D-major flute "Splinter" complete.

[solarbird]

Splinter, (2007/11/4, D major)

Complete except for the rubber foot I need to figure out how to put in the bottom for use as a walking stick, tho' I have no real intension of actually doing that. Splinter is a bit under 140cm long, which is to say just over four and a half feet. If you balance him on your left shoulder when playing, the weight is a non-issue. The second octave is not bad - better than I might have expected, tho' not as good as Scar's, something I knew when I got into this project and does not bother me overmuch. A little heavy on the harmonics, as you'd expect for a beast with walls thicker than optimal.

The good part of that is that the rest of this bamboo sample has thinner walls and better geometry, so should behave very well. This was the not-so-useful end.

As much as anything else, Splinter is a flute for posing in silhouette. As a flute, he's a reasonable D-major with an absurdly long head. As a walking stick, I suppose he's as good as any other piece of bamboo that's been smoothed and oiled; he's bound to hell and back with good heavy nylon, so should resist cracking for a reasonably long time. As a staff, he's not bad except for the inevitable fragility; balance is okay; you go from playing position to a basic defensive stance in one motion; from there, you have an obvious set of three attacks in sequence, one motion each. And from playing position, he'd make a good thwackin' stick with which to chastise an unruly conductor. -_^ Of course, I'd hate for anyone to actually fight with a flute like this - bamboo just isn't strong enough. So borrow someone else's.

What'd I learn today from Splinter? A better way of starting bindings, resulting in more even tensioning, less wear on my thumbnails, and less frustration.

Another view:


Splinter

I had to stand on a kitchen stool to get the entire flute in frame.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Nice. What're you using for background in the second shot?

[solarbird]

A blanket. Well, a fake-fur-on-one-side, velour(?)-on-the-other-side blanket thing.

[blues-kun.livejournal.com]

That is so cool. Like something you'd expect a Final Fantasy character to use as a weapon.

[solarbird]

I wish bamboo was stronger. I'd totally be a serious pain in the ass with this thing at conventions. ^_^

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

That's not a flute; that's a _jo_.

To make it stronger just fill with expanding insulating foam. Of course, that would prevent it being used as a flute. :-) Maybe you could wrap it in fiberglass soaked in epoxy, and drill out the holes.

Hiding, now. :-)

[solarbird]

If it weren't for the weight, that'd be a half-good idea for the head portion - which is most of it.

When I am better at this then I will be able to do inlays, and when I can do inlays, I will be able to inlay all sorts of amusing stuff, some of which could be structural.

[arethinn]

What do you do with all these flutes?

I have an obsession with flutes, especially those of low pitch, even though I can't really play. (I can make a flute make the right noise but have no idea how to finger one, that is.)

[solarbird]

Several of them, I play. It's helpful to have bamboo flutes in a variety of keys, since, being inline flutes, accidentals are annoying. However, in the recent generation, Savage and Derringer were both just about getting back into practice - I knew Savage would be a disaster as a flute from the start, but I liked the bamboo as an ornamental thing so thought hey, good piece of practice bamboo. And that's about how that worked out - the second octave is a mess. Derringer I thought might be better than he turned out, but that partial cracking really kind of ruined any hopes in that direction. And again, really, the intent was just getting back into practice.

Scar is the first of the new series that I consider a properly good flute, and I've been playing her a bit, though again, by intent, she was just another practice flute. But the practice work that comes out good is fun. ^_^ Sadly, she's not in a really very useful key, but that's not inherently horrible or anything - it just reduces the playing time she'll see.

Splinter - the latest - was built substantially to test a new stick of bamboo - honestly, I wanted to get some feel for the characteristics of this large piece I bought - and also to revisit larger-scale flutemaking. Pleasantly, he's in a useful key (D major), and came out well; so both he and Scar are now exhibition flutes that can get some actual playing time.

What I'm hoping is that some of the people who saw older flutes like Popcorn - my backpack flute, the one I play most - and said things like, "hey, how much for you to make me one?" were serious and will consider throwing me dollars to do so. Scar may join Popcorn in my backpack, though I need to make a slipcase for her first.

BTW, the fingering for the first two octaves on these is pretty much trivial. Seriously, it's the same as an Irish whistle, just straight up and down the pipe.

[arethinn]

"hey, how much for you to make me one?" were serious and will consider throwing me dollars to do so.

See, that's what I was thinking, actually, but I dunno what I would do with it once I had it. I have a wooden flute already that simply sits in its slipcover because I have neither the opportunity nor the patience to learn, yet I still feel "I want to play the flute!"

Seriously, it's the same as an Irish whistle, just straight up and down the pipe.

I don't know how to play one of those either. I can play a straight recorder, the kind we did in elementary school, but that's it.

[solarbird]

In terms of fingering, it's not really any different than that old recorder, even. All the basic in-line instruments, at the lowest level, are fingered the same. All the difficulty in inline flutes comes in the handling of accidentals, of bending, and most of all, at the mouthpiece.

Seriously, get out the wooden flute, cover all the holes except the mouthpiece, get the lowest note you can out of it, then lift one finger at a time, starting at the far end and moving one hole at a time towards your mouth. It should sound like a scale.

[arethinn]

Oh, well, no, duh, I can do that (well, except that lowest note is always hard -- breath control yo). But it is not like a piano -- the spaces between the notes are not single steps. And I don't know, reading a piece of music, what fingering I should use to produce any given note, especially since I think the flute is in D, which means transposing any given piece of written music.

[solarbird]

Oh, okay.

Half-cover holes to make sounds between the note below and the note above. This takes practice and doing it a lot is annoying, which is why it's nice to have several flutes.

The flute will be in the key of the lowest note. So if the lowest note is a D, what you're playing is a D scale. It'll probably be D-major scale but could be D-minor. So if major, it'd be D, whole step to E, whole step to F#, half-step to G, whole-step to A, and so on.

Personally I play by ear, so don't worry about that part so much. ^_^