I agree with your comments, as I believe our brain sometimes prefer less perfect sound and finds some degree of distortion to be enjoyable.

The digital revolution is now decades old, but some people still prefer the "warmer" sound of vinyl LPs and many prefer (me included) the sound of tube amplifiers. There must be a reason for that.

Tube amplifiers aside(there's a real reason they sound better, because they produce distortion differently), I noticed this years ago when I had to chose between various models of clarinet(which I played at the time). The Yamaha sounded very clean and precise, yet lacked soul. The Selmer(this was before they went cheap and were still making top-notch models) one wasn't as precise, yet had a very organic sound.

Clean and sterile versus organic and pleasing. Of course, the Selmer was about 25% harder to play, but the tone was there if you worked that extra bit.

Plus, to be honest, most flutes sound a lot alike. There's not a lot of difference with most professional models anymore. Not when you add wood, glass, ceramic, and other flutes in the larger family into the picture. There's something that I find to be pleasing about a low-cost and very old-school approach to making music. I honestly play my Hall flute more lately than my Yamaha.

P.S. I highly recommend Hall's flutes. Don't let the cost fool you. I think we've become accustomed to paying thousands of dollars for what in essence is a pretty simple instrument.

I did not know about Hall flutes.

Just visited their WEB site, beautiful designs but very little tech information.

Is this a kind of traverse flute without any keys?

Do you know a place where I could see how's the fingering?

It seems they do not have a C flute (probably the C is unreachable by fingers without mechanical keys), so where do you get the music fo it?

Sorry for so many questions, I am curious, you know

Jose,
These flutes are actually more like fifes. They do have one in C called a piccolo. The key of the instrument isn't so much related to the fingerings as the relative pitch of the fingerings. For instance, if you finger a given fingering that is called a C on that instrument what concert pitch do you get. If you look at the FAQ page of the Hall flutes site, you'd see that they do have fingering charts. I would assume that the fingerings really don't change between the charts but the names of the notes do.

For example on the Concert flute the old traditional all closed fingering is actually the low D. It sounds a concert (non-transposed)D. So on the Baroque Traversiere, if you basically raise one finger from bottom to top, you'd get a D maj. Scale. It is a D major scale on the flute and other non-transposing instruments as well. This of course has been slightly changed on the modern Concert Flute by T. Boehm.

Thanks. I had not checked the FAQ section.

And I did not consider the C piccolo because I supposed it was in the range of the actual piccolos (I do not want to play those highs notes as I have concerns about my present hearing loss)

If you wnat to get into a different sort of sound on a budget,
http://www.rhythmband.com/aulosrec3.html
Check out the Traversos that they have in plastic. They say that they sould pretty good.

I kind of like the sound of the baroque flute in relation to the modern metallic ones. They are more relaxing and they don't take so much support.

If you do decide to get a hall flute, I would not recommend the low D flute unless you have large hands and long fingers. My husband bought one for me last Christmas and my hands are too small to play it. I might think about putting it on display or I will be selling it on Ebay later this year. The sound is beautiful.

Thanks. I do have quite long and thin fingers, maybe I could reach the last holes. Here in Spain it is very difficult to try one before buying. i.e I had never seen one before.

As per the plastic traversos, I will check, I also love their sound. After so much discussion on materials, I think that probably a plastic instrument should sound OK for my skill level right now.

Yes, it's a transverse flute as you noticed

It's inexpensive, zero maintainance, looks and sounds good... It's a lot like a bigger, better, recorder in many ways.

They *do* make a C if you ask(any key, really), but the thing is alto flute huge - but without any keys(so good luck fingering it). They have no plans to make add-on key mechanisms.

The D is large, but it plays like a normal flute or recorder, just without a low C. Ie - (nothing)...D..E..F..

**
Each flute is carefully hand tuned and shaped with a modern Boehm taper to produce a note range of two and one half octaves. Included with each flute is a fingering chart, dark green gift box, and a one year manufacturer’s full warranty against accidental breakage.
**

so i said before i ordered 2 piccolos from flute world to do some comparisons.

so i got them in. and the plastic one was in need of an adjustment so badly. a few of the keys didnt even close all the way. so i wait now for them to send me another. hopefully it will be within the next couple of days.

Hi and welcome back. Nice to see you are still following the thread

Nice. Now I have another "toy" to add to my collection...

Those who love "organic" sounds might like to check out this, for doubling on: http://xaphoon.com/

Some of us already own one of those. I've had mine for about 10 years now...

Joe B