24TET Flute

I just got back from a flute convention/festival in Denton. Denton is
home of the University of North Texas, formerly North Texas State
University, which has very strong music school, and whose "1:00 Band" has
made a lot of waves in the field of Jazz.

One of the events there was a couple of large rooms full of flutes and
flute-related stuff. This was certainly not a major aspect of the
convention by any means, but I'm pleased to report that one of the
exhibitors showed an explicitly quartertone flute.

Brannen Brothers, by most accounts one of the three most respected flute
makers, the other two being Haynes and Powell, now sells quartertone flutes
based upon the fingering system devised by Dutch inventor Eva Kingma. It
mostly uses the pierced holes to create quartertones, but in cases where
there are not pierced holes, it goes ahead and pierces them and then places
an additional key over those newly-pierced holes.

You end up therefore with five additional keys in total:
1. A Cq# key just toward the rods of the left first-finger C# key. It
halfholes the additional C#-trill key on the right first-finger knuckle key,
just above the Bb knuckle key.
2. Another key whose purpose I can't identify right next to it and toward the
rods of the upper Bb pad.
3. A key above (i.e., also toward the rods) of the B of the usual Bricialdi
(sp?) thumb key, which puts down the pierced B thumb key, where in contrast
the usual B key puts down both the pierced B thumb key and also the pad
covering the pierced key. That key therefore produces a Bq#.
4. A key next to the left fourth-finger G# key, which opens the hole of the
pierced G# key thereby playing a Gq#.
5. A key above the low D# that opens a separate, small hole on the opposite
side of the tube from the low D# pad. That of course is for a Dq#.

It does not have any provisions for quartertones below the low D, nor in
the realm of the upper C#-D or C#-D# trill keys. I also don't know how
they deal with quartertones in the higher registers, but presumably that's
just a matter of coming up with additional fingerings as would be necessary
anyway.