Making a Simple Flute.

Introduction.
Flutes are wonderful instruments and have been around for thousands of years. They need not be as complex as modern orchestral instruments. All you need for a flute is a tube, a cork and some way of making half decent holes. The tube can be made from practically anything ~ wood, bamboo, stone, glass, metal, paper etc. The choice of UPVC tube here is practical in that it is dead easy to work with.

If you blow air across a bottle the air column is split and curls creating a note. This is the principle that governs the flute family.

Recorders and Whistles have a channel that shapes the air column, in the headpiece. This then hits a blade (fipple) to produce a note. These are surprisingly known as fipple instruments or vertical flutes.

A Shakuhachi flute has the blade but no headpiece and the air column is created with the lips. These are very old instruments and examples have been found that date back 14,000 years. No, that is not a typo I did mean 14,000. However they are very hard to play well.

Another group in the family is the traverse flute. Here a column of air is made with the lips and split by one side of a hole, created in the side of the instrument, and is usually held horizontally (traverse). These flutes are very versatile as they are easy to make, relatively easy to play and stay well in tune. They are the instruments most people think of when they talk about “Flutes” and are the instruments referred to in this article.

There are other members of the flute family but they are all variants from this basic principle. These include Panpipes, Ocarinas, Overtone flutes and Dizzi Flutes.

When you start to make your own flutes, expect to make about three before you get it just right for you. The first is always a bit of an experiment, the second tends to improve your technique and design and the third produces an instrument you will be proud of.

You will want to aim for a flute that has good volume, good tone, a good range (two octaves and if you’re good, two and a half) and good overall tuning. This article should enable you, with practise, to achieve this.

Making the Flute.

The Tube
So to start making you will need some 22mm diameter tube. If you are going to play on your own you don’t need to worry about exact tunings and exact lengths but in this case your flute will be bang in tune and able to play in sessions. As a rule of thumb always cut a longer
length than you need. It is easy to tune a flute tube “up” by cutting small amounts from the foot but almost impossible to tune “down” by doing the reverse! So you will need a tube 15cm (the head) and 25cm the body

The Mouth Hole.
Now you should make a workable flute tube. Glue on the mouth plate (it makes the note more stable but will work quite well without it) and when the glue is set cut or drill the mouth hole. See the template. It should be about 8mm size and slightly oval if you can manage it. The large axis of the oval should be going up and down the flute. This is always a compromise as, the smaller the hole the easier and more accurate the second octave notes. However the larger the hole: the greater the volume.

Now you will need to plug the mouth hole end of the flute. This I usually do with a cork and the help of some Vaseline grease. Sand down the cork until it is a little bigger than the bore of the flute. Then grease it well! This bit can sometimes end up as a battle of wills; it is you versus the flute tube. The aim is to block the tube a distance beyond the hole. This distance is about 2/3 of the diameter of the average bore. Don’t worry to much as this will need adjusting anyway.

Head Tuning.
Now try and get a note out of the flute! If you have never played a flute before this may be a problem. A little practice and a couple of pints should get you there. Blow gently and try twisting the flute slightly to get a note. (Note: a sharp edged hole makes a windy, breathy sound, a duller edge gives more of the note sound. Different music requires a different tone feel)

When you can repeat this note easily, try blowing much harder until the note breaks and shifts up an octave. The notes should be the same but an octave apart. If they are not you can shift the head plug slightly until they form notes that are as close as you can get. Take time over this. It is the most important step of the whole process and will govern the accuracy of the notes. It’s also the step most people miss out and then wonder why they get flutes that sound out of tune and duff. The Lower octave is always right so if you’re just learning don’t panic. Make another flute when you get good enough to use that second octave.

If you wish your flute to play with other people tune the lower note you have by carefully slicing sections from the foot of the flute (not the mouth end) until this note is in concert pitch. Use a tuning meter or compare it with another instrument of known pitch. For Solo use this step is not needed.

Finger Holes.
Having got a flute that makes a note you need to drill or cut the six finger holes. This explanation will sound very complex but as you have a printed template to start with you can always skip this bit... Whatever you do work slowly and always make the holes smaller than you need to start with.

The exact positioning of the holes can be a bit personal as every ones hands are different, but the template gives an average position guide that will do to start with. Note these holes do not need to be in a straight line but can follow where your fingers fall naturally onto the tube.

There are some issues with finger hole positions. To make a note higher you can make the hole larger or move the hole further from the foot the tube. To make it lower do the reverse. These two variables can make for a lot of versions of hole position and size but remember, the larger the hole the: louder the note, but you need fingers large enough to cover them! If you create great differences in hole sizes you will end up with a flute that has notes of different volumes!

The Finger Hole Spacing.
The rough formula I use is this ~ measure the length of your flute from the base edge to the centre of the mouth hole. Working up from the foot of the flute the first hole will be 83% of the distance measuring down from the mouth hole. Drill a hole just under 6mm. Then gradually enlarge this until the note it produces when open, is the next note of a major scale up from the note when closed. The entire sequence of hole distances is 83%, 73%, 68%, 58%, 50%, and 43%. This will give you a flute that plays a major scale, but you could make one that plays a minor scale. If you don’t know what a major or minor scale is, just follow the instructions. I use more than six holes but that just me!

One other thing that affects the note is, the thicker the tube the lower the note.

Experiment. As I said at the start you will probably make three flutes to begin with. If your first flute works perfectly I will declare you a genius.

Useful Internet Links

http://www.markshep.com/flute/books/Simple.pdf?

http://www.execpc.com/~rdmiller/flutes/flutesteps.html

Dave the flute, aka Dave Manley April 2001.
Share or do whatever you want with this article. It’s for everyone and anyone, but just keep it free. If you want to credit it to yourself or sell it and make money from it: then that’s up to your conscience. Whatever you do, enjoy your flutes.