The Early Business
Flute production at that time was, and still is, dominated by American and Japanese makers. In earlier times the better instruments came from Germany or France while English makers and players followed a long tradition of using wood rather than metal. Fashion for the all-silver “French style” swept all before it during the 1960s and the English makers began to disappear.
Meanwhile, many of the leading London players had developed a passion for rebuilt 19thC Parisian flutes, claiming them to have a far more beautiful sound than anything coming out of American or Asian factories. The trouble was that these old flutes had been around a bit and were very delicate, having thin tubes and notoriously unreliable mechanism. So it seemed to us neophytes that here was our starting point: we would try to emulate these expressive instruments but improve their mechanicals with the help of some modern materials. Lots of necks sticking out here for the simple reason that you don’t “copy” something by altering its fundamental composition! But unless you do, nothing much will be learnt.
To avoid having to delve into the history of the flute, for that is well beyond the scope of this article, I will simply state that we decided to keep to a relatively thin silver tube, around 0.013” wall, and try stainless steel for the keywork instead of the usual silver or nickel silver. Steel would be lighter and stiffer than the traditional metals and we planned to inlay some of it with polished black plastic to lighten it further. We had several other ideas, some of which were tried out in prototypes and test rigs but the design soon settled down to a broadly conventional flute with a highly responsive action that did in fact sound quite like those Paris flutes.
My role in all this was to make the keywork and fit it to the handmade tubes supplied somewhat erratically by John. I also did all the finishing work and got them to play properly under my wife’s guidance. Thirty years later I am doing the whole thing with the exception of head joints, which as mentioned earlier are better bought from specialists. Most of my customers already own a good head joint that they want to carry on using in a new flute so it makes good commercial sense to do it this way.
The requirement
What makes a flute good enough for a fine player? This question has of course dogged the lives of every instrument builder since the beginning of written music. Musical performance of every sort is a highly competitive and emotionally charged business. There are always many more musicians than available jobs and only the best will earn a living by playing alone. So their instruments are of vital importance in giving them the edge. Here is a list of the basic qualities of any wind instrument:
It must:
- play in tune
- have a highly reliable mechanism (usually referred to as “keywork”)
- be responsive to the tonal needs of the player
- have a focussed, resonant sound that projects well
- play evenly from bottom to top
Taking these points in turn,
1. The tuning of any wind instrument is a compromise. You are trying to get all 12 notes in each of three octaves as near to “equal temperament” (as a piano keyboard) as possible. This is theoretically impossible but every generation of makers and players sees an improvement. The exact position and diameter of every tone hole is determined by a mixture of maths and playing experience. The idea is to make playing “in tune” as easy as possible with the minimum of embouchure change. Nowadays we have got pretty near.
2. Properly engineered keywork is vital. All the holes on a flute are covered by thin cups or keys, each containing a soft pad to make an airtight seal. With only 9 active fingers (the right hand thumb is used for support only) some of the keys are closed automatically by others, involving a number of clutch mechanisms. Each pad must close off its tone hole completely and positively with the absolute minimum of finger pressure. If there is a small leak the flute will not play properly; it will lack power and resonance. So keywork has to be precise, light in weight and hard-wearing enough to withstand the rigours of daily practice, travel and changing atmospheres. And, of course, comfortable. Rather like a satellite, once it leaves the workshop, the flute is on its own out there, receiving little attention and sometimes no maintenance for years.
3,4 & 5. Flute sound should be anything but bland and monotonic. A good player will expect to produce a whole palette of colour and dynamic according to the demands of the music. Nobody knows exactly how this is achieved, some instruments enabling these variations more easily than others. American flutes tend to be heavy and thick-walled. This gives them raw power but often at the expense of expressiveness. They have a tendency to limit the colour spectrum and impose their own idea of flute sound upon the player. I am convinced that too much weight in the keywork has a bad effect: a sort of deadening. Different players can get a different response from the same instrument, partly because the acoustic system includes the oral cavity; everyone’s embouchure, and of course skill level, is unique too. Players know instinctively what they want from their instrument and it is the maker’s job to interpret this as best he can; he is a “tool maker” and intuition is often a better guide than physics.
Another major consideration is that most flutes will form part of the orchestral woodwind section where they have to blend. The standard repertoire comprises a vast amount written in previous centuries as well as our own by composers familiar with earlier, sometimes more primitive, versions of the modern instruments we know. You cannot therefore introduce a radically new sound into the mix. The musical profession is a conservative world that tolerates only minute incremental changes. Anything the maker can introduce that improves the ease and flexibility of the playing experience is good because the player is then able to concentrate solely on the music without worrying about the instrument. He wants the best tool for the job. This should be the maker’s goal, pure and simple.
The tube
This is the acoustic heart of every wind instrument, containing the air column which is set in vibration by a rapid alternation of eddy currents around the embouchure hole. (Or in the case of the oboe, clarinet and bassoon by the reed vibration) The body tube of a flute is cylindrical and has a bore of 19mm and a wall thickness (varying between makers) of 0.012” to 0.018”. (The two units of measurement may be characteristic of our times, the original work on the “modern” flute having been done chiefly by Theobald Boehm in Germany during the mid 19thC while later developments were mostly English or American). The default material is silver. This is far too expensive for the millions of factory produced instruments so nickel silver (a copper/nickel alloy) is used instead for the cheaper instruments and then silver plated. Gold is also used for some high end flutes and occasionally platinum. Other exotic materials such as pure tin, glass, even rock crystal, have been tried too but usually end up in museums. The tube material does have an important secondary effect on the sound but practicality and hygiene considerations have a part to play – precious metals are less reactive to the kind of stuff likely to be deposited on them.
I use silver exclusively and the seamless tubing is manufactured especially for me in Birmingham. I discovered recently on a visit to the works that, in place of the sophisticated CNC plant that I had always imagined necessary for the high quality production of such tube, it is actually made more or less by hand by the same fellow who has been doing it for nearly 30 years! He has become better and better at getting it perfectly round and within tolerance and it was nice to be able to compliment him personally. The tube starts life as a thick-walled tubular casting. It is then drawn down progressively through steel die plates on to a series of steel mandrels until it is several metres long. Constant annealing is required and scrupulous cleanliness to prevent pits and scars. Various other diameters are also needed for tone hole saddles and sockets (see fig 1 for explanation of terms).
