i'm really confused how the fingering works on flute. I understand that you can achieve different notes by the fingering but i dont understand the logic behind the production of the notes. I mean how can one note be a combination of two notes (i.e. 2 open holes)? and how comes the Bb thumb key is both Bb and B. its really confusing and i can find a logical explanation anywhere. is it simply a case of 'don't question, just accept it' in which case you are required to just remember the fingering combinations or is there a logical explanation to getting the notes. i have experience with string instruments and getting notes on those is simple i.e. you know moving up by a finger width raises note by half, is the fulte anything like that?

there is a logic to it, for example the b key and the thumb Bb are different keys that produce different notes...

get a good teacher to explain this to you...

To understand this more easily, start with the C# in the second octave (all holes open). Next, go down chromatically to C and notice that one hole is closed. Next, go to B and notice that yet another hole is closed. Now, if you finger Bb using the thumb key, you will notice that yet another hole is closed.

This same basic pattern occurs (sometimes with two additional holes being closed) as you go down the rest of the scale. Just take note of which holes are open and which holes are closed.

Every note above C# is a harmonic, so that's where it gets complicated. To understand the fingerings for those notes you will need to study acoustics. I'm no expert there, so you'll need to refer to others on that topic.



<Added>

I forgot to mention that many keys (like the thumb Bb key) trigger other holes to close. You should study each key of the flute and find out which holes close when you press that key. You might be surprised!

I hope this helps. Good luck!

I mean how can one note be a combination of two notes (i.e. 2 open holes)?

Presumably you mean two non-adjacent open holes. It should be easy for a string player to see how progressively opening contiguous holes effectively shortens the length of the vibrating tube.

is it simply a case of 'don't question, just accept it' in which case you are required to just remember the fingering combinations or is there a logical explanation to getting the notes.

I’m not a flautist, but my experience with musicians in general suggests that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is indeed a case “don’t question, just accept it” (although I could put it much less politely). The principles of brass instrument fingering, for example, are childishly simple, and yet most brass instrumentalists haven’t a clue. They simply push down the valves they’ve been taught to push down.

Note that "ask a teacher" is an evasion. Note that being proffered URL's is at best a deferment--and in this case the URL's don't address the question of non-adjacent open holes. Note that I haven’t addressed it either. (I vow to set to work on the problem though).

The descriptions in the URLs are not wrong but they are also less helpful than they could be because they place the emphasis on how the air is moving not the vibration pattern.

Consider a guitar or violin string. When the string is plucked it is seen to vibrate with the ends (obviously)stationary. The frequency of the note increases when the string is reduced in length, doubling the frequency when the length is halved (ie its inversely proportional).

The vibration in a brass or woodwind instrument is similar but also different in a very important way. The air at both ends of the tube is vibrating - at the frequency of the note. For lowest (fundamental) note of that length of tube halfway along the air is not vibrating (this is known as a stationary point or node). This pattern of vibration - known as a standing wave - is essential to get an instrument to resonate and especially in a brass instrument the larger size of the bell end means that the magnitude of the vibration is larger - increasing the volume of the note.

When teaching about vibrating columns of air it is usual at this juncture to discuss church organ pipes. Such pipes can be closed or open at one end. A pipe with a closed end produces a note which half the frequency (ie an octave lower) as the same length of open tube. This is because the closed end tube has a stationary node (see above) at this location.

On a brass instrument, to play an octave higher you make your lips vibrate at double the frequency - and create a vibration pattern (or standing wave) with an additional stationary point ie positioned 1/4 and 3/4 along the length of the pipe. Obviously, this frequency is the fundamental frequency of a pipe half the length ie double the frequency and up an octave. Its essentially the same physics on a flute you blow "differently" to go up an octave. You can also overblow eg an A to play the E above which is the next harmonic corresponding to 3 stationary points (at 1/6, 3/6=1/2 and 5/6 along the pipe).

There are two important but subtle complications: End effects mean that the effective length of vibrating air does not exactly match the distance between the mouthpiece and the first open key. Furthermore the magnitude of the end effect can be modified by closing or opening additional keys lower down the flute. This is the theory for keeping the Eb key open but its more obvious if you play A and the add the first and second fingers of the right hand and listen as the note decreases in pitch. The seocnd complication is that you can force some harmonics by opening keys along the length of the tube - essentially this reduces the vibration at the position of the key and encourages a stationary node close to that point eliminating one (or more) harmonics.

