List of Compositions to complete:

Solo Works
Piccolo
Flute – Romantic style piece, “Jig”, and others.
Alto Flute
Bass Flute – Low Register stuff
Oboe
English Horn
Clarinet – 3 Sketches for A Clarinet (also other A Clarinet pieces)
Saxophone
Viola
Cello
Trumpet
Baritone
Tuba
Marimba
Soprano
Tenor
Bass
Soprano Sax
Tenor Sax
Alto Sax

Solo with Piano:
Piccolo
Flute
Alto Flute
Bass Flute (unamped)
Bass Flute (amp)
Clarinet
Soprano
Tenor/Baritone
French Horn
Trumpet
Marimba
Soprano Sax
Tenor Sax
Alto Sax

Chamber Music:
Piccolo, Flute and Piano
Flute, Alto Flute and Piano
Flute, Bass Flute and Piano
Piccolo and Bass flute
Flute Duo/Trio/Quartet/Quintet
Flute Choir (up to 8 parts)
Flute and Clarinet
Flute and Marimba
Bass Flute and Clarinet
WW Quintet (standard)
Brass Quartet (Trombone)
Brass Quartet (Trumpet)
Trumpet, Trombone, Violin, Cello
Flute, Marimba and Trumpet trio
Sax duets and trios
Sax Quartet (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass)
String Quartet
Soprano and Alto with Piano
Soprano and Bass with Piano
Tenor and Bass with Piano

Bassoon Quartet/Quintet/Sextet

Small to large ensembles:

2 piccolo/3 flute, 2 oboe, 3 clarinet, 2 bassoon, 2 alto, 1 tenor sax, 1 baritone sax, pitched percussion, snare drum (16 musicians).

2 Flutes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, and 2 French Horns (double quartet)

Early Bands (Elm. and JH)

Beginning Band (HS)
Intermediate Band (HS)

Symphonic Band (with English horn, Soprano sax, and alto flute) (C)
Symphonic Band with Flute Quartet (Picc, C, alto, bass). (C)

Picc/2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 violins (2 parts), 2 violas (1 part),
4 cellos (2 parts), 2 Trombones, 2 trumpets, 1 tuba,
3 mixed percussion (24 musicians)

String Orchestra

Full Orchestra

Men’s choir (TTBB)
Treble Choir (SSAA)
Mixed Choir (SATB)

I have the option of “locking things down” and making all of my music and projects “paid only” but that doesn’t help spread the openess that music promotes. Realistically, I’m lucky if I have 1 or 2 fans of my music. Mainly because I haven’t put it out there for people to have access to it. I’m sure that as I put more and more of my music out there and expose myself to more people, I will eventually have 10 fans, and maybe even 100. I know that I’ll greatly appreciate anyone that says they like my music, and I’m willing to take criticism and feed back from those who don’t. I want to better myself as a composer, and one of the only ways I can do that is to get feedback from those who know about music and those who just enjoy listening to it.

Can a “freemium” (free content with an optional buy-in) business model work for a composer? I’m unsure if it really can. I think that I’d rather give my music away and find out where my fans are, and if they exist, rather than holding onto my music without anyone able to hear it. I think I have more to gain by giving it away, even if it comes down to just getting feedback. Yes, I’d love to make money off my music, but I don’t know if it is realistic to think that I ever will. One can always hope, but it isn’t something that I expect. I have invested a lot of time and money into my music education and experience and I hope that it translates in my final product, but I can’t make people decide that my music is ‘good’ or ‘respectable’. Ideally I’d give my music away, and then just give a way for people to donate to me if they wanted or felt my music was worth the money. That way it would be completely opt-in, and hopefully all parties would be happy.

I do have some larger goals that I still want to accomplish: Getting my music published, and getting a CD made (even if only digitally distributed). I feel they can both happen, it is just a matter of how. With everything digital now, it makes it much easier to distribute music (PDF, MP3s, etc) and I want to utilize it the way that ‘my audience’ wants. So I guess the best way for me to get my name out there will also still allow me the opportunities to accomplish those bigger goals. Realistically though, no matter what, I’d just be happy if people were playing my music and talking to me about it, outside of the small group of people that know about it.

