Woodwind design program rewritten

homeblogmastodonblueskythingiverse



I've completely rewritten my woodwind instrument design program. It uses a more accurate model of the instrument, and it allows a variety of new design constraints to be applied, such as even spacing of finger holes.

Using this, I have made flutes that are in tune over two octaves while allowing many cross-fingerings. The trick to this is a carefully calibrated bore area deviation between the mouthpiece and finger holes, which I achieve by the simple expedient of drilling extra holes and covering them with sticky-tape.

Feels like cheating, really. There's a Chinese flute that perhaps uses the same trick. The Western concert flute instead uses a tapered headpiece, and the recorder uses a cylindrical headpiece and tapered body, to similar effect.




[æ]