I hope this helps rather than confuses ... and I apologize for spelling errors I haven't found, other mistakes and oversimplifications ...

guys...... thank you so much for your answers, now i know more or less how the notes are made. I suppose now i just have to focus on technique so i can hit those high notes, or more importantly develop good tone! Thanks again.... flute on!

End effects mean that the effective length of vibrating air does not exactly match the distance between the mouthpiece and the first open key. Furthermore the magnitude of the end effect can be modified by closing or opening additional keys lower down the flute. This is the theory for keeping the Eb key open but its more obvious if you play A and the add the first and second fingers of the right hand and listen as the note decreases in pitch.

I see that this is a description of the phenomenon with which the essence (to my mind) of the original question concerned itself, but I don't see how it actually answers the question. Why can "the magnitude of the end effect...be modified by closing or opening additional keys lower down the flute"? Are you using "end effect" as a technical term or do you just mean the end effect, the resulting sound?

Again there is a lot of space devoted to what should be obvious--or in any case, what has already been discussed--and very little to what I consider to be the essence of the question. But I'm not really familiar with Boehm flute fingering, and I supposed it, perhaps mistakenly, to be roughly analogous to fipple flute (recorder) fingering--which is not to suggest, of course, that I imagined the same fingerings would produce the same notes.

There are actually two different recorder fingering systems: German and English. In the simpler (and less common) you go all the way up the first octave of a C major scale simply by progressively opening contiguous holes. The octave, of course involves harmonics. But even in this simpler system, pitches alien to the C major scale in this first octave involve non-continguous closed holes holes, and these cannot be explained as nodes (because they occur before the second harmonic--first overtone). In the less simple system, the lowest F natural (on soprano and tenor instruments) is produced with gapped hole stopping.

Does the flute not have something similar somewhere in its fingering? And even if it doesn't, how do you explain this aspect of recorder fingering?

My invoking the recorder may have intimidated some of you (or provoked your antipathy--flautists tend irrationally to detest the recorder), so let's consult a flute fingering chart, shall we?

According to Forsyth and Piston, the original lowest flute note without the trappings is actually D, not C (which would explain the piccolo). Ignore the left-hand for now and look at the right hand as we ascend from low D to low F (to keep this clear, also ignore the fourth finger of the right hand): We progressively lift fingers--D uses the first, second and third; E uses the first and second; F uses just the first. What happens when we want to play a low F#, though? The third finger returns--and only the third finger, leaving a gap. Why? It can't (can it?) have to do with harmonics and nodes because we haven't reached the second harmonic (first overtone) yet.

i personally find ti easier to use one of t5he other fingerings for Bb (like if it were an accidental)

I consulted Piston (his Orchestration, that is, and this time the actual book rather than my vague memory of the book). He calls the thing I've been talking about forked fingering--as good a name as any, and a name is progress. He asks us to imagine a simple flute with six holes, three for each hand, that sounds the first seven notes of a D major scale when we successively lift each finger in turn.

He says forked fingering such that only the second hole from the end (the end opposite the mouth aperture, that is) is open will give us a flatter version of the F#, a fingering we might use for F-natural. He doesn't say why this should be, though. I have to think that not all of the air is escaping through the second hole, that some of it makes out the end of the pipe. If I didn't know better (from experience), I might guess that this might cause us to sound two pitches simulaneously, but I wouldn't be at all sure about that either.

Anyway, Piston also says that one of the ideal aims of the Boehm system was to provide a separate hole for each chromatic note. Presumably that would obviate the need for forked fingerings.

Does the flute not have something similar somewhere in its fingering? And even if it doesn't, how do you explain this aspect of recorder fingering?

The answer is pretty simple actually.

The size of the tone holes is the key in this situation. Recorder holes small...Flute tone holes..BIG.

That affects how the air column behaves because the tone hole lattice is radically different. This function is controlled by the cutoff frequency which is pretty much determined by the size of the tone holes.

The effect is called a forked fingering on recorder. With a small tone hole (and low cutoff frequency) the air column can easily by pass the open tone hole extending the air column down the bore to an average of the open tone holes on either side of the "forked" vent. This is also why 3rd registers are more difficult to obtain on a small tone hole instrument.

