January 31, 2008
Ho hum
Been pretty slow here in the past week-- immobile, that is. It seemed that we were building up a head of steam for awhile, but then everything just fizzled. Oh well, February approacheth and Groundhog Day is right around the corner, so we're bound to perk up soon.
I've found this Western Oregon winter weather even more annoying than usual this year. There were a few relatively cold and dry days recently, but for the most part it's been just gray and drippy. Today's ten-day forecast shows a solid stretch of temperatures running between 31 and 43 F -- that's the total temperature range, including both highs and lows, throughout the ten-day block! And the single-word summary for every single one of those days is either "sprinkles," "showers," "rain," or "sleet." Not a single glimmer of sun in the glyph for that entire stretch. All in all, pretty monotonous. Kinda like this post.
Honestly, if I could sleep until April I'd go for it this year. There must be a drug for that, right? I've read about "induced comas" being used in certain medical situations... so do I qualify, doc?
It'd be a worthwhile goal to plan for at least a two-week tropical or subtropical escape in January or February every single year from now on. Heck, maybe I'll just wander over to the I-5 southbound lanes and stick out a thumb... Swamp Witch, if I don't show up this evening I'll give you a call from San Diego, or possibly from somewhere in Baja. --r.
January 25, 2008
Recipe Day
Hmmm, feeling hungry. Let's whip up a veggie pizza! Here's a recipe I found Somewhere on the Internet; a bit unconventional, but yes, it really was billed as "pizza."
INGREDIENTS
2 cans of Crescent Rolls
2 8 oz packages softened cream cheese
1 cup Miracle Whip
1 Package of Ranch Dressing Mix (Dry)
2 cups fresh broccoli, cauliflower and carrots
4 oz. Sharp Cheddar Cheese
The first thing you are going to want to do is let the cream cheese soften. I recommend cutting it into little squares to let it soften quicker. Then you are going to roll the crescent dough out onto a 15 X 9 (roughly) cookie sheet. Bake the dough at 375 F for 10 minutes. YOU MUST LET THIS COOL BEFORE PUTTING ANYTHING ON TOP OF IT. Let it cool for at least 1/2 hour.
You can chop up veggies while waiting for it to cool and make the cream cheese center. For the center, mix the cream cheese and the miracle whip. You can use mayo, but miracle whip is better for this recipe as you want more of a taste.
Mix it with a blender until it is very creamy and there are no lumps. Then add in the dressing mix to the cream cheese mix. Spread the cream cheese mix over the cooled crescent roll bottom. I recommend putting it in dollups over the dough, so you can spread it around easier. Try not to touch the crescent bottom as you are spreading it. The reason why the crescent bottom has to be very cool is because otherwise it will start to lift up as you are spreading the cream cheese.
Make sure to get all spots where the crescent shows. After this is done, sprinkle the chopped up veggies on top. Then sprinkle cheddar cheese. Don't try cutting it until you have let it cool in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Before putting it in the refrigerator though, run a knife over the outside of the pizza, so it is easier to get out later. If you try cutting it into slices before it is cool, the veggies and cheese will run along the knife with you.
Mmmm, sounds good to me... off to the kitchen now! --r.
January 24, 2008
Eerie Serendipity with the Vegetable Orchestra
For the past couple of days I've been thinking about Youtube and ideas for instrumental video clips that might prove interesting to a wide audience. For example, it's astounding that the Beatboxing Flute Dude has drawn so much attention-- this clip has passed the ten-million view mark! Now, I'm not about to try beatboxing, but just standing around playing a bamboo flute wouldn't quite cut the mustard; we'll have to come up with something more uniquely striking and bizarre.
Last night I actually dreamed of making a variety of wind instruments out of ordinary vegetables, and since awakening this morning have been thinking That's it! Spent much of the morning brainstorming on a few specific ideas-- wait 'till you see what's in store for burdock!
Imagine my surprise when this arrived in the email inbox today, forwarded by musical friends. It's eerie serendipity! Or perhaps a better term is synchronicity.
