Kingma system quarter-tone flute

A practical system for complete quarter-tone scales:

www.kingmaflutes.com/CMS/index.php
<http://www.kingmaflutes.com/CMS/index.php>

also:

www.brannenflutes.com/kingma.html
<http://www.brannenflutes.com/kingma.html>

best,

jls

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "J.Smith" <jsmith9624@...> wrote:
>
>
> A practical system for complete quarter-tone scales:
>
> www.kingmaflutes.com/CMS/index.php
> <http://www.kingmaflutes.com/CMS/index.php>
>
> also:
>
> www.brannenflutes.com/kingma.html
> <http://www.brannenflutes.com/kingma.html>

Great! But now, how hard would it be to play
22 or 19? How flexible is flute intonation?

> Great! But now, how hard would it be to play
> 22 or 19? How flexible is flute intonation?

Well, I have a regular flute with no "quartertone add-ons" here and I
clearly remember the moment when I tried to play 5-EDO or 7_EDO with it
(which are, of course, the most distant systems from 12-EDO in terms of
intonation properties). The most effective way to do this is to rapidly
change the angle between your lips and the embouchure hole of the flute --
turning the embouchure hole towards you decreases the pitch slightly, while
tunring it away from you increases the pitch. This is what flutists usually
always do while playing as the flute itself cannot be, for more reasons,
tuned in 100% exact 12-EDO (if you take C4 as the reference tone, for
example, then E4 is some 5 cents lower or so, E5 is about 10 cents lower, C5
is about 10 cents higher, C#5 is almost 20 cents higher). If I wanted to
change the pitch by such large amounts like more than 40 cents, I had to
turn the flute "here and there" in much greater distances than usual, which
took quite some time. Yes, you can play 5-EDO or 7-EDO on a flute but. A)
this can't be done in legato or in fast passages, and B) the tone timbre is
going to vary during such a piece, and C) you almost reach the limits of
playability. For example, to get the tone between the standard F and F# in
two different timbres, you can use the fingering for F and turn the flute
very much away from you (or rather the embouchure hole, to be more precise),
and then use the fingering for F# and turn it very much towards you.
Concerning my personal experience with this, I think I would need a break of
about 100 ms between the tones to be able to find the pitches.

Petr

I wrote:

> For example, to get the tone between the standard F and F# in
> two different timbres, you can use the fingering for F and turn the flute
> very much away from you (or rather the embouchure hole, to be more
precise),
> and then use the fingering for F# and turn it very much towards you.
> Concerning my personal experience with this, I think I would need a break
of
> about 100 ms between the tones to be able to find the pitches.

Some flutes using the so-called "French system" have holes in the keys and
these can be covered or uncovered or partially covered with your fingers.
This is how one of my favorite flutists, Tilmann Dehnhard from Berlin,
managed to do glissandi in his "Breath III". The keys on my flute don't have
any holes in them so I don't have much experience with this.

Petr