This came up in another thread about violins.. Do wooden flutes sound the same as metal flutes? as an amateur maker, I say that it is my experience that they do, but there are obviously many other opinions. Are there any other makers out there who can support/contradict this view?
No.
Oh, you want details, huh? Sorry, my ex SO was a flute player (I can’t spell flautist). I know from listening that they sound different. The sound of a flute still gives me a …
Bye.
Peace,
mangeorge
Yes, the wooden flute has a more hollow sound while the metal flute resonates better. Wooden flutes are better for folk music and metal are better for orchestra type music. The type of metal the flute is made out of even changes the sound. Hope that helps!
Some will tell you that they sound alike because it is the column of air that vibrates not the flute itself. These people probably think drum machines sound good too.
lee, the tone deaf
My area of knowledge is more in pulse jets than flutes, but they’re distant cousins of each other.
In pulse jets, there are three sources of sound: combustion, resonance in air cavities, and resonance of the jet and anything near it. Unless you’re a dragon, it’d be the same in a flute except for the combustion part.
What I’m getting at is that two identical flutes, one in wood and another in metal will make the same noises from the air cavities (where most of the noise of the flute comes from). However, the resonances of all the bits will be different because of the different densities and strengths and such, so that one won’t sound like the other.
Once you take into account that wood flutes and metal flutes aren’t identical, the sound changes even more.
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- While in a big local music store, I noticed that they sell normal metal flutes, and also (what appear to be) clear-glass flutes. I was in Chicago a long time ago, and saw the same things there in a music store also. What’s up with the clear glass? - DougC
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I’m no expert, but I would think that the flute-player’s hands would dampen any resonances.
With my wooden flutes, I can’t feel any resonances, but I can definitely feel them with my silver flute. I won’t claim that adds much to the sound, however.
DougC, I’ve seen the glass flutes too, and tried one out. It was a little tough to play, but I keep thinking of buying one. By the way, one of the most beautiful antique flutes I’ve ever seen was a flute once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte, made of crystal. Filled me with avarice and desire…
I just heard a local NPR report on a flute making shop outside of Boston, where they make some of the best (and most expensive) flutes in the world. The craftspeople there were talking about how different metals all sound different, and they could easily tell the metals used (gold, silver, platinum, combinations) to make a flute by listening to it.
The ULR for the violin/flute/etc thread is: here I’ll just add a slight amplification to a question I had that wasn’t answered yet there, which is: How is it that the most expensive metals just happen to make flutes that sound the best? Copper, tin, iron, ceramic, glass, and granite just happen not to sound as “good”? I don’t think so. I think what we’ve got is buyers and instrument-makers convincing themselves that expensive material must sound better, and maybe even changing the instrument design so that cheap materials sound even worse.
lucwarm:“I’m no expert, but I would think that the flute-player’s hands would dampen any resonances”
Physics/engineer guy here…
No, there is a slight dampening of an instrument from someone holding it, but not a complete dampening. An easier instrument to notice the effect on would be on an acousitc guitar. There is a distinct difference in sound if the guitar is held lightly away from your body, and when you play the guitar with your body pressed against the back of the guitar. You can hear it with hand drums also (bongos). A player can change the resonance of the drum with their legs pressed against the chamber of the drum or their hands on the membrane.
Hands themselves on a flute would affect the resonance, but wouldn’t be enough to dampen resonance entirely.
While I have seen very good glass, ceramic and jade flutes, I must admit that the thought of making a flute from granite is almost painful. It’s not that it woud sound bad; it’s that it would be damn near impossible to make. Imagine boring long, precise holes to make granite tubes, reaming them for inside taper, then turning them precisely on the outside to get your wall thickness, then drilling side holes, and then fraising and fine tuning those side holes, and if you want keys, attaching keyposts and shaping the top surfacesof the holes to fit with pads… all without breaking your work. Not that it couldn’t be done, just that it would be an extremely difficult process.
I suspect that it would be far more expensive than a flute made from finest ebony.
Copper would not be as good a choice as brass, either, as brass is tougher as applied in flutes. Most Boehm system student flutes are brass with silver or nickel plate.
Tin would be more expensive than brass.
Iron would be harder to work, requiring higher temperatures than silver, copper, tin, brass, or bronze.
Platinum and titanium are VERY difficult to work. I’ve never played a flute made of either of these, although I would like to.
Bamboo makes some very nice flutes that sound very different.
In fact I’ve often wished I had some bamboo, but it doesn’t seem to grow here.
Cane ditto.
Here is a small excert from “The flute and flute playing”, by Theobald Boehm,(Dover, ISBN 0-486-21259-9) the inventor of the modern flute:
"Any variation of the hardness or brittleness of the material has a very great effect upon the timbre or quality of tone. Upon this point much experience is at hand, for flutes have been made of various kinds of wood, of ivory, crystal-glass, porcelain, rubber, papier-mache, and even of wax, and in every conceivable way to secure the various desired results. Heretofore, all of these researches have led back to the selection of very hard wood, until I succeeded in making flutes of silver and German silver, which for twenty years have rivalled the wood flute. [Silver flutes were first introduced by Boehm in 1847.] Notwithstanding this it is not possible to give a decisive answer to the question ‘Which is the best?’ "
This book, by the way, is a fascinating read.
