Irish Flute - Physical Characteristics

Physical Characteristics

The Irish flute is a simple system, transverse flute which plays a diatonic (Major) scale as the tone holes are successively uncovered. Most flutes from the Classical era, and some of modern manufacture include metal keys and additional tone holes to achieve partial or complete chromatic tonality. Due to its wooden construction, characteristic embouchure and direct (keyless) fingering, the simple system flute has a distinctly different timbre from the Western concert flute. Most Irish flute players tend to strive for a dark and reedy tone in comparison to classical flautists. Though most commonly pitched in the key of D, simple system flutes are available pitched in other keys, and are often heard in Irish music pitched in E flat, B flat and C. Although referred to as a D flute, this is a non-transposing instrument, so if you finger C, a concert-pitch C is sounded. The name D-flute comes from the fact that the simplest 6-hole wooden flute has D as its lowest note and plays the scale of D without any cross-fingering. The E-flat, B flat and C versions are transposing instruments.

The flute has six six main finger-holes. For a D flute (the most common variety), with X symbolizing a covered finger-hole and O symbolizing an uncovered finger-hole, all holes covered, (three fingers per hand) can be represented as XXX-XXX = D . As the scale progresses, XXX-XXO = E, XXX-XOO = F#, XXX-OOO = G, XXO-OOO = A, XOO-OOO = B, OOO-OOO = C#, with XXX-XXX or OXX-XXX being the higher octave D for the full D major scale.

Wooden flutes have a cylindrical bore in the head and a conical bore in the body. This bore is largest at the head end, tapering down to a smaller bore at the foot. This has the effect of shortening the flute for a given pitch.

There is some confusion with modern players in that a modern Boehm keyed system flute is typically pitched in C. This is due to the added keys that allow one to reach low C, yet when one covers just the six main finger-holes (with thumb key covered) on a modern metal Boehm system flute, (XXX-XXX) the note achieved is D. For many technical reasons, a simple system D wooden flute more closely mirrors a concert C modern Boehm system flute in the pitches achieved in its fingering positions as opposed to a simple system flute pitched in C. Theobald Boehm completely redesigned the flute to more easily access the chromatic scale. The Boehm flute has a cylindrical bore (with a parabolic bore in the head) and uses keys to enable the tone holes to be in the ideal place and to be of the ideal size.