by Ben Power » Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:17 pm
I'm inclined to agree about the holes and air being what one feels—the same is true of wooden flutes, though with bigger holes. They also seem to do it more after being played for some time (when the bore is wholly sealed with moisture?). somewhat tangentally, I was once visiting Desi Seery, the Uilleann pipemaker up in Greystones, South of Dublin. Desi is a great believer in not wood, being one of the first to consistently turn out Irish instruments in Delrin, some of which were (and are I suppose, as they're more or less indestructible) very good. He used to take an old broken centre joint of a wrecked wooden flute and smash it to smivs on his bench vice, and then take the centre joint of one of his delrin models, bash the vice with it, throw it on the ground and dance a step on it, and then pick it up, put a flute together with it and play a tune, to make his point. Anyway, while I was there, I noticed a silver chanter on the wall, and upon asking about it was told it was stainless steel. Apparently someone had told him "it couldn't be done" and he'd taken it personally. He said it played fine, but didn't sound very good. Now one of them would have to be pretty reflective of vibration I'd have thought, and not at all absorbent of sound waves. Nor do wooden flutes tend to sound the same as the metal ones. Perhaps the vibrational absorbance of the wood is precisely one of the characteristics that speaks to the tone and, as such, we'd be able to feel it? Still much less than the air on the fingers though I'd have thought. What about on the right thumb? Do you feel it there?