I’m currently in the process of setting up my main domain, that will have samples of my music and information about my music and projects. I hope that this will become a good way for me to start interacting with people and to share my music with them. I plan on having samples, if not full piece downloads (PDF, MP3) for people to have and interact with. I just have to do some soul searching and decide how I want to peruse these goals while still keeping everything else going.

Any ideas or thoughts?? Please comment.

Thank you,

-Kyle

I recently got Sibelius 6, where previously I have been using Sibelius 3. It was a great gift from my partner, and it came with two trials of other music software that intigrate with it: PhotoScore and AudioScore. Photoscore is a program where you can scan your sheet music and it translates it into a file that can be imported into Sibelius. This allows opportunities for backup and easy editing and notes for a piece.

My goal: Backup my sheet music library in PDF, Sibelius, and MIDI format for personal use only.

Setup:
24″ iMac (Early 2009)
Canon Digital Camera (see Gdgt list)
Prizmo (Mac Application)
Photoscore Lite (demo version included with Sibelius 6)

I don’t currently own a scanner, and I didn’t want to get one for this purpose. I have a 12 MP digital camera that takes clear enough photos that I really don’t find it necessary to invest in a scanner that would take up much more room when I essentially could do the same thing with software. I started searching on the web, and I found a piece of software called Prizmo (for Mac). I decided to give it a try to see if it world work with Photoscore. I was unsure if it would, just because Photoscore has these requirements for it work with Mac scanning:

A scanner (probably connected to your computer via a USB, Printer or SCSI port), and installed Mac OS X TWAIN driver software (it is highly recommended you visit your scanner manufacturer’s website and download the latest version – also note that classic Mac OS TWAIN drivers will not work). You may need to contact your scanner manufacturer for information on installing a suitable TWAIN driver. If a Mac OS X TWAIN driver is not available for your scanner, you will need to scan using separate software, save suitable TIFF files, and open these in PhotoScore.

After doing some research to make sure that 1) TWAIN was built into OSX and 2) Making sure that I could export the right file type through Prizmo I got home and started playing with both programs to see how well it would work. Currently, I’m only using demo’s of both pieces of software, and once I get the money I will go ahead and buy the full versions of Photoscore and Audioscore (which I will dive more into later). Also, I will most likely be buying Prizmo, sooner rather than later, just because I can start taking the photos of my music now and then have it ready for Photoscore. Below is the differences between the Photoscore lite version (which I currently have installed) and the Ultimate Version (which I plan on buying):

Process:

1) Take a picture of the music with your digital camera.

2) Import into Prizmo, edit and rotate.

3) Export as PDF or TIFF. In this case, I’m exporting to TIFF because the demo only supports TIFF and the full version exports to PDF as well with text. Once I upgrade, I will export to PDF so that I can easily store and combine the PDFs.

4) Import music into Photoscore.

5) Export into Sibelius

6) Backup on harddrives and various places.

Note: The full version of Photoscore allows for text recognition, which means that I would not have to type and put all of that information in manually. Also, I use a sample of a simple score that will work, because obviously the full version can do a lot more than the lite version can. Once Prizmo is upgraded from the demo version, it will also allow for the image to be exported without the Prizmo watermark.

Links to mentioned software:

Sibelius 6
Prizmo
PhotoScore + AudioScore

Once I start the actual process and get it going, I will let you guys know how long it took (estimated) about about how much disk space it took to digitize my sheet music library. For me, currently, this was more of a proof of concept, and just solidified the fact that I don’t need to buy a scanner to do what I want to do!

Thanks for reading!

-Kyle

Thanks, and enjoy,

-Kyle

Thank you,

Kyle

Alto Piccolo
(Key of G, One octave above alto flute)

Eb Flute
(Key of Eb, between concert flute and piccolo)

Concert Flute
(Key of C,Written pitch)

Alto Flute
(Key of G, One octave above contralto flute)

Bass Flute
(Key of C, One octave below concert flute)

Contralto Flute
(Key of G, One octave below Alto Flute)

Contrabass Flute
(Key of C, One octave below Bass Flute)

Subcontralto Flute
(Key of G, Two Octaves below Alto Flute)

Subcontra Bass Flute
(Key of C, Two octaves below Bass Flute, Three below Concert Flute)

This is not a complete list…but this is everything that is easily searchable. Do a google search for “Big Flutes” and will get some image results! Sorry for taking so long to update, things have been crazy!

