How Wooden Flute Parts Affect Tone and Music

If you’re searching for a way to enhance your musical experience, nothing beats owning and caring for a  professional wooden flute. With proper care and maintenance, a wood flute can be incredibly rewarding to own and play.

Flutes are typically made out of metal, although you may come across models constructed out of wood as well. The concert flute is an especially popular type; its long cylindrical body can make an impressionful statement about who plays it best.

Tonewoods

Tonwoods you choose for your flute will have an impactful impact on its sound and music, though their specific acoustical properties depend upon which species and variety is selected.

Tonwoods used most often for crafting Native American-style flutes include Cocus (sadly no longer available), African Blackwood, and certain varieties of Rosewood.

Woods of this nature often offer both aesthetic and acoustical qualities that surpass those found elsewhere, as well as being moisture and rot resistant – something especially essential when designing flutes that will be exposed to changing temperature and humidity conditions.

Bore

A flute’s bore plays an integral role in both its sound quality and intonation, changing with age and humidity and being modified by its maker using reamers to shape.

Wooden flutes with larger holes require more air for proper sound production, which may decrease intonation; similarly, flutes featuring large embouchure holes allow less lip coverage than smaller embouchure holes.

In fact, small diameter holes have extremely large terminating impedance (see Equations 8.7 and 8.8) that prevent pressure waves inside of them from reflecting back from the opening; on the contrary, very long tubes typically possess impedance too low for this phenomenon to take place.

Headjoint

A flute headjoint is an integral component of wooden flute sound production, and must be composed of materials with specific density and stiffness to achieve desired tonality and music.

Changes in headjoint material can have dramatic repercussions for flute sound and music. Differences may range from subtle changes like changing its embouchure hole location, to larger effects like undercut or overcuting lip plate cuts.

An embouchure hole is where air first makes contact with a flute’s embouchure, and its size and shape determine its qualities of sound: large holes tend to produce loud, strong sounds while smaller ones create sweeter, gentler sounds.

Footjoint

Footjoints of wooden flutes have an indelible mark on its tone and music. When selecting one for your child, this factor becomes especially significant.

Standard beginner and student flutes often feature footjoints tuned to low C (written middle C or C4) as a footjoint note, which should meet most needs for beginning players as well as advanced players alike. There may be occasions where additional repertoire pieces require accessing another note: low B.

Therefore, many flutes come equipped with an additional foot joint called the B footjoint that allows players to access notes a semitone lower than what’s possible on the C foot, expanding their repertoire with additional notes.

Pads

Pads are disk-shaped pieces of non-woven felt placed beneath keys to cover tone holes, helping prevent air leakage through their edges and ensure reliable and loud sounds.

Your choice of flute pads depends entirely upon your personal preferences and instrument’s setup; generally speaking, firmer pads work best with instruments with tight tolerances or level and flat tone holes.

Woven felt pads are the go-to flute pad choice, yet not every flute will benefit from them. Since these pads react more strongly to changes in humidity and temperature than others do, woven felt can leak over time due to extra finger pressure required to compensate. This can compromise technique, lead to hand injuries, and significantly shorten pad lifespan.