boehm / simple system ?

[Wormdiet]

Good stuff can happen, though, when good players mix and match them - I was playing an O'Carollan on my guitar, full distortion, the other day... I thought it sounded great; not sure it would have won over a pub crowd. I should have used a wah pedal, though... Maybe that would have helped...

Once a few years ago I hooked up my flute to a guitar processor. . . it was fun. Delay, pitch, reverb effects were a good time. However, not so much the wah or distortion. . . even a simple-system flute doesn't have enough harmonic "meat" for timbre-based effects to mess with.

[Julia Delaney]

@ Bramble: Dear Girl,
Re: I mean, yeah, you could play ITM on sax

http://www.attheracket.com/

They ... are well known for their uplifting banjo/saxophone lead sound which gives that "divil-may-care-ness" to all their tunes .... With echoes of the pioneering Irish dance bands who recorded in the 1920s, they combine swirling saxophone and banjo with vamping piano and pulsating guitars, honeyed tones of fiddle and flute, along with a velvet voice!

[jemtheflute]

give me your reasons dudes.

As if I haven't waffled enough already, that lets me off the hook henceforward.
I am NOT a "dude", whatever else I may be.......

[Tootler]

Wood or Silver? - Why?
Simple or Boehm?
Why did you choose the system you did?
What makes it a better system than the other (for traditional music)?
What is the most important aspect of the debate to you?
What you're used to / Fingering / Tone / Ornamentation / Tradition / Aesthetics / Other?

It chose me. I am a recorder player and though I tried a Boehm system flute some years ago, I didn't really take to it and stuck with the recorder which I also use to play traditional music. (Confession time: I play English trad rather than Irish trad)

One day the musical director of our recorder group brought a wooden flute that was being given away and asked if anyone would like it. I put it to my mouth, tried it and was immediately hooked. I took it for a contribution to a charity that supports young recorder players.

It's a simple system flute, but atypical. It has a narrow conical bore with small finger holes and a smallish embouchure hole. It has a warm tone and is not overloud.

You can see it in this You Tube Clip

Geoff

[Denny]

It's a simple system flute, but atypical. It has a narrow conical bore with small finger holes and a smallish embouchure hole. It has a warm tone and is not overloud.

earlier that the ones we go on about....

poke about here
http://www.oldflutes.com/

[Skinty]

I've been considering buying a boehm flute recently. Cross fingering seems a bit hit and miss for most notes. When I played the guitar I could quickly figure out which notes would sound OK when jamming along even though I didn't know what key the song was in. It would be nice to have a flute where I wasn't just limited to the keys of D, G and A for example.

I've found something interesting though. The head joint is supposed to have more effect on the sound of the flute. So for example, the Yamaha 311 flute is a step up from the 211 model even though the body is the same because the head joint is made from silver instead. I've read that you can also fit a wooden head joint to a boehm flute to change the sound.

Which makes me wonder about Irish flutes that use tuning slides so that the inside of a wooden headjoint is lined with metal. Doesn't this miss the point of having a wooden flute?

I have a flute with a tuning slide and it has a much brighter tone than my other flutes that don't. It also lacks honk. It's nice to play but doesn't have that seductive organic sound that my two all-wooden flutes have. And doesn't a tuning slide mess up the intonation? Not to mention the durability of sticking a tube of metal inside a tube of wood that's going to shrink with age. Why doesn't a Boehm flute need a tuning slide? Metal contracts and expands with temperature.

[Sigurthr]

Boehm metal flutes do have a tuning slide, it is incorporated into the tenon of the headjoint. The thing about metal is that since it is such a good conductor it eventually warms up to your body temp from playing, so as long as you're not in a desert or tundra you tune up once your flute is warm and you're set.

I am curious how a wooden headjoint made for a Boehm silver flute would sound, however it isn't JUST the material, it is mostly the cut of the embouchure, and they depends on maker.

[talasiga]

.......
My copy of THE FLUTE AND FLUTE PLAYING lists the author as Theobald Boehm. There is an autographed picture inside where the author signs himself "Theobald Boehm." This is why I asked the original question. I will concede, however, that within the same volume, I found he also signed himself with your spelling, so I guess the ultimate answer is that both are correct, even according to the man whose name it is.

yes, of course.

