Shop Notes Blog
A lot of my blogs talk about how my flute designs have changed over time, or how these changes were inspired. Hopefully this is interesting! But since you are reading a blog in the Shop Notes section, I have to assume that you are a fellow flute-geek and enjoy hearing about weird technical details or thoughts on the subject of flute-craft.
One of the “moving targets” in my own personal flute journey is deciding what to make and offer for sale. This is not easy at times because quite often my own inclinations are at odds with the reality of making a living at my craft. There are all sorts of woodwinds that I’d like to make, simply because they interest me or present a challenge. Many (if not most) of these detours would not lead to anything that is particularly in demand. I routinely have to turn aside from something that interests me, because it is not what you might call commercially viable. In the real world, that’s a big thing, and I have to severely limit the experimentation-for-its-own-sake type of wanderings that I’m naturally inclined to indulge in.
But every so often I’ll jump the fence and go rambling around chasing some inspiration that flitted by, and when I’m really lucky this turns out to be a great idea. That just happened recently. Not only did it lead to a great idea, it also led to the aforementioned paradigm shift in my flute designs that is (in my view) an improvement on multiple levels.
The great idea that happened is the Quimera ™. The word “Quimera” is Spanish for “Chimera”, the mythical creature that is made up of several different animals. It is used also as a literary description (lower case “c” chimera) to describe something that is a hybrid of two different things. This name, which was suggested by some friends of mine, is the perfect description for the happy inspiration that I chased one day, and the unexpected result that came about in the wake of that. I was making a quenacho, which is a flute of Andean origin—a quena in a lower key, essentially. These flutes have really distinct voices—very full and robust, with a hint of airiness (I describe it as the whisper of wind in tall grass). It is a delightful voice, and they have a terrific response—smooth and powerful. But they usually play a diatonic major scale (do re mi). I decided that they would benefit from a different scale, so giving in to a personal bias, I gave them the same scale as the Chinese xiao. This took a bit of tweaking, for sure. Usually one doesn’t just slap a scale onto a given flute and have an instant result! To make it work there is a prototyping process that involves moving and resizing finger holes, balancing intonation, etc.. But the first experiment I made was successful enough to provide proof-of-concept and inspire me to pursue it. I gave it a Spanish name because I liked tipping my hat to its Andean origins.
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m really into the xiao—it is my personal “desert island flute”. Super versatile, nuanced and just amazing. I’ve spent the last 15 years refining my xiao designs, and it is still ongoing. In fact, the new Quimera ™ actually led to an enhancement of my xiao designs, but I’ll get to that in a minute!
The result of putting a xiao scale onto a quenacho was profound. It took two instruments that I love and gave birth to something that was neither of them, and yet partook of both. A chimera.
As usual, I wasn’t going to rely on my own opinion, because I do have my biases and I can’t always imagine what musical contexts the flute might be useful in. To that end, I turned to my small cadre of “flute testers”, which is a trio of professional musicians with deep backgrounds in woodwinds. I sent a prototype on tour to each of them and asked for their feedback.
I don’t know that I’ve ever received such unanimously resounding praise for any new flute creation! They were all strongly enthusiastic, each of them saying “WOW!”. That was the ultimate confirmation, and at that point I knew that I was onto something. So the Quimera ™ was duly added to my flute catalog.
But that’s not the end of the story, since we are talking about paradigms.
Some years back I was experimenting with my quena line. I had been making quena for a bit, and in my quest for a really well balanced instrument I had tried a number of variations, some traditional and others less so. The quena is often plagued by intonation problems, which basically means that it is challenging to find one where the second octave plays in good tune with the first octave without the player having to execute some real feats of technique. Most traditional quena that I had played had a flat second octave due to their cylindrical bore, whereas tapered bore quena try to compensate for this, but they almost always play too sharp in the second octave! Very frustrating!
