First Bb experience...

[ChrisA]

I think you're all very strange... while Bb is certainly a smooth, mellow sound, I've always had a strong preference for D, even before I ever got interested in ITM.

I think, every key has its own flavor... C is very bland (but you can build anything on it for that reason), D is very lively, G is very full and rich, Bb is very expressive. I expect it's all some sort of conditioning from being exposed to western music since childhood.

I seem to recall that historically the root note kept creeping up in pitch in search of a 'brighter' sound. I wonder if this isn't purely because a pitch above what you're used to sounds brighter, and below sounds deeper, and what you're most used to just sounds bland.

But nonetheless, I'm glad you enjoy it. Oh, and if you end up with a 'useless' D flute after 'upgrading' to Bb, just give it to me.

--Chris

[talasiga]

I think you're all very strange... while Bb is certainly a smooth, mellow sound, I've always had a strong preference for D, even before I ever got interested in ITM.

I think, every key has its own flavor... C is very bland (but you can build anything on it for that reason), D is very lively, G is very full and rich, Bb is very expressive. I expect it's all some sort of conditioning from being exposed to western music since childhood.

.....

What is strange is that a large proportion of music played on Irish flute is in G major and E minor. So I find your post a little strange.

I do not believe that keys have flavours ipso facto. It is interval relationships that obtain flavour to particular notes.

Let's just take the D note that you like. The D tonic in a D Ionian piece will have a different flavour to the same D tonic in a D Dorian piece using C flute. Play D Phrygian on a Bb flute and that same D tonic has a different flavour. You played D Ionian on the D flute just now. Now play D Mixolydian on the SAME flute. The D now has an unresolved wistful flavour. You see what I mean?

You can transpose all these and other effects to any key and you will get the same flavours according to the mode (particular relationship of intervals) rather than key specific absolutes.

There is nothing mystical about the Bb key. Its just that coincidentally you got a LOWER pitch with the Bb flute. The doggie in our psyche prefers the lower pitch!
That's why the A fife sounds better than the Bb fife.
see?

[talasiga]

.....
I do not believe that keys have flavours ipso facto. ..............

I think I said a lot of good things in my last post but I am haunted by my own challenging statement here. I am beginning to feel I am wrong. I cannot deny it. Its really strange. There IS something distinctly Venusian about D!

Well there you go ....... I give in.

[hans]

Thanks Terry for drawing attention to C=256Hz scientific tuning and the work of the Schiller Institute! This is amazing stuff! Maybe it is worth noting that the rise in orchestral pitch was resisted by singers, who found it uncomfortable to sing the classical repertoir in a raised pitch since it did not suit the natural vocal registers (see The Schiller Institute's Chart of Human Vocal Registers). It was the French government who passed a law in order to preserve a more natural pitch:

In the late 1850's, the French government, under the influence of a committee of composers led by bel canto proponent Giacomo Rossini, called for the first standardization of the pitch in modern times. France consequently passed a law in 1859 establishing A at 435, the lowest of the ranges of pitches (from A=434 to A=456) then in common use in France, and the highest possible pitch at which the soprano register shifts may be maintained close to their disposition at C=256. It was this French A to which Verdi later referred, in objecting to higher tunings then prevalent in Italy, under which circumstance ``we call A in Rome, what is B-flat in Paris.''

(I had to put in this quote because its a reference to Bb, so I am not totally of topic ) The quote was from the next link:

I found A Brief History of Tuning also extremely interesting to read, since it points out a political connection to create a standard pitch of A=440Hz, championed by Nazi Germany in alliance with Britain and excluding the French. Although I read that an international standard pitch was never agreed on despite several attempts, it appears that A=440Hz has become de facto standard, and perhaps (??) much helped by the spread of electronic instruments (keyboards) and musical aids.

Talasiga, I do agree that it is the sequence of intervals which create a musical mood and mode, and not the individual note or the tonic of the mode. But nervertheless I think that we as singers, players and listeners also resonate with individual notes and how they are pitched in absolute terms, and that we can feel this absolute pitch, even if we are not conscious of it. It has an effect, a physical resonance which goes beyond simple cultural conditioning.

A personal anecdote:
Apart from playing the flute I love playing mandola, which mostly I do on my own. I am again and again amazed that after having tuned to A=440Hz in order to play with friends my tuning of the instrument gradually settles down about half a semitone lower, and I am most comfortable with this tuning, which seems to be close to the scientific pitch of C=256Hz.

Has anyone similar experiences, perhaps even with the flute?

~Hans

[talasiga]

.......
A personal anecdote:
Apart from playing the flute I love playing mandola, which mostly I do on my own. I am again and again amazed that after having tuned to A=440Hz in order to play with friends my tuning of the instrument gradually settles down about half a semitone lower, and I am most comfortable with this tuning, which seems to be close to the scientific pitch of C=256Hz.