Thing is, I think I actually could do a lot better than that with the wind instruments. We'll see.
--r.
January 23, 2008
Pretty strange...
It's pretty strange finding a site that offers MP3 files of my tunes for only $29.95 per download...
...Oh, maybe they're actually selling the software needed to download the tracks for "free...?"
January 22, 2008
More speculation on questionable innovations
You know, that crazy idea described in yesterday's entry -- the keyboard-operated bass clarinet/clariboo -- would actually work! However, a similar scheme wouldn't work nearly as well with a flute-type instrument. Reeds are a much more powerful tone-driving mechanism than the simple split airstream of a flute, at least at the humanly playable scale; giant pipe organs are another story. So it'd be perfectly practical to provide just one sizable vent hole for each note, and the reed would be more than powerful enough to drive a good, solid tone through each single open hole. Disparities in volume and tone between notes high or low on the tube could probably be balanced effectively by varying the tonehole sizes.
With flutes it's a different matter: flutes are quite dependent on the extra venting provided by additional open holes below the note actually being sounded: that is, the topmost open hole. In fact, maximal venting is the prime principle underlying the design of the modern Boehm flute: Boehm set out to design a flute in which as many holes as possible were sprung open, so that only as many as necessary need to be closed for a given note.
On a clariboo, one can cover all the holes, sounding the instrument's fundamental, and then "pop" open individual notes all the way up the scale by raising a single finger for each note; the sound of the single-open-hole notes is only slightly muffled and flattened by the lack of additional venting lower on the tube. Does that description make sense?
On the other hand, if you try covering all the holes on a flute and then raise a single finger much higher on the scale, only a weak, fuzzy bleat will result: the clariboo is much more efficient at pushing a full tone through a single, lonely open vent high on the tube.
Back to the keyboard-driven bass clarinet: this thing would actually be easier to build than a standard woodwind design. If you ever get a chance to look closely at a modern bass clarinet, you'll see what I mean. Try making one of those from scratch as an untrained nonspecialist!
Ah, winter: prime time to dream of wacky, Seussworthy schemes. --r.
January 21, 2008
Reeds and crackpot schemes
I'm constantly planning to reinstate reed instruments as a significant percentage of my productive efforts, but that's always a struggle; flutes are inevitably the first priority and reeds suffer accordingly.
That's a shame, since single-reed instruments are extremely simple to mess around with-- I consider them easier to make than flutes, in fact. However, this perceived ease is premised on their being non-overblowing, as were almost all early-historical clarinet-family instruments. That is, there's no assumption that a clariboo* should have a functional second register whose notes align harmoniously and logically with the fundamental register.
Of course, many clariboos do overblow into the second register, and some even produce a perfectly-tuned series of notes that align perfectly with the fundamental register's scale. However, this is VERY hit-or-miss, since the infinite variety of bore profiles naturally present in bamboo make it quite difficult to calculate and adjust the pitches of overblown notes.
On the other hand, my flutes are routinely expected to play perfectly in tune through their second octave, and often well into the third octave; I consider an excellent bamboo-flute range to be about two octaves plus a fifth or sixth. (Modern orchestral flutes have a standard range of about three octaves plus a step, so a good bamboo flute covers about half an octave less than a fully mechanized modern flute. Not bad!)
Assuming good bamboo selection, it's relatively straightforward -- although by no means "easy" -- to make fine adjustments to a flute's bore profile in order to correct the tuning of second and third-octave notes. However, with reed instruments this is an entirely different and more acoustically complicated subject-- more on this later.
Even if one expects no overblown notes on a reed instrument, the fact that they can easily be made with a much wider range entirely within the fundamental register largely compensates for the lack of a second register. In fact, it's a simple matter to make reed instruments with a fundamental range of between 1.5 to 2 octaves.
Of course, as instruments get bigger it becomes more physically awkward to place the fingerholes in managable places-- although I've made very large and extremely low-pitched bass clarinets, these produced only a relatively few notes throughout a limited range. (By "very large and low-pitched," I mean in the three or four-foot length range.)
