What's The Loudest D Flute?

[Doug_Tipple]

We are living in the 21 century, so there is no need to blow your brains out or spend big bucks for the loudest acoustic instrument if you want more volume for your street performance. To make music, all you need is some sort of signal generator (a flute, for example), a microphone or pickup, an amplifier, and an effects processor with speakers. All of this can be had in a small, battery-driven unit that doesn't cost much and is easy to carry. Suppose you are busking on the street. Wouldn't it be nice to have a knob that you could turn to regulate the volume of your music to the ambient conditions at any given time?

[Doc Jones]

Loren makes excellent points and I agree with what he's said.

I'm guessing Hammy Hamilton could play an old gym sock louder than I could ever play a Hammy flute.

That said, I play a lot of flutes. Granted I don't play them nearly as well as many on the board, but I play them.

For my playing nothing is ever louder than a Mcgee. I've never played an Olwell Pratten (only about six "Nicholsons" and 2 or 3 of his "Rudalls") but I've played 5 or six Hammys, three or four Healys, and many McGees and about everything else.

The first McGee I ever pulled out of a box and tooted (a Rudall Perfected as I recall) my wife's comment was "Wow, that's loud".

But this still begs the question of why.

Is there just something unique about the way my head interacts with a McGee? Or is there something inherently more powerful about them?

Olwells and McGees are, for me, the easiest flutes to play.

I just now played two McGee Prattens and a Healy and the McGees were markedly louder. But, maybe if I spent as much time with the Healy as I have with the McGees it would be a more fair contest. Skip plays his quite loudly.

So, though I've added nothing useful, at least I've been able to blather a bit. Hmmm, maybe I'll start selling gym socks.

Doc
Irishgymsockstore.com

[cocusflute]

Why is it that accomplished fluters never obsess about volume? At least not to the extent that punters do.
Isn't anybody reading what Loren wrote? He's right on the money, as usual.
Is it the American way, to buy some thing that we hope will compensate for our shortcomings? Instead of negotiating we send in the heavy equipment and lay waste the land.
A better way would be to commit the time and energy needed to play the way we want to and to live the way we want to. Not buying a thing that will make us feel better about ourselves. After we buy that thing there's the next thing and the thing after that. The good flute begins with the good fluter.
And before I go... busking is not practise. Don't kid yourself that it is. It makes you a worse player. You gloss over your mistakes and hear what you want to. You overblow to make yourself heard rather than working to refine and focus your embouchure. You skip over the hard parts. You care about the wrong thing: making lucre rather than music. Eamonn Cotter says, Playing jigs and reels is not itself going to make you a better player. You have to take ornaments and phrasing and tone and work on these separately.
A louder flute is not a shortcut. You'll just be a mediocre loud player.

[jim stone]

We are living in the 21 century, so there is no need to blow your brains out or spend big bucks for the loudest acoustic instrument if you want more volume for your street performance. To make music, all you need is some sort of signal generator (a flute, for example), a microphone or pickup, an amplifier, and an effects processor with speakers. All of this can be had in a small, battery-driven unit that doesn't cost much and is easy to carry. Suppose you are busking on the street. Wouldn't it be nice to have a knob that you could turn to regulate the volume of your music to the ambient conditions at any given time?

Thanks. I've checked these out. I prefer to stay entirely
acoustic. I'm probably just clumsy, but, as things now stand,
I'm dropping stuff, spilling stuff, chasing dollar bills
that people don't quite get into the jar, etc.

Probably the solution is to go back to my
G flute or consider a Bb flute again. It's a whole lot
easier to play a higher pitched flute for several
hours straight. Easier to finger, less air, more
audible.

Also I get a good deal
of volume out of my D flutes, and I think I'm
probably more audible on the street than I realize. Ma femme,
who comes along with me sometimes when I busk (she
refuses to dance the hula, despite my pleading, just
goes shopping), assures
me that I can be heard. I'm just hungry for power, ya know.

Thanks for the responses. My impression is the Olwell Pratten is
the beast from Hell, volume wise. One day I'll get
to play a Hammy and see how it does.

[tin tin]

Also worth pointing out is that real embouchure development (and control) is not achieved in months or a few years. Learning to play the flute really well (so that one can get great tone and dynamic range) takes a long time, longer than some, perhaps, would like. The only shortcut is learning good technique (a teacher can be very valuable in this regard) and practicing lots. Some of my best flute playing was one summer a few years ago when I was gigging regularly and put in around four hours a day practicing (note: not playing, practicing--there's a huge difference!)

