Flute or Player: You Decide...
- GaryKelly
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Some additional information, which perhaps I should have mentioned... sorry!
The player recently had the opportunity to try a number of flutes (always wise before considering a purchase). Knowing that a flute may sound different under the ear of the player than to listeners, the player recorded the separate tracks, the better to make an informed decision as to each flute. It was an honest appraisal, with no knowledge that later on 'someone' would do a cut-and-paste to make this test track.
No special effects or any other manipulation have been applied to the track(s), other than the 'assemble editing'... ie cut-and-paste.
Oh and 5 minutes is 'less than 10 years', so is 1 year, etc etc. And I'm not going to name the player privately in email or PM... sorry Colin#1!
The player recently had the opportunity to try a number of flutes (always wise before considering a purchase). Knowing that a flute may sound different under the ear of the player than to listeners, the player recorded the separate tracks, the better to make an informed decision as to each flute. It was an honest appraisal, with no knowledge that later on 'someone' would do a cut-and-paste to make this test track.
No special effects or any other manipulation have been applied to the track(s), other than the 'assemble editing'... ie cut-and-paste.
Oh and 5 minutes is 'less than 10 years', so is 1 year, etc etc. And I'm not going to name the player privately in email or PM... sorry Colin#1!
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner
- treeshark
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Well it starts sort of soft and delicious like a buttery croissant, then I detect a distinct lemony cheescake flavour and mmm, let me see, I get notes of butterscotch and bacon rind, it all finishes with a flurry of fruity flavours I get lime and apple sauce, raspberry sorbet, and elderflower....YUM!
- vanessa
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What a fascinating experiment ! I'm only a beginner with no musical background and my musical hearing skills are pretty poor so when I listened I only heard 6 different flutes but I'm sure I'm way off here and I lack the confidence to comment because I'm not good with jargon re tone and timbre and what have you, which means I leave that up to the experts but I do have a personal preference when listening, so I can hardly wait for the results but I would have to laugh if it's one and the same flute when I'm hearing six - not sure what that would say about my mental state
- AaronMalcomb
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It's the player and lovely playing indeed. I hear nothing that makes it obvious that there is more than one flute.
Edit to add that I thought that the tone did sound rather like a chocolate bar, about 70% cocoa, with chunks of European walnuts and taken moderately with sips of frothy, French Roast coffee.
Edit to add that I thought that the tone did sound rather like a chocolate bar, about 70% cocoa, with chunks of European walnuts and taken moderately with sips of frothy, French Roast coffee.
- rama
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hmmm.... listen for the tapping foot, it appears and disappears and reappears. 4 possibly 5 changes detected. also, i believe gary to be a proponent of "it ain't the flute" school, so i figure there is at least 2 flutes being played (which would demonstrate and support this view).
my guess there are at least grinter and a hamilton flute, maybe 1 more.
my guess there are at least grinter and a hamilton flute, maybe 1 more.
- crookedtune
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- Whistlin'Dixie
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- GaryKelly
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Hmmm, some interesting things have come out of this 'experiment' so far.
Interesting Thing No.1 Perhaps the most interesting responses are the one that haven't been written. And they've been not-written by the most ardent, vociferous, and dogmatic proponents of the 'it's the flute' camp. Where are they? I've seen 'em browsing the forum and posting to other threads. Surely those who continuously propagate the belief that certain woods possess distinct 'tonal qualities' would have absolutely no difficulty with this test? Of course, if they don't want to play, we can only surmise as to the reasons why. Guess what I'll be surmising.
Interesting Thing No.2 was this:
Interesting Thing No.3: There's been only one serious attempt at question E.
Now you'd think, given the endless reams of adjectives spewed around here on flute tone (quite often by those non-participants mentioned in Thing No.1 above) that it'd be a relatively simple question to answer. From the huge list of such frequently-bandied adjectives as sweet, pure, rich, complex, full-bodied, creamy, buttery, reedy, honking, buzzing, barking, edgey, hard, soft, focussed, centred, unfocussed, breathy, bright, dark, light, sombre, chocolatey, full, round, woody, woodier, warm, cold, dead, &c &c &c &c ad infinitum, you'd think there'd be no difficulty assigning at least half a dozen to the test track.
