Wooden head-joint on Boehm system

[crookedtune]

Thanks, all. It looks like I have an opportunity to borrow a student-grade keyed flute from someone's closet for awhile. Maybe after a spin with keys I can get a better feel for whether this is for me.

[Cork]

...You can plug the holes on a French model flute, but the scale and response is altered...

@ Jim

It seems that one advantage to the "open", French style keys, especially to beginning students, is that they help to promote a "correct" finger technique, in that if the fingers are not kept in the right places, the keys simply will leak, badly. BTW, only five of the keys are "open", not all of them.

Also, the well known Avant Garde player/teacher, Robert Dick, uses French style, "open" keyed flutes exclusively, to achieve numerous "special" effects.

However, for "straight" playing purposes, the "closed", or plateau, keyed flutes offer greater tonal consistency in performance.

[jim stone]

I guess open hole Boehm flutes are also supposed to sound better...
The French-style I mean.

Thanks.

[Cork]

I guess open hole Boehm flutes are also supposed to sound better...
The French-style I mean...

Some say yes. Others say no. And, there rarely seems to be any middle ground to that controversy.

For instance, as a rule I prefer plateau keys, for the reason I mentioned in my earlier post, as above.

YMMV

[tin tin]

I guess open hole Boehm flutes are also supposed to sound better...The French-style I mean.

Some (like Cork, above) argue quite to the contrary, saying open holes cause intonation compromises and uneven tone. In German-speaking parts of Europe (and perhaps Eastern Europe?) it's fairly common to find pros using professional-grade flutes with plateau keys with C-feet, rather than the French (and by extension American) preference for open holes and B-feet.

Also, the well known Avant Garde player/teacher, Robert Dick, uses French style, "open" keyed flutes exclusively, to achieve numerous "special" effects.

He goes a step further, using a modified Kingma-system flute, which has little keys on the regular keys, thus giving him the option of open holes on all keys, in addition to the normal five. Aside from special venting options for some multi-phonics and smoother glissandi, it gives him access to a quarter-tone scale, in other words, 24 notes to the octave, instead of the piddly twelve other Boehm flute players settle for!

[Doug_Tipple]

I have Venus (Chinese, $150 new) open hole flute with a C foot. I have owned a couple of Yamaha flutes, and I like the Venus flute just as much as I did the Yamahas. I go back and forth between the open-holed, simple-system Irish flute and the Boehm silver flute. I use the plastic plugs to close the five open holes on the silver flute, so, effectively, I have a plateau-style flute in this configuration. I am not a serious student of the Boehm flute, so with the open-holes covered with the plugs, I can finger it with piper's grip. This is a no-no in classical technique. However, I don't notice any intonation problems caused by closing the open holes with the plugs, as Dana suggested may be a problem. I don't see why it should make a difference whether you closed the open-holes with your fingers or with the plugs. If a key is closed, it is closed. With the open-holes and my Irish flute fingering technique, I was having a lot of problems playing the silver flute. The plugs solved that problem.

[Denny]

ignoring the whole Robert Dick glissando head joint thing

what's probably just as well, anyhow

[Cork]

...a quarter-tone scale...

I've heard about quarter-tone flutes for a long while, perhaps the past twenty years or more, but I've never actually seen such a thing, not even a picture. So, please, could you, Tintin, or could somebody, direct me to a picture of such a thing?

TIA!

[Doug_Tipple]

...a quarter-tone scale...

I've heard about quarter-tone flutes for a long while, perhaps the past twenty years or more, but I've never actually seen such a thing, not even a picture. So, please, could you, Tintin, or could somebody, direct me to a picture of such a thing?

TIA!

http://www.robertdick.net/
The glissando headjoint video is interesting.

[Cork]

...I don't notice any intonation problems caused by closing the open holes with the plugs, as Dana suggested may be a problem. I don't see why it should make a difference whether you closed the open-holes with your fingers or with the plugs. If a key is closed, it is closed...

The controversy begins when the "open" keys are in the "up", vented, position, and not when those keys are held down. For instance, if one's fingers followed the movement of the keys so closely that they never left the surface of the keys, then it simply wouldn't matter whether the keys were "open" or not, for whatever holes in the keys would then always remain closed, but, if the fingers lift off of the "open" keys, even slightly, as to then vent the "open" holes, the whole picture changes, where then those keys with the "open" holes are then double vented, once by lifting the key, and again by the hole in the key. Moreover, by installing the plugs, you are negating this double venting effect, where, BTW, by design these "open" keys were intended to be double vented.

[Doug_Tipple]

...a quarter-tone scale...

I've heard about quarter-tone flutes for a long while, perhaps the past twenty years or more, but I've never actually seen such a thing, not even a picture. So, please, could you, Tintin, or could somebody, direct me to a picture of such a thing?

TIA!

http://www.brannenflutes.com/kingma.html

[Cork]

http://www.brannenflutes.com/kingma.html

Thanks!

However, I got as far as seeing that the configuration includes a C# trill mechanism, and I then knew it was not for me. I have a couple of Boehm flutes with such a thing, and in practice I have found that the weight of the C# trill mechanism screws up the balance of the flute, causing the flute to perpetually rotate inwards, toward the player, as a perpetual PITA.

Goodbye, quarter tone flutes.

Again, however, thanks!

[Dana]

I don't see why it should make a difference whether you closed the open-holes with your fingers or with the plugs. If a key is closed, it is closed.

Closed hole flutes have slightly increased key heights over open hole flutes. So if all the keys are closed, there's no difference in response. For a note when one or more plugged keys is open, there is a subtle difference in pitch and response. The open hole flute flute is designed to play with the added venting of the open holes combined with lower key heights.

That being said, if you don't notice any difference, great!

Dana

[Doug_Tipple]

...I don't notice any intonation problems caused by closing the open holes with the plugs, as Dana suggested may be a problem. I don't see why it should make a difference whether you closed the open-holes with your fingers or with the plugs. If a key is closed, it is closed...

The controversy begins when the "open" keys are in the "up", vented, position, and not when those keys are held down. For instance, if one's fingers followed the movement of the keys so closely that they never left the surface of the keys, then it simply wouldn't matter whether the keys were "open" or not, for whatever holes in the keys would then always remain closed, but, if the fingers lift off of the "open" keys, even slightly, as to then vent the "open" holes, the whole picture changes, where then those keys with the "open" holes are then double vented, once by lifting the key, and again by the hole in the key. Moreover, by installing the plugs, you are negating this double venting effect, where, BTW, by design these "open" keys were intended to be double vented.

I can see that open-holed Boehm flutes are meant by design to be double vented, but in practice, are the double open holes always fully vented? I think that the answer is no. We tend to keep a finger (or two) close to the open hole when the key is not depressed, thus causing some intonation variation in the playing of the flute. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some professional musicians prefer the plateau-style, closed keys; they can rest their fingers against the key mechanism when the key is open.

[Cork]

I can see that open-holed Boehm flutes are meant by design to be double vented, but in practice, are the double open holes always fully vented? I think that the answer is no. We tend to keep a finger (or two) close to the open hole when the key is not depressed, thus causing some intonation variation in the playing of the flute. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some professional musicians prefer the plateau-style, closed keys; they can rest their fingers against the key mechanism when the key is open.

Well, those keys with "open" holes indeed are meant to be double vented. After all, why else would those holes be there, if not to serve as a vent?

However, a correct venting of such keys does call for the fingers to move sufficiently far away from them.

Plateau keys eliminate any such venting irregularity potential.