Well, at some point I got to thinking about the Indian bansuri. This is a cylindrical bore instrument which (when well made) has excellent tuning balance. How does it manage this? In short, it is a combination of very thin walls and larger finger holes, coupled with proper placement of the stopper. The size of the holes, helps, but a crucial factor is thin walls. Why is this?
The simplest way to put it is that when you drill a hole into a cylindrical bore flute in order to achieve a certain note, the location of that hole is only optimal for one of the octaves: either the first or the second. Let’s say the note is G. If I drill a hole of a certain size on the body of the flute so as to make the first octave G play in tune, the second octave G is going to be a bit flat. That’s because the optimal location for the hole is different for each octave. Ideally, if you want that same hole to play the second octave in tune, it needs to move down the bore a couple of millimeters.
If you make a flute that has large finger holes (or oval shaped holes) you can theoretically span both of the optimal locations. Undercutting the hole toward the foot of the flute helps as well. But the thinner the walls of the flute, the closer together those optimal points get to be.
The reason so many folk flutes have thicker walls has to do with the materials that are traditionally used rather than a deliberate design decision. If the flute was traditionally made from bamboo, then the maker is going to work with what they have and adapt to the dimensions of their material. Makers of North Indian bansuri use Assam bamboo, which is a naturally thin-walled material, so their designs allow for excellent second octave accuracy (though there is a bit more to it than just the thin walls).
And makers of wooden flutes might choose thicker walls on their instruments for reasons that have nothing to do with tuning. A thicker walled flute is sturdier and less likely to break. And it is much easier to craft instruments that have more substantial walls. Crafting a hollow tube made of wood to the point where the walls are just a couple of millimeters thick can be quite tricky, so most makers don’t attempt to go quite that thin.
In my early experiments with making wooden bansuri I had perfected a method of making very thin walled flutes without any mishaps, and I’ve successfully created flutes with walls that are a single millimeter thick! I don’t recommend going quite that thin because that’s getting pretty fragile. It’s like a Pepperidge Farms pastry straw. But I have been making flutes with walls that are about two millimeters thick and that is magic.
The flutes are wonderfully lightweight to hold, the thinned walls make for superb response and tuning—these things really sing. I believe that from a sonic perspective this is next-level development, and I’m actually applying this principle to all of my flutes. This means that they all have a more slender profile, but they also have improved intonation. But yes, they are more fragile.
My thinking is that most serious players of woodwinds are not tossing their flutes around in a careless fashion, leaving them laying on the couch where someone might sit on them, etc.. So while a thin-walled flute might be relatively more fragile, this won’t matter at all if the player is taking reasonable care in handling them. The idea behind this is to emphasize function over form. The most important thing is that a flute is an instrument first, so whatever I do to enhance performance is going to be prioritized over other concerns such as appearance or the ability to endure rough handling. My assumption is that players are going to value performance more than anything else.
This does not mean that I don’t care about appearance. In fact, the look of my instruments is not fundamentally changed by this design modification. To the critical eye, they will perhaps appear slightly more streamlined in their profile. In reality, thinning the walls doesn’t radically reduce the girth of the flute, and I can imagine many players not even noticing unless it is pointed out to them. When you pick up the flute you can feel that it is a bit lighter in the hand, and I personally think this is a very desirable quality. If I’m playing a flute for an extended period of time, the lighter the better. Heavy flutes can cause fatigue over time. For example, I’ve made some shakuhachi out of very dense materials in the past, and holding and playing them for a long session is noticeably tiring. In this sense, light is good.
Even though I’m applying this design principle to all of my flutes, for some of them it is not going to result in a difference. My bansuri, Simple Zen shakuhachi, quena and quenacho already have thin walls—they are not getting any thinner! But my end-blown flutes, Essential flutes and xiao are all going to get trimmed down a bit in pursuit of improved intonation. These are subtle changes and I believe that the improvements will be relatively nuanced, but as I often say the difference between “good” and “great” is sometimes very, very small!
Published Friday, September 13, 2024