At the fundamental, a flute will progress chromatically as each tone hole is revealed. Tone holes on a flute are so named for the pitch they sound. For instance: the tone hole under the thumb is the C tone hole. When it is open that is where the oscillation rebounds to produce a C.

Now stay with me. Because the tone holes are so large on a flute, a mechanism is required to be able to close tone holes with the available fingers to achieve all the chromatic pitches. On a recorder, where the tone hole sizes are small, Forked fingering can be employed to play a chromatic scale.

So what about this cutoff frequency? This is determined by tone hole size and establishes how the functioning air column can extend beyond a tone hole at a given freqency. With a low cutoff frequency, the air column can easily extend beyond a first open tone hole making forked fingerings possible. On a large tone holed flute, the cutoff frequency is much higher and the entire bore will not radiate effectively until you play notes above the established cutoff frequency.

So a recorder with a low cutoff frequency will have it's sound waves travel farther down the bore at most of it's useable range.

A flute though will only exhibit this in the highest of the 3rd register.

1 register fundamental..open a tone hole at a time, go up by a chromatic step

2nd register, air column splits in two and the sound wave can travel a little farther down the bore.

The third register needs to physically split the airstream into parts. For the 2nd register, air speed control is enough to accomplish this for the bore to length ratio. The fingering system creates this by opening a tone hole in the middle of the closed system. Think High Eb. You finger an Eb and press the G# lever which opens a hole in the middle of the closed system. As you move up chromatically the next tone hole in the middle needs to open. And that's why High E and F# are unstable. Due to the mechanics of the flute to play chromatically with large tone holes, these notes have 2 tone holes open making them sharp and less stable. Split E mechanisms have been created which are acceptable. The High F# mechanism is a nightmare!

After you get to High G# where you are using one physically open vent, the air column now switches again, and 2 are needed to play in this area where the sounded note is above cutoff frequency and the entire bore of the flute is utilized. Above cutoff frequency, all tone holes radiate effectively which is why opening a closing a seemingly innocent tone hole in any location can provide interesting effects.

Hope that explanation helps.

Joe B

1) You'll have noticed that I already assumed some of the air in forked fingering (a term that had already made its appearance in this thread, as had the distinction between diatonic and chromatic hole placement) made it to the end of the pipe. What had not, and still has not, been explained is how this effectively flattens the pitch--the crux of the problem.

2) According to Piston, holes in the flute before Boehm were dependent partially on how easy they were to close with the fingers.

3) The term cutoff frequency is most commonly used in respect to filters. Since you are evidently using it here in a different manner, it would help if you were to explain specifically what you mean by it.

4) The low F# Boehm flute fingering previously cited looks like forked fingering, whether it really is or not, and, as I've pointed out before, it occurs well below the second harmonic (first overtone).

OK let's start from the bottom up.

4) The low F# Boehm flute fingering previously cited looks like forked fingering, whether it really is or not, and, as I've pointed out before, it occurs well below the second harmonic (first overtone).

As has been explained, this is not a forked fingering on flute. This is a mechanical method of closing the necessary tone holes. As you approach the cutoff frequency determined by the tone hole size the flattening effect is increased as the cutoff frequency is approached.

3) The term cutoff frequency is most commonly used in respect to filters. Since you are evidently using it here in a different manner, it would help if you were to explain specifically what you mean by it.

As I explained, this relates to tone hole size and is a standard term in aircolumn physics. The smaller the tone hole the lower the cutoff and visa versa. On a low cutoff frequency instrument, this means the sound wave can easily travel past a tone hole. (there's your filter) The distance between the open tone holes on either side of the "fork" is therefore an additive length. Since therefore, that is a longer tube, the pitch is flattened

Here's a reference to the standard term use relating cutoff frequency in air columns.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/fluteacoustics.html#cutoff

2) According to Piston, holes in the flute before Boehm were dependent partially on how easy they were to close with the fingers.

That's just history. It was Boehm who wanted to increase the range and power of a flute and make a useable third register. This led to the natural evolution of adding a keyed mechanism to deal with large tone holes and account for necessary venting for a viable third register. The 10% reduction in headjoint taper was also a natural consequence to raise the natural flatness of the harmonic series. (perturbation weight curves will explain why since the reduction act on the pressure node/antinodes for this purpose)

What had not, and still has not, been explained is how this effectively flattens the pitch--the crux of the problem.

Well hopefully it is clear for you now.

Joe B