However, given the fact that a clariboo yields notes which are an octave lower than an equivalent-sized flute, this is strikingly deep indeed: it'd take a six-foot long flute to hit notes as low as those produced by a three-foot clariboo! My largest practical bass flutes run about four feet in acoustical length, so reed instruments certainly have more potential reach far into the bass register.
One could even make ultra-low contabass reed instruments. I've experimented with plastic tubing and made prototypes that blast their fundamental note easily and strongly at an acoustical length of ten feet or so! Needless to say, fingerhole placement becomes, er, somewhat problematic on something that long...
Which brings us to today's brainstorm: for someone more electro-mechanically more ambitious than I, it'd be a relatively simple matter to construct a hybrid single-reed bass instrument operated by a standard piano-type keyboard. All you'd have to do is provide an individual vent hole for each desired note along the tube's length, with each hole covered by an electro-mechanically-operated key. In fact, this could be done purely mechanically, but an electro-version would be more modern and elegant.
Whatever the controlling linkage, each vent hole would be assigned to the appropriate key on a regular keyboard. For a bass instrument, a range of about an octave and a half would be a practical starting point, so you'd need about eighteen keyed holes on the tube for a fully chromatic version. The player would sit with the mouthpiece fixed in an adjustable position above the keyboard, and could simply lean forward and blow on the mouthpiece while operating the notes on the keyboard. Any bends in the tubing needed to bring the mouthpiece into convenient reach would be acoustically insignificant if this was done right, and the tubing could indeed double back several times if necessary.
Naturally, only one note at a time could be played; this would be a monophonic instrument. But it's in the bass range, so who cares? Anyway, would somebody out there get to work on this idea right away?
(Wonder if someone's already done so... NAAAAH, this is probably too crackpot for anybody sane to tackle.) --r.
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*Oops-- forgot to follow up on the asterisk in the original posting. "Clariboo" is my own term for a single-reed, more-or-less cylindrically-bored instrument made of bamboo.
January 17, 2008
Good Grief
Unbelievable: this Gallery photo has been up for months and months, and the measurements in the picture are completely wrong! The right-hand figure should be a full inch less than shown.
That's quite an oversight, since something like that would be more than enough to scare away the 422 people who have looked at that illustration so far. Even I couldn't come close to playing that flute if the span was actually 4-3/4"! Absolutely appalling.
Thanks to customer DK, who finally pointed out the unlikeliness of that measurement. All ye who were intimidated by that figure, come back! I have a flute to sell you!
Come to think of it, that flute was even listed on eBay several months ago-- and the picture with the wrong measurement was part of the pitch, natch. The fact that that flute didn't sell is one reason I've completely avoided eBay for so long: at the time, my petulant reaction was, "Well, if you're going to BE that way, then just FORGET it, eBay... I don't need you. Who wants to put all that work into a listing that'll just sit there bidderless?" AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH...!
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ANOTHER CORRECTION: in an earlier entry, it was mistakenly stated that the "hep" kids these days would say "Conan O'Brien sucks." We hereby retract and renounce that claim, since the correct expression is: Conan O'Brien is teh suck. Sincere apologies to Mr. O'Brien for the error.
(Off to fetch sackcloth and ashes) --r.
January 16, 2008
Time is impartial-- on nobody's "side."
Check this site out: http://www.timeanddate.com/
Nice time tools on that site. It informs us that in Portland, Oregon, daylight will last one minute and fifty-two seconds longer today than it did yesterday. By this coming Saturday we'll top two minutes' gain per day, at 2:02. Daily light will steadily increase until March 16, which is the first of four consecutive dates showing a gain of 3:13 apiece. This year's vernal equinox falls on the 20th, which is the first date showing a slight drop in the rate of increase, down to 3:12. From then on daylight will continue to lengthen until the summer solstice, but at a steadily decreasing rate. June 20th is the last day showing a gain; it'll be a whopping three seconds longer than the day before.