[AaronMalcomb]

... busking is not practise.

True, but it can be a practise in performing which is another facet of playing music.

It makes you a worse player.

As long as you are doing your practice at home, busking can be valuable playing time (not just for the coin). But if busking is the only playing you are doing, it will certainly foster many bad habits.

[johnkerr]

Jim, you're talking about busking, right? This says to me that you are playing either outdoors or in some cavernous indoor space, most likely with a lot of ambient noise from crowds of people, cars, trains, etc. In that case, you as the flute player are in the absolute worst place for being able to make any judgment on the sound you are producing. A flute sends sound outward from the point of its generation (the embouchure hole), and when you are playing that means the sound is being generated only a few inches from the ears you are trying to hear it with. If there is no reflective surface close enough to bounce the soundwaves back to you, you're not going to hear any of them other than the ones that go directly from your mouth to your ears. And unless your anatomy is way different than most people's, sound waves would need to go around a bend to make it directly from your mouth to your ears. So anytime you're playing the flute nearly all of the sound you will hear is being reflected back to you from some other surface. This is why it sounds so great to play in the bathroom (lots of nearby highly reflective surfaces) or in a well-designed large indoor space - when it's empty, of course. If there are people in there, most of the reflectivity is lost.

Trust me, your wife is speaking the truth when she says she can hear you fine when you busk. She probably also says she can't tell any difference in your sound no matter which flute you're playing, and she would be right there too. Why? Because there's no such thing as a D flute that's inherently louder than another D flute when played by the same person. If you detect differences in "loudness" when you compare two D flutes, that's because you're producing a different tone on one or the other, and the tonal differences are such that one of them cuts through the ambient noise and makes it back to your ears better than the other one. The focused, pure tone of a Rudall may not cut through the noise as well as the broader, more dirty tone of a Pratten, but it's every bit as loud from the standpoint of decibel measurement. If you don't believe me, instrument yourself sometime and put it to the test. You might be surprised at what you find.

If you really want to be able to cut through the crowd noise and hear yourself too, the only way to do that is to go with a higher pitched flute (Eb, F, G, A, whatever your ears can stand). Why do you think marching band flutes and fifes, which are designed to be played outdoors, are pitched higher than orchestral flutes anyway?

One of the traits of a good flute player is the ability to tell what kind of sound you're producing even when you're in situations where you're not able to hear yourself. There are all kinds of physical cues that will let you know. Work on them rather than wasting your energy (and money) trying to find the "loudest" flute. Really, words like "loud", "session cannon" and such ought to be banished from any discussion about flutes. For comparison purposes, they are meaningless.

[tin tin]

Yes--loudness and projection are two very different things. Sometimes, flutes that seem very loud to the player don't project as well as flutes that seem less powerful. And learning to project is another skill that takes time and practice.

[Cathy Wilde]

Ah, the sweet voices of reason. Thank you all.

[Father Emmet]

I've seen others here recommend the 'hat trick' in the past. Wearing a hat with a brim to give yourself a built in reflective surface.

[Denny]

Ah, the sweet voices of reason. Thank you all.

Off topic!

Where's the moderators?

[Nanohedron]

We are living in the 21 century, so there is no need to blow your brains out or spend big bucks for the loudest acoustic instrument if you want more volume for your street performance. To make music, all you need is some sort of signal generator (a flute, for example), a microphone or pickup, an amplifier, and an effects processor with speakers. All of this can be had in a small, battery-driven unit that doesn't cost much and is easy to carry. Suppose you are busking on the street. Wouldn't it be nice to have a knob that you could turn to regulate the volume of your music to the ambient conditions at any given time?

A vote here for the Luddite camp. I say look to the acoustics of the beast unplugged and one's technique. Just in case, like. You never know these days if we'll again be reduced to wearing wolf skins and chucking stone points.

[jim stone]

Awwwhooooooooooo!

[GaryKelly]

Eb? Bb? No no no. Take the Olwell when you busk! Muggers need quality instruments too y'know! Otherwise they're stuck with the TrafficMaster 2000, AskColin, he'll tell you.

[Cathy Wilde]

WHERE'S THE LOO IN THIS PLACE????????????????????