Flute acoustics: measurement, modelling and design - School of ...

2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
and the position and size of such holes is a compromise. Existing instruments are therefore
not perfect and even the idea of perfection in this context is contestable. Instruments usually
change gradually in response to musical tastes and performance demands. There are some
notable exceptions—such as Boehm’s development of the modern flute and the invention of
the saxophone by Adolph Sax in the 19th century. Instrument makers vary in their approach to
instrument design, some guided primarily by the work of earlier makers and simple rules-ofthumb,
while others are more rigourous and acoustically informed. In most cases, however, an
element of trial-and-error is inevitably involved.
In the light of this, one of the aims of music acoustics is to help makers: to better understand
the physics of musical instruments and to use this knowledge to make better instruments, or
even just to make good instruments more quickly or with less cost. Such is the goal of this thesis.
The task is subtle and requires a high degree of precision, since the human ear is sensitive
to minute changes in pitch and timbre, and any physical model needs to match that sensitivity.
There are also many constraints on the design of musical instruments (determined by such
things as the size of a player’s hands) and new designs need to fit within these constraints.
1.2 THE FLUTE MAKER, THE CURATOR AND THE SOFTWARE ENGINEER
This project presented the opportunity to bring together three diverse fields, experts in which
might not typically find themselves in collaboration.
Terry McGee (shown at his mill in Figure 1.1) is an Australian maker of wooden flutes in
the classical style. His flutes are shipped worldwide, particularly to players of Irish traditional
music, of which he is one. Terry’s designs are based on popular historical instruments from
the classical period (late 18th to early 19th centuries), but he regularly modifies his designs to
improve intonation and better to suit customers’ requirements. Terry’s website ∗ has extensive information on the history of flute making, his designs
and innovations, and flute performance.
The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney houses a large collection of musical instruments. The
museum has an extensive range of early flutes, many of which are made of wood and are now
unplayable due to cracking or other mechanical defects. The museum’s curator of musical instruments,
Michael Lee, is interested in the playing characteristics and intonation of these old
instruments. This might potentially be used to trace the history of flute development, as well
as changes in tuning and temperament over the last few hundred years.
The Virtual Flute is a web service built and maintained by software engineer Andrew Botros
that uses a semi-empirical model of the impedance of the modern flute, based on measurements
performed at the Music Acoustics Laboratory at the University of New South Wales. The
web service calculates the impedance of the modern flute for any of its 39 744 possible acoustic
configurations and provides players with tuning, timbre and playability predictions for these
fingerings (Botros et al. 2006). The web service has many and diverse applications among players
and composers such as finding new fingering combinations for difficult-to-play phrases,
∗ A copy of this website archived by the National Library of Australia is available at .