And, in my twisted tangential world, this point proves that he, Theobald, played the Bb both ways on his flute .

[Fluteswordsman]

Reasons why I like the simple system flute (I own and played a Boehm for a couple years):

1.) It is fully chromatic in three octaves, especially those with 10 keys or more.
2.) Its tone, due to the conical bore and smaller hole sizes, has a sweeter darker sound.
3.) It is quieter (It does not put volume before tone)
4.) I just like wood.
5.) It is primarily made to play in the first two octaves (with the third as a bonus), whereas the Boehm is made to play in the second and third octaves, with the lower octave, to some extent as a bonus. (I think the lower octave of Boehm flutes sounds a little like a sax)
6.) Open tone holes - allows for sliding, crisp ornamentation, and finger vibrato.
7.) Somewhat less complicated fingering (Depends on how many keys we´re talking here. Some simple system flutes had up to 16 keys.)
8.) Tradition. Yes, stop laughing in the back. I tend to be partial to all kinds of folk flutes - I like the spirit of traditional music and truly, folk music is experiencing a revival all around the world. The Irish flute on this subject seems somewhat obscure as technically, the simple system flutes were just classical flutes that had been dropped by their owners in favor of Boehm flutes and sold to Irish Trad players at cheap prices. But they retain much more of the characteristic qualities of old flutes, like the renaissance flute and medieval flutes that had been played for hundreds of years before (I.e. wood, open holes, sweet sound, simple elegant basic scale.) I feel more drawn to it for these reasons than the Boehm flute, which evolved for music in bands and orchestras. Thus the loud sound (for competing with trumpets) and the focus on the second and third octaves. The Irish flute for me is just more personal and more nearly approaches the sweet tone I have come to expect from folk flutes.

And its not completely true either that Bohem flutes can play chromatic music a lot better. Certainly, there are some keys where it is easier to play in, as with the Irish flute. But it’s a question of dedication; music is not easy. In reality, the flutes have relatively equal ranges, and some players actually preferred simple system flutes for chromaticism (Check out this conversation: http://www.oldflutes.com/articles/argue.htm). I personally would find the Irish flute to be very well suited to playing different genres of music . Open holes and wide range of effects (like sliding) make it good for Jazz. Mozart, Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach – these people wrote for the simple system flute. Also, the simple system flute approaches more nearly in design (however far away) the traditional flutes of other cultures like the bansuri, the dizi, the shamizen, and the quena than Boehm flutes. (Although, honestly, it sounds nothing like any of them.) Better to buy them separately.

Cheers, - The Flutesowrdsman

[talasiga]

.......
And, in my twisted tangential world, this point proves that he, Theobald, played the Bb both ways on his flute .

However many ways he may have played it, he thought he was playing Hb ......

[Lucas]

.......
And, in my twisted tangential world, this point proves that he, Theobald, played the Bb both ways on his flute .

However many ways he may have played it, he thought he was playing Hb ......

Brush up your German, Tal. When Theo played a B, it sounded like a Bb. Unlike your B that sounded like an H to him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note

[hans]

.......
And, in my twisted tangential world, this point proves that he, Theobald, played the Bb both ways on his flute .

However many ways he may have played it, he thought he was playing Hb ......

Brush up your German, Tal. When Theo played a B, it sounded like a Bb. Unlike your B that sounded like an H to him.

He may have played a Ces, or a Ceses, or even a Heses, but never a Hb.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonische_Verwechslung

[talasiga]

Ah, thanks for that men.
Let me see .... here goes again:-

.......
And, in my twisted tangential world, this point proves that he, Theobald, played the Bb both ways on his flute .

However many ways he may have played it, he thought he was playing B ......

[Aanvil]

give me your reasons dudes.

As if I haven't waffled enough already, that lets me off the hook henceforward.
I am NOT a "dude", whatever else I may be.......

Yo Ese, take a chill pill an' calm the F down Homes!