Whistle head for flute

[Calum Stewart]

Hyall,

Does anyone know of a maker who makes whistle heads that fits in a conical bore flute (Boehm bore)? The idea being to transform the flute into a low whistle? I don't specifically mean the entry level flute/whistle combos, using the same body with different heads.

My flute is a Rudall Carte simple system (Conical bore), and I wondered if there is a maker out there who has done this before?

thanks!
Calum
www.calum-stewart.com
www.myspace.com/calumfrancisstewart

[Feadoggie]

You are obviously aware of the combinations Tony Dixon markets. You are likely familiar with cheaters and vertical flute heads too. So, onward...

The only commercial head of which I am aware is the Eklute head which is meant for a Boehm flute not a simple system. I do not believe it is in production any longer. I've only seen a couple on eBay in the last ten years. Here is a link to a thread with a photo of the Eklute head:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=74622

Your best bet, IMO, would be to approach a maker/restorer of simple system flutes that happens to also make low whistles too and see if they are interested in the concept.

Feadoggie

[jemtheflute]

Calum, Calum, unless your flute has been transmogrified since Saturday, it is cylindrical (like Bohm) bodied, not conical. With Bigio's barrel converter it should accept the things already mentioned. I think there is at least one old thread on this or similar - Probably worth hunting it out.
A whistle head to fit a Bohm flute would not need a Bohm tapered head to play in tune. Any well made low whistle head with the same bore as the body, fitted with a standard Bohm head tenon and cut to the correct sounding length should work, at least in theory.

[Calum Stewart]

ha ha! oh my... There must have been something in the water in Mold the other day Jem, to make a mistake like that!! Yes, you are right!
Thanks for that I'll report back...
Calum

[raindog1970]

I've tried my hand at making an Eklute style mouthpiece for a Boehm flute, but didn't have much luck with it.
A Boehm flute has a very narrow bore and a larger range of notes in comparison to a whistle, which makes it practically impossible to use with a fixed embouchure mouthpiece.
At best, the low notes will be very easy to over blow and the high notes will require a significant push... at least that was my experience.
You really need to be able to adjust your embouchure to solidly play the entire range of notes on a Boehm flute, and I don't know how to design a whistle style mouthpiece with that capability.

[Tyghress]

IMO going from a flute to a whistle is a step backward. You lose expressive range with the loss of the embouchure.

If you are taking a low whistle and trying to fit a flute head on it, you're still going to have big issues. Physics be damned, that body design will (hopefully) be fine tuned to one method or the other, and a compromise will be noticed. On smaller instruments you're not going to hear it as much, but as you go lower....

Submitted for your approval,
Tyg

[Calum Stewart]

Yes, you are right Tyghress & raindog. Of course the flute has more dynamic range and is overall more versatile, but I was looking for something I could just swap round now-and-then, for a different sound - perhaps for recording or a different voice for harmonies or something.
I've tried looking for Eklute head online, and it looks about what I was imagining! But sadly no-one makes these things now!

Thanks all for your responses.
Cheers, Calum

[Maihcol]

I did some brief experiments with this one day a while back and got results similar to Raindog. On and off here when I get time, I do some work on a low D. I made up a whistle mouthpiece and aluminium upper tube to fit in the simple system body I use for the aluminium flute with delrin head I make. The bore of the body of that flute is cylindrical and 19mm in diameter - the bore of the delrin flute head is tapered but that part isn't used for the whistle of course. So the bore of the body of that aluminium flute is the same as the bore of the body of the modern silver flute - the Boehm flute. Just that the toneholes are laid out in the manner of a simple system flute - similar in size and position to a Pratten flute, for example. Which is the same type as the body of the flute Calum is referring to in his initial post.

Anyway, I got a soft "hooty" tone from it - not very satisfying to my ear - nothing like the power and focus you can get out of the flute version of this bore. It did seem to be more or less in tune though. I'm not talking about the modern flute with it's large, keyed toneholes here which might give a different result.

I then tried the same mouthpiece with a Pratten flute body, which has a conical bore of course and that was even weaker - presumably because of the overall narrower bore it has - and the tuning was a good bit out this time. That would need to be retuned for the whistle.

For the moment, my conclusion is that these bores would work better with higher keys if they're to be used for whistles.

Garry

[talasiga]

Calum,
this may interest your research.
http://luisdelacalle.com/quenaflute.html



a quena style headjoint for vertical Boehm flute playing
and some interesting history on the quena (whose etymology is not related to the word "cane".)

[ubizmo]

This video from Edduciman, the guy who makes the Edducci quenas, may be of interest, although it's not a flute body. This is a very creative individual, who does some interesting things with aerophone instruments.

Ubizmo

[Calum Stewart]

Yeah, some really great ideas there! Thanks for that Ubizmo & talasiga

I did some 'research' of my own this morning, and my head is frazzled!!

Basically, I had a 'spare', very cheap ($20 from ebay) headjoint, that I doctored to accept a wooden whistle head.
My theory being that simply sticking a low whistle head on a boehm body won't work, for the same reasons putting a parallel bore head (R+R, Pratten etc) won't work. So, by inserting a shortened parabolic headjoint (minus the lip plate, and the hole taped up... nice ) into the afore mentioned low whistle head, it's possible to get a considerably better sound.