I think a couple things go into this. First, I’d expect the primary properties of the material to affect the sound of the flute would be its rigidity, elasticity, and density. Accoustic energy loss in the flute material will affect the higher frequencies more, resulting in a less bright sound. This might all be able to be folded into a single parameter, fall-off of the higher frequncy amplitudes.
Malleable metals like copper, tin, lead, and also pure gold likely would have reduced amplitudes of the higher overtones. An alloy of copper like brass (copper + zinc), however, is much more rigid. Iron would rust, copper and tin would corrode. Has anyone said glass, ceramic, or granite flutes would sound bad? I’d suspect that concrete (mentioned in the other thread) would sound OK, but taste nasty.
I agree that when you get into brass versus gold (alloy) or silver, the cost and status of the material probably does start to play into it more than the intrinsic material properties. However, if you’re a flute maker, why not use more expensive materials in the flutes you put more effort into? As the cost of makling the flute rises, the material cost becomes less important in terms of added cost, and more important in terms of status (i.e. marketing). This can be true for wood also. So “more expensive materials make a better flute” may be partially a self-fulfilling statement, but that doesn’t make it not true.
Here is a link to the Boston NPR report on flutes: http://www.here-now.org/topics/_arts/al_020611.asp
And here’s a link to Brannen Flutes: http://www.brannenflutes.com/ Check out their price list, ouch!
I don’t know exactly how the weight of the materials differ, but it was mentioned in the story that a professional musician has to hold the flute at an awkward position for an extended period. Not sure I’d like to try that with a concrete instrument.
Silver = approx 655 lbs/cubic foot
concrete (w/ brick aggregate and lime mortar) = 120 lbs/cu ft, lighter without the aggregate.
Surprising, isn’t it?
But of course, the concrete flute would have to be thicker than the silver one…
Before I became disabled, I built pipe organs from scratch. I made everything in my shop except the metal pipes, which I had made in Holland. I made my own wood pipes.
Instruments that rely on the material it’s made from to amplify and color the sound must be made of materials that have been found to work well for that purpose, e.g. stringed instruments, pianos, drums etc. The exception being solid body electric guitars.
Instruments that produce sound by vibrating a column of air, e.g. organ pipes, flutes etc. don’t need to be made of any special material so long as it is strong enough to maintain it’s shape. I could make a pipe out of crate lumber and one of walnut with no audible difference. There is an audible difference between metal and wood but this is mostly because of the thickness of the wood compared with the metal.
Reed instruments, e.g. oboe, bassoon, krummhorn are somewhat affected by what they are made of, as are reed activated organ pipes.
I talked with a friend today who was a music teacher, and who owns several flutes.
He said that it’s true that all flutes sound alike above a certain thickness, but for normal metal thicknesses, there was absolutely no question in his mind that there was a difference between metals.
In fact, he lamented that the brass flute with silver plate (to avoid contact with poisonous brass) had gone out of fashion, because apparently brass makes an excellent flute.
He described the differences among metal flutes as degrees of being more mellow and rich.
So, addressing the OP, since wood flutes are so thick the size of the wall doesn’t make any difference, metal flutes of normal thickness never sound the same as wooden flutes.
I’m almost positive that they sound the same–I seem to recall a news story on this very subject a few years ago, in which scientists had recorded notes played on different flutes (I think they used an air hose, rather than a human being, for consistency) and no musical expert they brought in was able to tell the difference. The rub of the article was that it was therefore unnecessary to cut down exotic, endangered rainforest hardwoods to make expensive flutes, since they all sound the same anyhoo.
I’ll see if I can find a cite.
I seem to recall a study that if you take different types of instruments and make a recording of the same note from each, and then chop off the very beginning, or creation of the note, then it is virtually impossible to tell from the duration of that note which instrument is which. Unlike the helpful toadspittle, I won’t be trying to find a cite for it. 
I studied this extensively in high school and college physics and I would not believe such a study, although “virtually impossible to tell” might mean perception of the human ear vs. the actual physical characteristics, which might have (just) a grain of truth.
A sound, particularly a musical one, has a temporal envelope (its characteristics as they change through time) comprising attack, sustain, and decay. The attack of a musical note is a very distinctive attribute of a musical instrument, how it gets from silence to steady-state vibration (the beginning of the note, as you mention). The decay is how the sound falls back to silence when no more energy is being supplied (for drums, pianos and acoustic guitars, decay starts pretty much right after attack since no energy continues to be supplied). The sustain is the middle part where energy is being supplied to keep the vibration going. The sustain has a waveform that comprises the fundemental frequency for the note (for concert A the fundamental is 440Hz) plus the overtones, which are various whole-number multiples of the fundamental. It is the proportions of how these overtones are mixed that also give an instrument its distinctive sound.
Although an untrained ear might have a hard time telling the difference between two similar instruments without the attack, I believe just about anyone could tell the difference between a flute, trumpet, and violin.
What level of training would be required and whether it’s even possible to hear the difference between metal flutes of slightly different materials is a different kettle of fish. I would be most interested in seeing double-blind tests of this theory. There have been some humorous results in controlled wine-tastings by supposed experts.