Has anyone similar experiences, perhaps even with the flute?

~Hans

I am starting to sing a lot with E and G tonics lately to the point of obsession.

I am also obsessed with the cross fingered C on the Irish flute as a tonic for C Yaman and C Bhoop/Pahadi. It allows unique dip down ornamentations that no-one else seems to be doing. And there is something particularly sweet about this X fingered 7th as a tonic on the Irish flute. More seductive than the same on bansuris. Is it the C or the Irish flute? Hmmm? Or a bit each way?

[hans]

I justed opened my mouth and sounded a long note. It was an E, pitched at A=430 according to a check with my Korg tuner (I am a tenor). I am going to detune my flute for experimentation: to extend the slide another half inch (13mm or so) should bring it to the lower tuning of A=430 or C=256. See how that feels. Might as well take advantage of that slide, and leave the comfort of "it is supposed to be tuned for A=440Hz".

~Hans

[talasiga]

I justed opened my mouth and sounded a long note. It was an E, pitched .......

So are you a Cancerian then? Or perhaps you have moon or venus in Cancer?

[ChrisA]

What is strange is that a large proportion of music played on Irish flute is in G major and E minor. So I find your post a little strange.

Yes, you're certainly right about modes and minors changing the character of keys entirely. Many people would probably say that it's the -only- thing that determines the character of a key. Nonetheless, D minor is my favorite minor key, and yes, I realize I would need a C flute to play it. I do like E minor as well, though I think it's more 'wistful' and less 'haunting' than D minor. A minor is better, but doesn't have a good range on the flute.

And while I don't care for C major, C minor is a -very- beautiful key, so, I probably would really like the Eminor tunes played on the Bb flute, since they'd come out in Cminor, so that would be a plus for the beasts. If my fingers would reach. I don't think I've ever tried a Bb flute.

And yes, I'm sure, it's all in my head, but then, so much of music is all in the head.

[Henke]

Nonetheless, D minor is my favorite minor key, and yes, I realize I would need a C flute to play it.

Nah, just a Fnat key on the D flute, and the foot keys of course if you need to go below the tonic.

[andrewK]

Don't forget, Hans, Scheibler's recommendation for A=440 as an international pitch standard had been adopted by a Congress of Physicists (Deutsche Naturforscherversammlung) in Stuttgart in 1834

More details for anybody interested in the history of pitch at

http://www.mozartpiano.com/pitch.html

[talasiga]

Nonetheless, D minor is my favorite minor key, and yes, I realize I would need a C flute to play it. I do like E minor as well, though I think it's more 'wistful' and less 'haunting' than D minor. A minor is better, but doesn't have a good range on the flute.
...............

Chris,
I play 2 D nat minors:-
one on my low C bamboo flute (X fingered for the diminished 6th)
and one on my F bansuri (one finger D tonic)

The first is more haunting because of the lower pitch and the timbre of the thicker bamboo.
The second is not as pleasing to me but I need to play this one at times if there is lot of dip down below the tonic.

However, Chris, I cannot say that the E minor with Irish flute is less haunting and wistful than D minor. The B minor on the Irish flute is equally haunting and wistful.

Aeolian is Aeolian is Aeolian is Aeolian is Aeolian is Aeolian.

[fyffer]

I think you're all very strange... while Bb is certainly a smooth, mellow sound, I've always had a strong preference for D, even before I ever got interested in ITM.

I think, every key has its own flavor... C is very bland (but you can build anything on it for that reason), D is very lively, G is very full and rich, Bb is very expressive. I expect it's all some sort of conditioning from being exposed to western music since childhood.

.....

What is strange is that a large proportion of music played on Irish flute is in G major and E minor. So I find your post a little strange.

I do not believe that keys have flavours ipso facto. It is interval relationships that obtain flavour to particular notes.

I'll have to agree with ChrisA, and disagree with talasiga on this point.

I wouldn't call them "flavours" however (and not just because of the extra "u" ), but rather "colors" (again no "u" ). This is especially true of songs, as opposed to tunes. I am a singer as well as fluter, and I've been singing for as long as I could talk. There is absolutely an indiscribable quality to certain keys that makes a significant difference to the performer as well as the listener. As a singer, I've always found it very difficult, if not impossible, to sing a song in the "wrong" key. To me, it just sounds like a different song altogether. If a song is in, say, D major, and that's how I remember it, trying to sing it in C, just to accomodate my vocal range better just plain doesn't work. I think my brain (anyone else's?) has not just interval memory associated with tunes and songs, but absolute pitch memory as well. My wife thinks I have "perfect pitch" for this reason, but I don't think so. I've met people with perfect pitch, and I'm not that way at all.
For instance, take a tune that almost everybody knows: Happy Birthday. I'd be willing to bet that most people sing it in the key of F, e.g. starting on a C. It's just the "right" key for that tune. I actually did an experiment recently to try to prove this, and I didn't get very far, but what I did was go up to random people with my tape recorder and ask them to sing "Happy Birthday", off the top of their heads. I think I got 3 people, and 2 of them were pretty close to the key of F (but 2 out of 3 is not a big enough sample set I'll admit).

