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Re: Blow-Out

Author: wrowand
Date: 2005-07-22 02:02

Hi Mike:
I'm not a flutist so I have no direct experience with the differences between silver and gold flutes -- but I do admit to being skeptical in the past about claims of different tonalities attributed to the body material. I've read that Marcel Moyse played on a silver-plated nickel-silver flute and that he firmly believed that there was no need for anything else. I've also heard flute players claim that a jewel in the end plug of their headjoint made a difference in the sound. To this I would just roll my eyes and go back to working on my reeds.

A flute is very different from an oboe though, and I *do* have a lot of experience with those. Blow-out is not so subtle a thing. Not only is it noticeable to the person who owns the instrument but it is frequently noticeable to others that try it. A friend of mine teaches oboe at a university in Texas and when I saw her at the IDRS conference she was trying oboes and asked me if I'd try hers. Her oboe had a very unstable high A (first ledger line) -- so unstable that she never would have bought it if it had had that problem when it was new. The problem was obvious to me when I tried the instrument, and to her, but she'd learned to cope with it over time. No one listening to her play would have noticed the instability but unstable notes are very noticeable to the player.

Instrumental music making is not an uncontrolled system. The performer hears what is coming from the instrument and makes minute adjustments which affect how an instrument feels to him. Perhaps there's a way of measuring this objectively, but for myself I'm not so concerned. It would be a bit like wondering whether the light will come through the window.

-Woody

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Blow-Out new

Bill_D

2004-06-21 09:32