Sorry if that's tiresome stuff, but I'm obsessed with the days right now, being sick of the rainy season and eager to perceive any signs of spring. At least there's a week of mostly dry weather in the immediate forecast, and it's not a moment too soon.
Merely by typing "sunrise sunset [your location]" into g-g-g-g-yahoo search, you'll land on the time and date site. Planning a garden party? Want to know when the sun (or moon) will rise and set on May 17th, 2027? No problem! That and much, much more is at your fingertips with http://www.timeanddate.com/
Off to the studio now; something on bamboo flutes later today or tomorrow. --r.
January 15, 2008
Hey, Mumbles!
I've mentioned this before, but it's surprising how often messages such as the following appear on my voicemail:
Hi, this is Joe calling from Jersey, and I'm very interested in your flutes. Would you please call me back so we can discuss the options for placing an order? Anyway, my phone number is [unintelligible]. Thanks, hope to hear from you soon!
Many's the time I've listened to such messages eight or ten times, unsuccessfully trying to sort out the rushed and mumbled digits dictated therein. Here are two suggestions for those who'd like to discuss flutes:
1. If possible, don't use the phone. Email instead, and if you wish, include your phone # in the message.
2. If you insist on calling, please state your number slowly and clearly, preferably repeating it.
If a followup sale had resulted from just half of those unintelligible and unreturned calls, I'd have raised enough dough to survive the rest of this winter. Instead, these dankly frigid days find us in knead yet again.
That pun was unpremeditated, I swear-- it just bubbled up spontaneously! The fevered fermentation of an impishly overactive imagination often leads to such mischief, but that's the yeast of our worries right now.
Geez, I've been hanging out with yeast too much over the past few months; that's what winemaking will do to a dude. OK, back to flutes-- which really means that I should sign off now and get back to the dusty bits. More later today, perhaps... --r.
January 14, 2008
Misc
There are several nice unsold flutes sitting around the studio, and I haven't yet paid January's rent. Thank heavens for that 22-year track record with an easygoing landlord, eh? Also haven't had the stomach to put up more eBay auctions, which is stubbornly self-defeating in a way. It's just that it's such a tacky neighborhood...
Maybe it's time to go back to paying $1,200 five months in advance for an upscale arts and crafts show booth, then flying across the country, renting a car, and staying in a hotel for the duration of an exhausting three or four-day exhibition? It's about the only way to find those customers who won't bat an eye at the $600-1,000 price range -- pretty hard to crack that price point on the Internet when selling quirky bamboo flutes outside of a established tradition such as shakuhachi, etc.
On the other hand, the shows are infinitely more work and were on the verge of killing me. *Sigh* you just can't win... Anyway, we'll put up info and pics on currently-available flutes soon.
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Changing gears: let's complain some more about cellphone cameras! I'd briefly mentioned attending a Stevie Wonder concert last August, in a very nice, intimate outdoor amphitheater (~4,000 seats).
I carry a medium-size camera bag just about everywhere, which serves as a general-purpose Manpurse as well as holding a digital camera or two, a charger, compact tripods, etc. This was slung over my shoulder as we entered the amphitheater and the ticket-takers made the usual quick inspection of incoming bags. There was one compact camera in mine, which I hadn't even thought about as a potential issue-- certainly had no particular plans to take photos.
"Oh, you can't bring this camera into the concert," announced the bag inspector.
"Really? Well, how 'bout if I just promise not to use it? I really wasn't planning to anyway."
"Sorry," insisted the inspector. "We have a strict no-photography, no-camera rule; you'll have to store this elsewhere before entering the concert."
I was obliged to leave the head of the line and trek out to the parking lot, lock the camera in the car trunk, then trudge back (muttering in aggrieved annoyance all the while, you may be sure.)
Naturally you've guessed the rest of the story: throughout the entire concert, hundreds of people all around us were constantly taking pictures with their goddam cellphone cameras, and many even appeared to be sending snapshots to friends on the spot.