I’m sure I will mention these again in the future, and I will be more in-depth in later postings.

First, we are going to start with head joint. The head joint is the first part of the flute that flute players tend to upgrade. You can upgrade the head joint of your flute only and it can drastically change the sound that you are able to get from your flute. Although the rest of the flute does matter and change the tone and sound of the flute, nothing changes it nearly as much as a change to a head joint. The parts that we are going to discuss in this post are the following:

1. Head Joint Materials
2. Crowns/Corks
3. Risers
4. Lip Plates/Engraving
5. Embouchure Hole Cutting
6. Maker Logo
7. Uncommon Head Joints
8. Things to Consider When Buying a Head Joint.
9. Links to head joint makers
   

1. Head Joint Materials -

Flute head joints can be made from the following:

• Nickel -
  Nickel head joints are common on student flutes. Often they are on flutes that are cheap to produce. Students have to be careful about flutes with Nickel head joints because Nickel allergic reactions seem to be fairly common within the flute community. They tend to have the weakest response time, and the tone produced is often very ‘fuzzy’ and unclear. This all depends on the player, but I can’t say that I have ever had a positive experience with nickel head joints over the years of playing. Choose if funds are limited, or if you get given a flute with a nickel head joint, I suggest moving up to a silver plated head joint, or even better a silver head joint.
• Silver plated Nickel -
  Silver plated nickel is a step up from nickel, but because the sound still resonates primarily from the base metal, it will still have many of the acoustical properties of a regular nickel head joint. The biggest improvement is that if you have an allergy it will reduce reaction, at least until the plating starts to ware, which is common on cheaply made flutes.
• Silver (Various silver levels) – (Picture 1a)
  Silver heads tend to have a very clear and bright sound. Before professional level flutes became a common thing for flute players to own once they reach a certain playing level (which now-a-days, is college or before), they were only found on the best instruments. Now, you can get a solid silver head for rather cheap ($1,000+) and you can attach it to a lower level body and greatly improve your sound. These are standard now on intermediate flutes, and professional flutes.
• Gold plated Silver -
  This is something that was recently developed by hand made flute makers, and it is starting to ripple down into cheaper instruments. When hand made, they tend to be very high quality, and can have a very similar sound to silver heads, but it is often a little more responsive and has a slightly ‘warmer/softer’ sound. One of the reasons this has become very popular is because of the beautiful aesthetic of the gold.
• Gold (Various Karats) – (See picture 1b)
  Gold is known for being warm, and clean. It can range from karat level, but overall gold flute head joints are warm. They are the only metal head joint that are often compared to wood head joints because of the sound that you can get out of them. That said, some players prefer the sound and feel of a silver head joint. Hand made gold head joints tend to range from $3,000-$9,000 depending on maker and options.
• Platinum -
  Platinum is known primarily for it’s dynamics range and projection. It is not known for being a subtle metal, and because it is so expensive they are rare to see on a flute.
• Wood (Various) – (See picture 1c)
  Wood head joints are primarily used in baroque music. They are very harder to produce a clear tone with, but some people prefer to sound of a wood head joint over anything else. Many flute players are starting to have a wood and a metal head joint and use the wood head joint for chamber music or baroque music and then use the metal head joint for other performance venues. Wood head joints tend to start around $1000.
• Glass (uncommon)
  See Part 7.
• Composites
  See Part 7.
• Vertical
  See Part 7.
• “Other”
  There are always new flute head joints being made by makers who are trying to change the flute. It isn’t possible for me to know all of them, so if you find something that I did not mention, please let me know and I will add it!! For the ones that I found, please refer to part 7!