But no. Nothing, except of course for the delightfully amusing aromatic wags! Which is a shame, because here's a chance for the adjective-brigade to agree upon and fix a set of standard adjectives to a tone that everyone can hear and use as a reference... "Aha! So *that's* what they mean by rich-complex-full-centred-honking-focussed-creamy-dark-edgey-reedy!"
Interesting Thing No.4: Approaching 700 'views', only 28 responses (and a few of those are cow-bell and belly-button related).
However. Interesting Things aside, it has been brought to my attention that some folks don't necessarily visit C&F every day, or perhaps can only visit at weekends. So, to give them all a fair chance I'll wait until Monday to post the answers to A,B,C, and D. I reckon BigDavy nailed E.
I think I'll bookmark this thread and point certain individuals to it next time they start wittering on about "xwood has a warm dairy product tone, but ywood has a hard buzzing tone". It might spare us all a long winter...
Pants. I forgot to put in a question F about sports cars.
Interesting Thing No.1 Perhaps the most interesting responses are the one that haven't been written. And they've been not-written by the most ardent, vociferous, and dogmatic proponents of the 'it's the flute' camp. Where are they? I've seen 'em browsing the forum and posting to other threads. Surely those who continuously propagate the belief that certain woods possess distinct 'tonal qualities' would have absolutely no difficulty with this test? Of course, if they don't want to play, we can only surmise as to the reasons why. Guess what I'll be surmising.
Interesting Thing No.2 was this:
Shame about the last sentence in the quote though, which rather negates the 'definite' in the first. But, after tapping me teeth with a pencil for a while it came to me that Unseen is 17 (please correct me if I'm wrong, Avery). Which means, if he hasn't already devastated his hearing playing those feckin' awful Agony-Bags, he may be hearing something in the track that those of us who are older (some of us considerably older) simply cannot detect. Advancing years progressively reduces the high-end response of our ears. But his statement is too vague to be of value as it stands. Avery, perhaps you could do us a favour? Play the track again, and tell us the time at which you think you hear a transition from 'a larger bore instrument' to 'something smaller' or the 'change in the player's embouchure'. That way we can all have a listen again to see if we can hear what your younger (and therefore higher range) ears are picking up.Unseen122 wrote:I definatly hear a difference between the first and last Flute playing. I can tell that the first one is probably a larger bore instrument and the last is sometihng smaller. Of course it could be one Flute and one player changing their embochure, it would have the same effect.
Interesting Thing No.3: There's been only one serious attempt at question E.
Which, oddly enough, is what all the non-flute-players who've heard the track have told me..."sounds like a flute". And which of course is quite right. It does indeed sound like a flute, and not a congealed dairy product or a member of the animal kingdom.BigDavy wrote:Tone - flute like.
Now you'd think, given the endless reams of adjectives spewed around here on flute tone (quite often by those non-participants mentioned in Thing No.1 above) that it'd be a relatively simple question to answer. From the huge list of such frequently-bandied adjectives as sweet, pure, rich, complex, full-bodied, creamy, buttery, reedy, honking, buzzing, barking, edgey, hard, soft, focussed, centred, unfocussed, breathy, bright, dark, light, sombre, chocolatey, full, round, woody, woodier, warm, cold, dead, &c &c &c &c ad infinitum, you'd think there'd be no difficulty assigning at least half a dozen to the test track.
But no. Nothing, except of course for the delightfully amusing aromatic wags! Which is a shame, because here's a chance for the adjective-brigade to agree upon and fix a set of standard adjectives to a tone that everyone can hear and use as a reference... "Aha! So *that's* what they mean by rich-complex-full-centred-honking-focussed-creamy-dark-edgey-reedy!"
Interesting Thing No.4: Approaching 700 'views', only 28 responses (and a few of those are cow-bell and belly-button related).
However. Interesting Things aside, it has been brought to my attention that some folks don't necessarily visit C&F every day, or perhaps can only visit at weekends. So, to give them all a fair chance I'll wait until Monday to post the answers to A,B,C, and D. I reckon BigDavy nailed E.
I think I'll bookmark this thread and point certain individuals to it next time they start wittering on about "xwood has a warm dairy product tone, but ywood has a hard buzzing tone". It might spare us all a long winter...
Pants. I forgot to put in a question F about sports cars.
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner