# Woodwinds made of modern materials **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 12, 2017, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woodwinds-made-of-modern-materials/784330 "2017-04-12T16:47:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2017, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woodwinds-made-of-modern-materials/784330/41 "2017-04-14T03:23:42Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Edgard Varese, Frank Zappa’s favorite avant-garde composer, wrote the lovely _Density 21.5_ in 1936 in honor of NY Philharmonic principal flute player\* Georges Barerre’s brand-new platinum flute. > > Now _I_ want a platinum flute. > > - Hah! Avoided controversy! I preferred flautist because that was the term preferred by the hot, young flautists I crushed on in '72. Give me a better reason. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2017, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woodwinds-made-of-modern-materials/784330/42 "2017-04-14T03:36:28Z")
Daughter had a rented wooden clarinet. She sounded okay. I bought her a rather nice plastic instrument. Within her limited limitations she sounded fine. Back when I had 3D hearing I laughed while, in concert, her sister pretended to play. Her fingering and bow position were perfect, but no sound emminated from her violin. “I saw what you didn’t do. It must be hard to come this \>\< close and not play a note.” “It’s not so hard.” She is truly my daughter. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2017, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woodwinds-made-of-modern-materials/784330/43 "2017-04-14T14:52:06Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I preferred flautist because that was the term preferred by the hot, young flautists I crushed on in '72. Give me a better reason. 😉 Nope, that’s the best reason I can think of, too. To me, “flautist” sounds pretentious and “flutist” sounds kinda goofy. So I generally say “flute player.” ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2017, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woodwinds-made-of-modern-materials/784330/44 "2017-04-14T15:34:29Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Make them out of bathroom tiles – because, as well all know, everyone’s voice sounds better in the bath than anywhere else. > > (Love your use of technical terms! That’s acoustical science that we can actually comprehend!) Yeah, I have all the good words!! 😉 Bathroom Tiles - great topic for this thread. So, kidding aside, actually, they’d stink to build an instrument out of. The beauty of a tiled room is that it is very reflective. So if you beam some good sounding stuff at it, it bounces around and kinda harmonizes with itself/thickens itself up, if that makes sense. If you beam a broad signal at it, it will bounce that just fine, too, resulting in a very clashy, bright, yucky noisecloud, yes? But the value of the tiles are second-order: you have already used the \*instrument itself \*(or your voice) to dampen out the bads and project the good frequencies. The tiles then add reverb to that good signal. If you were to make an instrument out of something so reflective, you’d have to worry about how loud it was and how clashy all of the harmonics are that it would be delivering. Even a metal resonator/slide guitar has a speaker cone transducing the signal and dampening out some of the ice-pickiness in the original tone. One other approach to this thread: **Chronos** , I get it: Science uber Alles especially on the ignorance-fighting Dope. And, to be clear, dampening, to my knowledge is something seen on spectral analyzers. But this is all wrapped in something a bit more complex: a player’s tone. When a player sounds like _themselves_ on pretty much any instrument, and when blind evaluations show that Strads are often not preferred over excellent modern examples, etc, it can be easy to throw the Baby Art out with the Woo Bathwater. Here’s what I experience as a long-time player: My tone - how I sound like \*me \*across instruments - is based on what I’ve brought and the instruments I’ve played/learned on. Crappy instruments can have their specific appeal, and excellent instruments are typically defined as “excellent” because they reward better technique with better tone. You pick up habits and ticks, good and bad, over the years. Once I have that deeply ingrained approach, I bring that to any instrument. Barring the limitations of something truly crappy, I bring what I’ve learned to most instruments. So when I hear Charlie Parker or Art Pepper on a plastic horn, I hear the player, I don’t think “man, what idiots for thinking a Selmer sax matters.” So do woodwinds of different materials provide different tones? Yep. Does a player trying them out side by side still, by and large, sound the same? Typically, yes. In the end, I just know what works for me, and if that’s delusion, cool. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2017, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woodwinds-made-of-modern-materials/784330/45 "2017-04-14T15:40:40Z")
Oh, quality certainly matters. I think that for woodwinds, the biggest difference is usually the seals. And higher-quality instruments are usually made out of more expensive materials. But that doesn’t mean that the material itself matters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woodwinds-made-of-modern-materials/784330.md?page=2)