By rights, armed security guards should have been escorting such violators out of the venue by the score-- actually, the exemplary Tasing of just a few who objected would surely have kept the rest in line without further fuss. But noooo: these egregiously blatant violations went completely unpunished, while I'd had to return to the parking lot beforehand merely to stash a small camera!
Is that stupid or what? Either you have standards and you stick to them, or not. Why should these #!@*&%!!! cell-cam outlaws go unpunished-- after all, a a camera is a camera! What an utterly ridiculous double standard. DEATH TO THOSE WHO WIELD CELLPHONES INAPPROPRIATELY IN PUBLIC!
(Unfortunately, the concert was so good that I was too blissed out afterwards to whine, moan and complain bitterly to the staff while pointing out the outrageous inconsistency of their "no pictures" policy. That would have been fun! Oh well, maybe next time.) --r.
January 10, 2008
Shakuflutchi
I'd hoped to get to that transverse-flute utaguchi project in December (see Nov. 29 entry) but it didn't quite happen. This month for sure though, and I'm heading to the studio to work on it today. Finally got most of the new tools and supplies collected, including two very small but quite expensive specialty files, some scraps of 1/4" acrylic sheet, several Exacto saw and knife blades, and a couple of other odds and ends. Should be fun, and I'm looking forward muchly to posting pics.
Speaking of pictures, Flickr must die! In very short order they've run roughshod over the utility of Internet image searches: practically anything you look for these days yields page after tedious page of crappy Flickr pictures, many if not most of which were probably taken on chintzy cellphone cameras. On Flickr, everyone and their dog seems compelled to post several thousand photos dramatically documenting each and every aspect of their fascinating lives. (Actually I think the dogs are responsible for most of those photos since they certainly appear in disproportionate numbers.)
I'm starting to feel almost as old-school crotchety as Andy Rooney here, but to me a telephone is a telephone and a camera is a camera. Why would I want a chintzy camera built into my telephone? I have several CAMERAS for that purpose!
Even if for some bizarre reason I decided that a combined phone/camera would be a good idea after all, I'd want it done the other way around. Instead of tacking a cheap, low-quality piece of junk camera onto a phone, I'd add a phone to a good-quality camera! That would make a lot more sense if you ask me.
But you DIDN'T ask, so please pardon the crotchety Rooney-style rant. Hey, that's a TV reference: looks like my New Year resolution is holding up so far!
Veered off the track there; we were talking about flute utaguchis. Another idea I had years ago for a flute-shakuhachi hybrid was the... shakuflutchi. The shakuhachi has an extraordinary amount of pitch flexibility, and notes can readily be "bent" by a full step or more by varying the blowing angle and the amount of the flute's open end covered by the player's lower lip. Since this open top end of the shakuhachi is much larger than the embouchure hole of a typical transverse flute, there's a lot more room for varying the angle and lip coverage.
So why not make a transverse flute with an enormously oversize blowhole in order to allow for just such extra flexibility? The experimental ones I've made in the past worked out pretty well, but it was one of many interesting schemes that have been shunted aside and largely forgotten, since the real-world need to sell enough flutes to pay the bills absorbs a lot of energy that could otherwise be devoted to fascinating, novel experiments.
Those oversize-blowhole shakuflutchis featured a deeply concave lower-lip rest, and combining the oversize hole with a concave cut seemed to enhance the shakuhachi-like effects. However, I never got around to trying this with a lip plate: all the experimental shakuflutchi so far have been made with plain, extra-thick bamboo.
And then there's the utaguchi: so, on our experimental list this month is a revival of the shakuflutchi, with an added lip plate and an utaguchi! Things could get interesting indeed with this feature set.
By the way, the well-known American shakuhachi maker Monty Levenson sells endblown shak headjoints for modern metal flutes which appear to be quite popular. Monty dubbed his creation the "shakulute," but I prefer my coinage. Shakuflutchi soon! (By the way, the word shakuflutchi is both singular and plural, as is shakuhachi.) --r.