2. Crowns/Corks -
The crown is often made of the same material that the head joint is made of, however some players decide to buy crowns that have stones in them, and they are used as a piece of decoration. The cork that connects to the crown is often unchanged. However, there have been cork ‘alternatives’ made that don’t warp over time like corks do. Here are a few pictures of decorative crowns:
Here are three crowns that are made made for decoration:

3. Risers -
The riser is an upgrade that isn’t able to be seen from looking at the flute. Risers are typically made out of the same material that the flute head joint is made out of, and with hand made head joints you are able to have it be a different material . The riser is the piece that holds the lip plate to the flute. The acoustical properties of the riser is typically the same as the way the metals are listed for the head joint options. A lot of players mix and match, and will sometimes have gold head joints with a platinum riser, or a silver head joint with a gold riser. It all depends on the player and what they like more.

4. Lip plates / Engraving -
The lip plate can, like the rest of the head joint, be made from the same materials that the head joint is made out of. Some head joints have ‘winged’ tips around the hole and drillinger head joints are often made with special modifications to the lip plate. Engraving is done often as a symbol of beauty but on a technical level it helps reduce the lip from sliding when the flute is lubricated from playing.
(post some pics)

5. Embouchure Hole Cutting -
The way that the embouchure hole is cut changes the sound of the head joint dramatically. Each hand made flute maker has it’s own different standards and options for the cutting and this is where trying different types of head joints can really benefit you. They can give you vague descriptions of their perception of what the embouchure cutting will do for the sound, but until you play it and see how it personally responds to your personal type of playing you can never know for sure. Play as many flute head joints with different cuts as you can, and if you are comfortable with it and it responds the best to your playing, that should help determine the head joint and style you want.

6. Maker/Brand Logo -
The maker or brand of head joint is always stamped or engraved on the head joint towards the side of the barrel. This is where information such as serial number and material are often engraved.

7. Uncommon Head Joints:

Glass head joints – Although uncommon, they are made from crystal glass. I have no idea what the acoustical properties of it are.

Composite Head Joints – Head joints made out of ‘plastic’ materials, are often considered composite head joints. The sound can vary greatly depending on quality and composite materials. Because they are made from materials that can easily be mass produced, they tend to be cheaper than metal head joints.

Upright Head joints – Uprights are used often to prevent fatigue and allow the flute to be a little more natural feeling when playing. Many people consider an upright head joint when they have some medical issues that need to relieve finger and/or body tension. They are hand made to order, and because of that they tend to cost a lot.  The pictured head joint is made by Maarten Visser, and can by found at FluteLab.

Robert Dick Glissando Head joint – This is considered an experimental head joint. It is only made by Brannen flutes, and sales are done directly through Robert Dick. They cost around $2,000 each and are hand made and fitted to your flute. The Glissando head joint allows you to made the note ‘slide’ like a trombone…You can head Robert Dick play it on his site!

Picture 1a) Silver Flute Head joint

Picture 1b) Gold Flute Head Joint

Picture 1c) Wood Flute Head Joint

8. Things to consider when buying a head joint:

• When testing a head joint, make sure that your flute is in good working order and that there are no pad leaks and that there are no mechanical issues with the flute. These issues can get in the way of finding your perfect head joint.
• When you are testing head joints, make sure that you are in an isolated room and completely able to hear yourself and the differences when playing.
• Test the head joint by testing and playing in all dynamic ranges.
• Play in each register to see how it responds to low, middle, and high ranges. Make sure to test the dynamics in each range too.
• Close your eyes and try to hear as pure as a tone as you can and if you are having an ‘off’ playing day where you aren’t pleased with your sound overall, considering going back another day.
• Play each head joint for about 20 minutes, until you are able to get comfortable with it. This will make a difference when you compare, because you need some time to adjust to each head joint.
• Play on as many as you can, by as many different makers. You never know what you will find, and when.
• Don’t let material decide: Let what gives you the sound that you want be the right one. Just because people have ‘common’ experiences with certain metals doesn’t mean that it will work that way for you. The sound of the flute changes depending on each player and how they play.
• Go to a flute fair when possible to easily try many types of head joints, or contact your local seller and see if they have any trial program arrangements made with the common flute makers.
• It is okay to have more than one head joint. Consider having one for various types of music, just don’t get so many that you don’t have a ‘regular’ head joint that you use for your daily practice. It will hurt you if you don’t have a regular head joint to play on and if you are ALWAYS switching. It is like switching from piccolo to flute and back, over and over again. You have to allow your mouth and body time to adjust to the head joint that you are playing on.
• If you fall in love with a head joint, don’t let money be the factor. Many head joint makers offer credit programs, and if you want it bad enough and you are truly in love with the head joint you will make it work. There is nothing wrong with saving and putting money away for something that you want to have and hold onto for a long time.
• If you decided to get an expensive head joint, in my opinion, anything over $2,000 for the head joint ALONE, I suggest you get it insured. You insure the body and the head joint separately if they are made by different people and didn’t come part as a ‘whole package’.
• Have fun when testing head joints and take any opportunity you can to try a new one!

