I am just curious who do you think makes the darkest sounding flute (in the key of D), what model, features and wood?Join me, my son. Come over to the Dark Side!
Thanks for your input!
Jordan
Who Makes the Darkest Sounding Flutes (In the Key of D)
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Sillydill
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Who Makes the Darkest Sounding Flutes (In the Key of D)
Thanks for your input!
Jordan
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Jon C.
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I would have thought, that blackwood would be darker then boxwood?Unseen122 wrote:Boxwood is darker than Balckwood and Rudalls are darker than Prattens. Those are just some generalizations.
M&E is kind of dark sounding...
"I love the flute because it's the one instrument in the world where you can feel your own breath. I can feel my breath with my fingers. It's as if I'm speaking from my soul..."
Michael Flatley
Jon
Michael Flatley
Jon
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Terry McGee
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A tricky question, hard to answer except in the presence of rather a lot of flutes and a blind-folded audition panel!
Theory would suggest it would be a small hole flute, the "cut-off frequency" (which we interpret as brightness/darkness) being proportional to the diameter of the finger holes divided by the diameter of the bore at that point. That should give my Grey Larsen Preferred (and anyone making French-style flutes) the edge on darkness.
Next I imagine would be flutes based on small-holed Rudalls, eg Chris Norman's flute, my Rudall Refined and (I think) the M&E Rudall. There may be other makers working from this style.
Next, we'd expect the medium-to-large hole Rudall, Nicholson or other improved-era flutes. Most makers seem to offer something in this range.
Finally (in conical flutes) we'd expect the Prattens (also a fairly universal model), and, well after that, the Boehm flute (whose holes are getting close to a truncation of the bore at that point.
The ones whose position would be hard to predict are the cylindrical simple-system flutes such as Doug Tipple's flutes, my Metzler cylindrical, Pat Olwell's bamboos, etc. Although the holes are as large, the bore is bigger that a conical flute's, suggesting the cut-off frequency should be lower. There may be other effects though that might offset this. It's on my agenda to investigate this.
Keep in mind too that flutes can be bright or dark, but so can players. Cover more of the embouchure hole and you'll get a darker sound. Grey Larsen for example covers about 60% of the hole, whereas someone from the Boehm world will cover about 30%. This variation will be at least as significant as the finger-hole size.
Hope that helps!
Terry
Theory would suggest it would be a small hole flute, the "cut-off frequency" (which we interpret as brightness/darkness) being proportional to the diameter of the finger holes divided by the diameter of the bore at that point. That should give my Grey Larsen Preferred (and anyone making French-style flutes) the edge on darkness.
Next I imagine would be flutes based on small-holed Rudalls, eg Chris Norman's flute, my Rudall Refined and (I think) the M&E Rudall. There may be other makers working from this style.
Next, we'd expect the medium-to-large hole Rudall, Nicholson or other improved-era flutes. Most makers seem to offer something in this range.
Finally (in conical flutes) we'd expect the Prattens (also a fairly universal model), and, well after that, the Boehm flute (whose holes are getting close to a truncation of the bore at that point.
The ones whose position would be hard to predict are the cylindrical simple-system flutes such as Doug Tipple's flutes, my Metzler cylindrical, Pat Olwell's bamboos, etc. Although the holes are as large, the bore is bigger that a conical flute's, suggesting the cut-off frequency should be lower. There may be other effects though that might offset this. It's on my agenda to investigate this.
Keep in mind too that flutes can be bright or dark, but so can players. Cover more of the embouchure hole and you'll get a darker sound. Grey Larsen for example covers about 60% of the hole, whereas someone from the Boehm world will cover about 30%. This variation will be at least as significant as the finger-hole size.
Hope that helps!
Terry
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Whistlin'Dixie
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Kevin L. Rietmann
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Terry McGee
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Indeed, the samples I collected might well assist in answering the question. Unfortunately, trying to get my backlog under control has meant I haven't got to do the analysis of them, though it's still very much on the agenda. It stemmed out of some work Grey Larsen, Prof. Neville Fletcher and I were doing to identify differences in sound and approach between modern flautists and Irish flute players. Hopefully I can get to it soon - Neville and Grey have done their bits!
I chose G for the samples, as G is always a good solid note on the flute. It may be enough to differentiate the flute types, although of course as I mention above the player is equally significant. It's possible though that we would need to do a sample of all the notes (at least low octave) and analyse them collectively, to give a "profile" of the flute sound, rather than a view of a particular note.
If anyone wants to give me a sample, please feel free. Let's make it the seven notes of the bottom octave, starting at c# and running down to D, played for 1 second each. Don't worry about gaps or breaths, I can edit them out. Tell me the type of flute (or flutes) made the sound, and what sort of embouchure hole it has (elliptical, rounded rectangle etc)
I have a 10Mby limit on emails, so check the file size first! Recording in mono, using a 22kHz sample rate and mp3 compression if necessary should help keep it down. The box clears every 10 minutes, so send any additional files separately after that period.
Terry
I chose G for the samples, as G is always a good solid note on the flute. It may be enough to differentiate the flute types, although of course as I mention above the player is equally significant. It's possible though that we would need to do a sample of all the notes (at least low octave) and analyse them collectively, to give a "profile" of the flute sound, rather than a view of a particular note.
If anyone wants to give me a sample, please feel free. Let's make it the seven notes of the bottom octave, starting at c# and running down to D, played for 1 second each. Don't worry about gaps or breaths, I can edit them out. Tell me the type of flute (or flutes) made the sound, and what sort of embouchure hole it has (elliptical, rounded rectangle etc)
I have a 10Mby limit on emails, so check the file size first! Recording in mono, using a 22kHz sample rate and mp3 compression if necessary should help keep it down. The box clears every 10 minutes, so send any additional files separately after that period.
Terry
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toughknot
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I think the samples at http://www.yscolan.info/. ( which I think are great ) could be described as dark.
I shall never bitter be so long as I can laugh at me.