January 7, 2008
Conan O'Brien is a Clueless Goober
Conan O'Brien was slammed in the earlier entry just below, so we'd better provide context. When I used to work far into the night in the studio I'd sometimes have a small, battered black-and-white TV going beside the bench, and when "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" came on one night several years ago, the band's short opening number after the first commercial break featured -- of all things -- a flute! No, not an electric guitar or a wailing saxophone, but an actual flute, dude!
Isn't that refreshing? Sure nice to see that for a long-overdue change, right? Of course, one of the band's saxmen was doing the playing; many saxophonists double on the flute. The featured piece was the intro to "Heard it in a Love Song" by the Marshall Tucker Band, which is the only countryish-music outfit I'm aware of that prominently features flute.
The ditty in question sports a typical flute passage: a bouncy, bright, upbeat melody. As that Late Night band played, I thought to myself "It's nice to see them featuring flute for a change-- too bad they're using a somewhat stereotypical bouncy tune instead of something more edgy or unexpected. Oh well, at least it's a flute... you certainly don't see that every day."
But when the music stopped and the camera cut to Conan, he was staring at the band with a sour, disapproving expression.
"Ehhhhhhh-- I'm not digging the flute," he said. "To me, when I hear a flute, it just says Go to sleeeep..."
At that point O'Brien raised his arms and INCORRECTLY MIMED PLAYING A FLUTE, with both palms backward-facing, all ten fingers wiggling and an exaggerated, scrunched-up facial expression. After a couple more such wisecracks, he finally moved on and left me steaming with indignation. What a rube: as if that lightweight, breezy Marshall Tucker ditty was the only possible musical representation of the instrument!
I absolutely, positively guarantee that if *something* else had been played on the flute in a different style and musical context, he would have "dug" it just fine. Can't say just what would have worked for O'Brien, but SOMETHING else played on a flute would certainly have struck him as perfectly appropriate.
This is another of my pet peeves about the public's misunderstanding of musical instruments: they tend to conflate musical instruments with the musical styles and contexts in which they most typically appear. Must we describe the preconceptions inevitably associated with, for instance, the banjo, the electric guitar, the saxophone-- or the flute? Of course not: you know what I mean!
People just don't get that there are no boundaries in music: one could very well play punk banjo, heavy-metal flute, bluegrass saxophone, or classical electric guitar if packaged and performed convincingly!
Conan O'Brien had no business indiscriminately and ignorantly slamming the flute in general when what he was really disparaging was the way it was presented at that moment. This sort of confusion is commonplace, and flutists must battle such shallow preconceptions as much as any other instrumentalists, since the flute is universally known and carries longstanding mythological and cultural baggage.
Rant's not over yet! Here's the real kicker: the very next night, I was back in the studio at the same time; again, the TV was on and O'Brien's show started. The band played their customary opening bit: this time, it was a more typical, aggressive electric-guitar riff. When the camera cut to the host, O'Brien was beaming and nodding approvingly:
"Yeah-- I like that! And no flute!"
Now, that was really, REALLY too much. What a simpering, clueless fool. Conan O'Brien sucks!
--r.
I quit.
I quit. Years ago retirement seemed inconceivable, but now that I've been doing this for close to 25 years it's finally gotten old. I'll expect the first pension check in early February, thank you very much.
What a concept: a pension! I last visited Alaska in 1984, and ran into an old high school friend who was already drawing a pension-- In 1984! Yes: 24 years ago, one of my former schoolmates was receiving pension checks!
Turned out that she'd gone from HS straight into a cushy union job working for some company with a big Alaska Pipeline contract, and sticking with that gig for ten years had been enough to qualify her for "retirement" benefits. Sure wish I'd been smart enough to do that! But noooooo: instead, let's be "creative" and "artistic" and "independent" and "stupid."
--Just kidding! 2008 should be a Good Year if we can manage to avoid reading, seeing or hearing anything whatsoever about politics. Unfortunately, one of my main New Year resolutions is to watch twice as much television-- seriously! When I told the Swamp Witch about this resolution she laughed, observing that "Twice as much as none is still zero!" It's that bad: I watch so little TV that my cultural literacy has suffered horribly. So, could someone please explain to me what's supposed to be interesting about Jessica Simpson, for example?