Two drawbacks - I was using a low F head, not a low D or C head, so it wasn't as powerful as it could be. However, the higher notes were not as screechy as I thought they might be. It just sounded like a really lush wooden low whistle (the the infinite benefits of keys!).

However, I don't know if it was the fact that I was using a low F head, not a D. Or perhaps the fact that the parabolic insert was not all the way up to the chiff (or is it fipple) and the top of the inside of the whistle head, that meant the upper second octave was a little flat (note hugely, but annoyingly ... not... quite... there....).

My guess, although I don't have the tools and correct head at my disposal to know for sure, is that with a parabolic insert all the way up to the top of inside the whistle head , it's possible to get both octaves and into the third octave, in tune.

I understand what has been said about the body of the flute being designed for a different purpose, and fine tuned etc... But actually, if one was to do this (parabolic insert all the way up the whistle head), effectively it's producing extremely similar results? Of course, you can't have the dynamic changes and subtle nuances that you can with a flute, but instead a more fundamental collection of frequencies (perhaps less 'reedy', but more 'clear').

Anyway, they are my thoughts at time of writing! Does anyone have a low D or C wooden whistle head with a 'spare' parabolic headjoint to try this on a boehm bore???
Calum

[Maihcol]

I did some 'research' of my own this morning, and my head is frazzled!!
Calum

These tubes will do that to a head!

19mm - the Boehm flute body bore - is a narrow bore for a low D whistle, so the bottom end will always be quiet - or weak - depending on your personal preferences. As far as the tuning is concerned, the straight cylindrical bore will work for whistle, though not (properly) for flute. In the tests I did, the straight 19mm bore tube, with the toneholes sized and positioned as for the simple system flute version (without the keyed notes, just the straight six holes), was pretty much in tune all the way up to 2nd B - I didn't go any further. Due to the narrow 19mm bore, the top notes are easier and wouldn't be screechy unless there was some problem in the mouthpiece. The tapered head bore is necessary for the flute tuning - but not the whistle. A larger bore will give more power but the tonehole sizes and positions become less convenient for the hands of course and the top end needs more push.

Garry

[jemtheflute]

Just to support Garry, Calum - I haven't done any experiments with this, or at least, not aimed at it, and full scientific understanding of it (as in "can do the Maths") is beyond me, but I know enough about the principles involved to know that a cylindrical whistle does not require a tapered head to play in tune through 2 octaves and into a 3rd. The requirement for a taper somewhere in a transverse flute is due primarily to the necessity of having a stopper set back from the embouchure hole. That cavity causes the flattening and scale distortion on an all-cylinder transverse flute. In a whistle/any fipple flute, there is no such cavity (unless deliberately designed in by under-cutting the fipple-block) so there is no distortion to correct, although the precise placement of the cut-off of the fipple/end of the wind-way floor in relation to the top termination and to the width and depth of the window.... and all the other variables of a whistle mouthpiece...... do affect its voicing in many ways. There are other issues, perhaps, and fipple flutes may be given tapering conoid bores for other reasons.

Anyway, the upshot is that the intonation issues you have found with your improvised "parabolic" whistle head are actually most likely to do with its taper. It isn't "curing" a problem, but causing it. You need a correctly proportioned cylindrical whistle head with the same ID as the flute. Amongst all the messing about I have done with PVC tube over the years, starting off with transverse flutes and giving up because of the classic all-cylinder tuning problem until Doug Tipple led me to the Fajardo Wedge as a solution, I have ended up using flute bodies I made, tuned as best I could for a transverse head without a taper....... with my Dave Lim (Lymm/Lynn/Lin? I've never quite been sure!) whistle head (all cylinder) to pretty good effect. The Eb and D tubes play as whistles with pretty decent intonation and the low C and Bb aren't bad up to about 2nd 8ve A, though ideally I should make tubes specifically to use with the whistle head as slightly different tone-hole-specs are needed for an optimum scale.

I suspect that, as I said before in this thread, with a tailor-made cylindrical whistle head you could probably get quite decent results (accepting what others have said about issues of tone/ease of speaking in different registers, control, etc.), though some of the scaling of the flute body might not be ideally appropriate, especially towards the top of the tube. I honestly think you are wasting your time and efforts trying to fix up a pseudo-Bohm whistle head - it simply won't/can't fit with the fundamental acoustic principles at work.

Have you had a look at the Uni of NS Wales Woodwind science stuff? http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/woodwind.html It's worth it! You'll find the explanation of the stopper in the flute, though alas there is no equivalent analysis of fipple flutes to help you more directly. I expect there is something out there somewhere, but I don't have a reference.......

[Calum Stewart]

I honestly think you are wasting your time and efforts trying to fix up a pseudo-Bohm whistle head - it simply won't/can't fit with the fundamental acoustic principles at work.

Sigh....I fear you are probably right Jem. Oh well, it was worth a try anyway! Damn those fundamental acoustic principles!!!

Calum