9. Head joint makers links:

Brannen
Haynes
Burkart
Drelinger
Guo
Robert Dick
Miyazawa
Muramatsu
Powell
Pearl

This is a list of recommend head joint makers to check out. This is not a completely comprehensive list, but it is a good place to start. Also, check out Flute World for more!!!

If you made it though this entire posting, thank you for reading! Please comment!!!!

-Kyle
@musicytechgeek on twitter!

I’ve decided that because I’m going to be talking about the advances in the flute being made, I would give a break down of the parts on the flute so that they can easily be understood anddiscussed. Because this flute does not have every option available I’m doing to list them below, and when they come up in the future, I will expand on it more.

Pictured: Foot Joint – B foot

Common Flute Options: Bb Foot (uncommon),C Foot, D Foot (not a standard choice for most flute players).

Pictured: Gizmo Key

Common Flute Options:The gizmo key is used on flutes to close the last key/hole on the flute when playing the high C (4thoctave). This note or higher, often becomes muffled because of the extra length of the foot joint when compared to a C Foot joint.

Pictured: Open Holes

Common Flute Options: Plateau key (no hole in the middle of the A, G, F, E, D Keys), Open Hole. If requested, I will do a diagram of the key names as well, but I don’t know if we need to cover that right now.

Pictured: Offset G

Common Flute Options: Inline G, or half-offset G. This refers to the placement of the key on the body. Inline means they are all in a single line, without any of the main keys being ‘offset’ from the other. Offset G is often found on student model flutes, but recently it has started to become more ‘acceptable’ on the professional flute for ergonomic reasons.

Pictured: Mechanism

Common Flute Options: There are several options that would change the mechanism of the flute, some of them are: C# Trill, Split E, G Donut. Also, there arepin-lessmechanism that have no adjusting screws. Adjustment screws are normally found on student and intermediate flute. It is believed that flutes without them tend to stay in adjustment and don’t have as many mechanical problems.

Pictured: French pointed arms and Y-Arms.

Common Flute Options: The arm type has to do with the connection of the key to the mechanism. This flute is considered “French Pointed Arms” because it has pointed key connections on the keys that are closed via the mechanism. The only reason there is a Y-Arm on this flute (on the C key) is because of the fact that the first finger of the left hand is on that key. It if had a ‘pointed key arm’ it would be uncomfortable to play. French pointed arms is a feature that is common on professional and intermediate flutes, and it isaestheticallymore beautiful to most flute players.

Pictured: Barrell

Common Flute Options: The barrel is notnecessarilyan option for flute players. However, that is where the maker places the company branding and often the serial number of the instrument. There are different bodythicknessoptions, but this will come into play later.

Pictured: Lip Plate

Common Flute Options: Flutes can have winged lip plates, or lip plates that are made from a different metal from that of the body. Engraving is also popular to help reduce sliding of the lip from the head-joint while playing.

Pictured: Riser

Common Flute Options: The riser can often dramatically change the sound of the flute, and can be made from the same material as the rest of the flute or another metal. Flute players will often upgrade this before the lip plate because it seems to change the flute sound a lot more.

