes, I am not really aware of how I do it, other than that I am changing my embouchure slightly for each note.

It is a lot easier to understand what is going on with a vibrating string, for example, on a guitar. Picking an open string causes the string to vibrate as one piece, sounding the fundamental note. However, if you just barely touch the string in the middle of the string length, a node will form at that point, and, when you pick the string, it will then begin to vibrate in two pieces, sounding the 1st harmonic or overtone. You can experiment by touching the string in various places and simultaneously picking the string. All kinds of harmonics or overtones are available on a vibrating string, some of them being strong notes and others more of a "thud" than an actual note. You soon learn the position of the usable harmonic notes because you have a visual linear reference in the fingerboard. A similar reference is not available when playing the flute. This means that flute harmonics are more challenging.

[Dragon]

When you strike the surface of the bowl with a soft mallet, you can hear the fundamental and a number of the overtones all at the same time. In addition to the overtones that are present, you can detect a pulsing or beat frequency oscillation that result from sounding notes being very close to each other. Flute tones, on the other hand, are purer tones with less accompanying overtones.

I wonder if a soft or "woody" sounding overtone is possible. It seems like the second octave and up the notes become loud and very clear. Would it be possible to produce second octave/overtone notes and above that are high pitched, yet soft or slurry.

This discussion produced an idea for a song where the first octave notes are played softly, slurred together then are raised into the second octave, the third octave etc...but keep the "liquid-blurred lines between the notes" quality of the sound. I think it would sound very neat and surreal (not very Irish-ish, but very diffrent and dream-like).

[John S]

Just to put it another way the harmonics generated by a flute (or any simple harmonic oscillating system) are hole number multiples of the fundamental frequency.
Frequency Hz Harmonic
440 x 2 = 880 2nd
440 x 3 = 1320 3rd
440 x 4 = 1760 4th
440 x 5 = 2200 5th

And so on.

In Ratios
1/1 fundamental
2/1 Octave
3/1 (3/2) Fifth 1 octave up
4/1 2 0ctaves up
5/1 (5/4) Major 3rd 2 Octaves up
6/1 (3/2) Fifth 2 Octaves up
7/1 (7/4) Harmonic 7th 2 octaves up.
...........

Hope this helps

John S