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Showing posts with the label flute

Humming on a flute - resonator of voice

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The flute is an instrument that only one voice at a time, a monophonic instrument. Or isn't it? Humming and blowing at the same time can produce parallel motion or even polyphonic motion of two voices. Here is an example. Polyphonic Singing, For the Contemporary Flutist by Wil Offermans In Offermans's example, he focuses on blowing and singing at the same. If we just sing/hum without blowing any air, the sound is different. Lately, I wrote a piece for marimba and I learn how the resonator works.  The introduction of the marimba resonator If humming on the flute without blowing, the tube of the flute becomes the resonator of the voice. If the tube length (fingering) matches the harmonic series of the voice, it amplifies the harmonic partials, producing two tones at once. The playing technique is to make sure to channel the air stream to the nose.  This is my piece below experiencing the technique of humming without blowing and humming with blowing. The beginning of the pie...

Harmonics on instrument - the haze of tone colour

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On every acoustic instrument, when a string, an air column, or even a material vibrates, it does not just produce the frequency is played (the fundamental) but also the sequence of frequencies as the series of integers multiple of a fundamental. A note is played also means a series of notes are above sounding weak above. If we focus on playing around the harmonics, we can get a kind of hazy sound contrast to the solid fundamentals that we usually play. On string instruments, harmonic is a quite standard technique. But on woodwind, it is a technique that has not been used widely. The hazy sound is very special and deserves to be heard more. These two pieces are stunning. Skip to 03:26 for the harmonics tone color A piece with harmonics as the major feature by  Wil Offermans The piece by Wil Offermans is the only piece I found used the harmonic extensively. Ravel and Toru Takemitsu have some examples of it but are not prominent. Thus, I improved based on the harmonic technique, ...