Pictured: Crown

Common Flute Options: Most flutes come with a crown (the piece that connects to the internal cork to make sure that the tubelengthof the flute is correct) of the same material the flute is made of. You can order special crows/corks with suspected differentacoustical traits, but this is not proven to be true or false. It is a choice of the player, and what best suits the personality.

Unlabeled:

Body Tubing – The tubing that the flute is constructed from. The head joint, body, and foot joint are all constructed on the body tubing. You can have the head joint with a different tubing from the body, and often it is seen when students step up to a hand made head joint. Ex: A silver flute with a gold head joint.

Pads – This is the part of the flute that closes between the key and the tone holes. I will discuss them further as I talk about the different pad options available to flute players.

Tone Holes – You can have ‘drawn’ tone tones, or ‘soldered’ tone holes. Drawn tone holes are extruded from the body tubing. This is often found on machine produced instruments. Soldered tone holes are soldered by hand onto the body, and it often on hand made instruments. This is also an option on hand made instruments, to have it one way or the other. Some people speculate differences between the two, but there is no scientific proof that one is better than the other.

Head joint – The part of the flute that connects to the barrel of the body.

Body – Has the mechanism on it that holds the inline or offset G, and it is where everything but the pinky finger on the right hand plays.

Foot joint – The foot joint is the last piece of the flute and all of the keys are controlled by the pinky of the right hand. This is also where the gizmo key can be located.

The first flute that I’ll be talking about is the Kingma System Flute.  This flute has additional keys added to it so that it can easily play quarter-tones (aka, microtones) that are very popular in modern music.  The addition of these keys not only allows for quarter-tones, but also different overtones that allow new chords to be produced on this flute.  Flute players can also use these different fingerings and keys to make sure that they are in tune in ensemble music.  Flute players have a wide variety of tone colors available from this flute, and hopefully at some point, I will have the opportunity to play one to test out.

A picture of the Kigma System flute system with added keys

The Keys added to the flute are the following:

C up, G up, F# up, D up, B up, Bb up, C up, and C# up.   These keys open up the ‘middle’ of the keys that are normally closed when a note is being played, creating the microtone.  Not only are these easier to finger with the extra keys, but they closer to being in tune, and they are not awkward fingerings.  You can order them directly from Eva Kingma or you can order them in America from Brannen Flutes.  Robert Dick plays exclusively on these instruments, and is well known for creating powerful music that uses the instrument to it’s full potential.

The next flute I will be talking about is the Grenaditte flute, which is made my Guo Musical Instruments based out of France.  What makes this flute special is the fact that it is made completely out of a composite material that is unaffected by weather like common concert flute.

Grenaditte Flute made by Guo in France

What makes this flute special is the fact that it is made from a composite that has acoustical properties in between a wood flute and a silver flute.   It isn’t a tradition bohem system flute, it actually had a custom key spacing, an extended Bb key, and a redesigned ’cock’ in the head joint that allows for more tonal colors not available in a regular flute.  Also, because of the fact that it is easily machine reproducible, the cost of the instrument is minimal of a hand made silver instrument.  You can buy this instrument for around $2500 *USD* where a hand made silver flute would range from $4,000-$36,000 (depending on maker, model, and options). The only USA seller of these instruments that I know of is: Flute Specialists, based out of Michigan. This is an option that either most flute players don’t know about, or they are unsure of the experience they would have with the new material. However, as more people hear about it, they may consider it as a primary instrument due to the equal temperament due to the custom system, or as a secondary instrument due to it’s ability to not get destroyed by humidity for outside performances.  Guo also makes Grenaditte head joints, and a “G Flute” which is basically an Alto Piccolo.

Here are two videos of the flute being demonstrated:

Thank you for reading my first blog post.  As I find more flute related advancements, I will share them! My next topic will be: Modern music composition software and choices for modern composers.

-Kyle

UPDATE: I will be posting a new blog post with a more compressive list of what advances are being made on the flute.  This will include everything from crowns, lip plates, other key systems, and materials.  I may finish this up before I start my composition related posting.  Thank you for reading! *Updated on 5/25/09*