Let's just take the D note that you like. The D tonic in a D Ionian piece will have a different flavour to the same D tonic in a D Dorian piece using C flute. Play D Phrygian on a Bb flute and that same D tonic has a different flavour. You played D Ionian on the D flute just now. Now play D Mixolydian on the SAME flute. The D now has an unresolved wistful flavour. You see what I mean?

Not really. I'm not sure where you're going here ...

The D tonic on a D flute is a "real" D - concert pitch.
The D tonic on a C flute is a concert C, so the D dorian scale on a C flute has F and C naturals, as played:
D flute, D ionian scale (concert pitches): D E F# G A B c# d
C flute D dorian scale (as played): D E F(nat) G A B c(nat) d

Or, if above you *are* referring to "concert pitch", the scales are still not the same:
D flute D ionian (concert pitches): D E F# G A B c# d
C flute D dorian (concert pitches): E F# G A B c# d e

The intervals between the pitches do turn out the same, i.e. the modes are relative to each other, but of course they have different "flavours" - they are completely different keys - and modes - altogether!

You can transpose all these and other effects to any key and you will get the same flavours according to the mode (particular relationship of intervals) rather than key specific absolutes.

There is nothing mystical about the Bb key. Its just that coincidentally you got a LOWER pitch with the Bb flute. The doggie in our psyche prefers the lower pitch!
That's why the A fife sounds better than the Bb fife.
see?

OK, that's just preposterous conclusion based on the above argument. Sorry, I don't want to start a flame war here (because, basically I just want to have polite intelligent conversation), but after all that "absolute pitch and key have really no bearing on anything" argument above, you go ahead and say that an A fife sounds "better" than a Bb fife? That's just plain silly.

[Wormdiet]

This whole question (Do keys have unique flavors based on absolute pitch?) strikes me as a d@mn hard thing to prove either way. How do you get a fair test, given that traditional instruments *will* have a different timbre when playing in different keys based on the instument's construction? I speculate that this is true of the human voice as well.

In other words, there's nothing special about the *pitch* of any particular key, but rather, the incidental changes in timbre (Attack, sustain, harmonic content, decay, volume, etc. etc. ) that almost always change *at the same time pitch changes*. Methinks one would need a darned good synthesizer and a trained accoustic technician running a double-blind experiment to know for sure.

But of course I;ve been wrong on occasion

[fyffer]

Hi Worm -- I don't think this discussion (at least my intent anyway) has anything to do with timbre. I actually do feel that certain keys have certain qualities about them, irrespective of the instrument making the music. For instance (and the following is *completely* subjective),

The major keys have a certain feeling about them, and I can usually tell roughly what key something is in - even the first time I hear it, based on how it makes me feel.

C - Think "common" -- not good, not bad, but straightforward, "Just the facts, ma'am", pretty happy-go-lucky, nothing special. The Beatles' "Let it Be" is in C major.

G - often called "The people's key". It's a key most average singers can sing in easily. Most folksy kind of songs are in G (at least the ones I know) -- perhaps because it's a friendly guitar key, and the first chords people learn are usually G, C and D. It's a "party" key. Almost every Jimmy Buffet tune is in G (or D)

F, Bb - As we move to the "flat" keys, even though still major, things begin to acquire a "melancholy" air to them. Not quite sad, but not just blindly happy. More thoughtful, deeper, richer.
Bb is to C as Godive dark chocolate is to a Hershey bar.

D - Still kind of a "people's key" (not necessarily Tommy), but more energetic, more lively -- a little "smarter" than G. G is a punter's key (think drunken singalong), where D is a player's key.

A - Moving to sharper keys, one acquires a bit more "energy", and hope. A is a very uplifting and joyous key. I like to think of it as an "Easter Sunday" key if you get into that sort of thing.

Obviously I've thought about this a bit, and your mileage may vary, but it works for me.
(Boy -- talk about your serious thread creep on this one ....)

[Henke]

I love singing in G minor. Like Nick Cave's "Where the wild roses grow" (recorded together with Kylie Minogue). It goes quite deep.