# Identifying Flute Material from Tone



## Kursat Christoff Pekgoz

Hello,

This question is for everyone but especially flute players. Ever wondered the extent to which a flute's material has an impact on its tone? Do you think your ear is sensitive enough to notice the difference between materials? Well, now you can find out for yourself.

I tried out four different flutes today:

1. Yamaha 212, nickel and silver alloy,
2. Pearl Dolce, pure silver,
3. Handmade wooden flute,
4. Miyazawa 9k handmade gold.

I played the same passage with each flute. Below are the anonymized sound clips. Can you identify the flutes from their tone alone? Also, which flute sounds the best in your opinion? Looking forward to your answers. As a small incentive, I am offering $20 to the first person who gets the sequence right.


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https://soundcloud.com/kursat_phd%2Fsets%2Fcan-you-guess-the-material-of-a-flute-from-its-tone

Kind regards,
KCP


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## Enthalpy

We hear only your breath, so the differences are impossible to tell. I suppose the microphone was at a wrong position.

Yes, there are big sound differences between flutes.

The material contributes little to these differences. The body temperature matters much more. The blow hole shape and the tone holes undercut, sure. The alignment of the partials I suppose. The material comes last, I doubt it can be heard over a computer, and a part of the difference is the playability, not the sound. Some wooden flutes sound very mellow, I suppose because the luthiers design the shape to match the musician's expectation. At Hammig, the wooden and metal flutes I tried sounded identically.

My trial of flute headjoints of varied materials there:
scienceforums
I did perceive a difference but only after 20mn provoking the instrument's weaknesses. A second pro flautist coincided with me while a third one noticed no difference at all. I trust my observations because they are not at all what I expected before the trial, and because the second flautist coincided exactly on the three materials.


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## Kursat Christoff Pekgoz

Enthalpy said:


> We hear only your breath, so the differences are impossible to tell. I suppose the microphone was at a wrong position.
> 
> Yes, there are big sound differences between flutes.
> 
> The material contributes little to these differences. The body temperature matters much more. The blow hole shape and the tone holes undercut, sure. The alignment of the partials I suppose. The material comes last, I doubt it can be heard over a computer, and a part of the difference is the playability, not the sound. Some wooden flutes sound very mellow, I suppose because the luthiers design the shape to match the musician's expectation. At Hammig, the wooden and metal flutes I tried sounded identically.
> 
> My trial of flute headjoints of varied materials there:
> scienceforums
> I did perceive a difference but only after 20mn provoking the instrument's weaknesses. A second pro flautist coincided with me while a third one noticed no difference at all. I trust my observations because they are not at all what I expected before the trial, and because the second flautist coincided exactly on the three materials.


Thanks for the response. I am intrigued by your experiment and I take it that you are a flute maker. Yes, the recording equipment was of low quality -- a middling cellphone, to be exact. I am inclined to think that the material of the flute has minimal impact on the tone, while the craftsmanship plays a major part. That being said, I was able to hit pianissimo high notes on the golden Miyazawa while I cannot achieve the same feat with my silver-nickel Yamaha. Again, this may be due to the superior craftsmanship of the golden flute (and not because gold is an inherently more musical element).

Which flute (among the sound samples) sounds the best, in your opinion?


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## Enthalpy

I can't make any difference from your records.

Yes, pp high notes and f low notes are one all-important feature to test on a flute. For that, the best flute among the (100?) I tried was the wooden Yamaha, by very far. But it sounds very velvety, which I like but does not fit every style, every room size, nor the taste of every flautist.

For the trials, Miyazawa had prepared 3 heads of shape "as identical as possible", of silver-plated nickel silver, plain silver, and their Pcm. Their seller in Germany invited 3 people, I ignore why I was in the pack with two pros, except that I tested many instruments and find quickly the weaknesses. The other flautist and I coincided that nickel silver and plain silver were undistinguishable while Pcm was slightly "better": easier low and high notes, medium more brilliant, détaché better. From hearing flautists and from their testimonies, silver is always brilliant while gold is warmer and its timbre more flexible. And: I expect the body's material to matter much more than the head's one.

Nickel silver flutes use to be medium level instruments with tone hole chimneys pulled from the body. These thin chimneys leave the body more flexible locally and allow no important undercutting below the chimneys. Silver body flutes in contrast use to have chimneys soldered on the body. These are thicker, they stiffen the body and leave room for a rounded transition to the bore. This difference matters certainly more than the material.

Too rounded transitions, and the instrument loses the brilliant tone. I suppose luthiers do exactly this when making a wooden flute, because the material alone wouldn't explain the difference. It might also be the main difference between silver and gold... Pay $$$$$ to get a bigger rounding radius.

I'm not an instrument maker up to now, and if I become an independent one, rather for percussions. I've been an inventor-physicist-engineer up to now, and I've played 6 instruments.


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## Kursat Christoff Pekgoz

Hello,

I can hear some difference between the recordings, although this may be because I was in the room playing the flutes, i.e. more acoustic exposure and bias from memory. I wonder what others would think of them. I should probably record the same clips with better recording equipment. Anyway, you may find the following research interesting:



https://ccrma.stanford.edu/marl/Coltman/documents/Coltman-1.06.pdf




https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228488924_Silver_gold_platinum-and_the_sound_of_the_flute



They conclude that the material has almost no impact on the tonality of the flute. That's interesting.

P.S. Since you have experience recording flutes, what do you think is the best position? How can I prevent my breathing from interfering with the flute's sound?


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## Enthalpy

I've read several papers claiming that instruments are all identical. That's typical *bad science*.

It took me 20min provoking the instrument's weaknesses before I convinced myself that I had found differences that I could reproduce. I played the instruments, so I also perceived differences in playability, not only in sound. How could listeners possibly distinguish instruments in 10s by hearing a scale?

Notice the spectral analysis in one paper. These ignorants imagine that a harmonic spectrum characterizes the sound, as if musical sounds were periodic. Every single person how did try to synthesize a musical sound from its spectrum knows that this fails miserably, but bad scientists keep propagating the initial gaffe by Helmholtz. The Pcm alloy makes a vibrant sound. Try to synthesize a vibrant sound from a harmonic spectrum!

Then the folklore of double-blind trials and statistics that lets nonsense look scientific. Man, the result of my trial was not what I had expected, same for the other flautist, and we coincided exactly. These are observations that I trust, not the mean value of garbage.

Such pseudo-scientists even negate the difference between violins, which are much bigger than between flutes.

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To record a flute, the microphone must be outside the air flow. Above the flute is a good start. For any instrument, it must be far enough, since some sound components and noises decrease faster with the distance. You can observe that your instrument sounds differently when playing near a wall: than you hear the near components better. A near microphone does the same. This must be avoided.


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