I do have a flute-related anecdote about Conan O'Brien. He made a completely inappropriate, hugely ignorant and uninformed wisecrack about flutes several years ago, which I will never, ever forget. Conan O'Brien sucks Conan O'Brien is teh suck, as the "hep" kids say these days. More on that soon! Now hurry up with that pension check, junior.
23 skidoo,
--r.
January 2, 2008
Poster Putty Paean
We were supposed to post more flute-tuning material today, but let's take a short detour to sing the praises of poster putty! Where has this stuff been all my life? I wasn't aware that it even existed until quite recently, and finally bought a package last week-- what a great product! A small blob or two can be used to affix lightweight objects such as photos and posters (natch) to vertical surfaces, and they can easily be detached and relocated at will. Poster putty is also ideal for stabilizing heavier items on horizontal or oblique surfaces where they might otherwise shift around or topple. You could so totally use this stuff to attach a Star Wars statuette collection to your AMC Pacer's dashboard and they'd just, like, sit there with Jedi-worthy resolve, dude!
It'll also be extremely useful in photography; I've often had problems getting a flute to stay put at just the needed angle, and a bit of poster putty should frequently solve that problem. More on this exciting product tomorrow, along with a few links and some more tuning stuff. --r.
January 1, 2008
Still more on tuning
Let's kick off 2008 on the right foot by posting on bamboo flutes.
Tomorrow a new D minor is going out in the mail, along with a second D Major that I didn't make. The customer had mentioned that although he'd owned this other flute for quite some time and liked it, it had tuning issues, particularly in the second octave. It was made by *someone* who shall remain nameless but who has a very prominent Internet presence by bamboo-flute standards.
As we finalized the order, I suggested that the customer send this "problem" flute along with the money order for the new one: although offering no absolute guarantee, I was pretty confident sight-unseen that improvements could be made in short order. Sure enough, the flute turned out to be a prototypical "hippie-quality" flute, vast numbers of which are churned out annually. I've seen far worse and the tone wasn't bad at all, but octave tuning was pretty shaky indeed. Quoth the customer:
It's a low D and it was touted by its maker to be in standard (A=440) tune. He said it would be tuned electronically, and therefore would be infallible. Wrong. The first octave was in, but the second octave was out of tune.
--Ahh, it's the old "electronically tuned to A=440" schtick! This flute was a classic example of "wishful tuning" as I've dubbed it: it could be forced to play in tune with much strenuous effort, but that hardly makes for a pleasant musical experience! After all, the mark of a good flute is an ease of tone production along with a ready playability well in tune throughout its range. One shouldn't have to Fight the Flute in order to play it in tune.
At one point my customer had asked another well-known flutemaker about the tuning issue (this maker used to produce well-regarded bamboo flutes but now concentrates exclusively on wooden ones.) His reply was that "...a bamboo flute *could* be made to play in tune through its full range, but it's a tricky science."
True, it is a bit tricky, but it ain't rocket science! It's somewhat surprising that more bamboo flutemakers don't know how to make the necessary adjustments, but on the other hand bamboo flutemaking isn't exactly a field that attracts the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree... gulp Er, mea gulpa?
Sure enough, a half hour's effort vastly improved that hippie-quality flute. This is the second such rehab job I've done on someone else's mediocre instrument in the past few weeks, and perhaps there's a market for such services: for merely what you originally paid for the flute, I'll make it three times better or your money back!
Anyone can make idle claims about electronic tuning and A=440, but flutemaking is an inexact science requiring good judgement, experience, and talent-- which is more important than dry technical analysis. I've encountered very smart people with vastly more acoustical knowledge than I'll ever possess who still somehow managed to make mediocre flutes. There are many, many intangible aspects to this racket, which is what keeps it interesting-- and what ultimately elevates it to the realm of art.
More tomorrow in this general direction...
--r.
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