Vertical Flutes
jefftk.com
jefftk.com
The shorter neck on the instrument also means you don't have to hold your tuning hand out so far (a similar torque issue) and it also means moving your hand out of first position to play higher notes is a shorter motion.
edit: The viola is of course also thicker, which means maneuvering your tuning hand around it involves twisting your shoulder more. I imagine the unusual shape also improves that situation.
I used to play the viola da gamba (leg viola), which comes in all sizes but you play them kinda like little cellos. They have six strings, frets, and you hold the bow a little differently, but even the small ones are played with it tucked between your knees.
The modern viola is too small to resonate well in its note range, but it's a compromise we make to keep it looking like a violin.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_octet [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVVh-kNmRcA
Or just have cellists play them, instead of violinists. It seems Yo Yo Ma has played one without much difficulty!
> Ergonomics is ugly.
He casually pinned these three words like he pinned something to a cork board.
Making anything involves fitting constraints and prioritizing by some criteria. Ergonomics just means using human anatomy (capability, comfort, safety) as a deliberate constraint/criterion in tool design, instead of treating it as an afterthought (even when ignored, anatomy still has some kind of “veto” insofar as a tool can’t ever be entirely impossible to use).
Starting from first principles with human capabilities and comfort as an explicit goal results in more effective designs which extend tool users’ capabilities further.
I think it is incredibly beautiful to have tools shaped to match human bodies. After looking at a couple videos of these lovely ergonomic violas, every time I see a regular viola in the future I’m going to be seeing debilitating repetitive strain injuries.
I mean... That instrument can sound like it's made by Gods in Heavens, but it looks like one of those Dali semi-molten clocks that got turned into a violin and would subtly message "kILL mEeeEe" through any music played through it.
Aesthetics of musical instruments matter a lot, both to the performers and the audience.
Case in point, most people don't get an ergonomic mouse/keyboard until their hands start hurting.
The french horn is not exactly the paradigm of beauty. Or a player blowing into an oboe (it is difficult to imagine that gesture producing such a beautiful noise; does he need to make that face, really? Indeed, he does). The posture with the violin is one of the most awkward one could imagine, also.
When those violas are played (as seen in the videos), the shape is least visible.
No, it's because it is very asymmetric, and we prefer symmetric shapes to asymmetric ones.
>The french horn is not exactly the paradigm of beauty.
I disagree. The instrument has an aesthetic.
> Or a player blowing into an oboe
The instrument looks fine though.
>The posture with the violin is one of the most awkward one could imagine, also.
The posture with the cello is arguably a very sexy one, but if you ask a cellist and violinist to walk while playing the instrument, guess which one's going to be the awkward one.
The violin gained initial popularity among street musicians. This is why it has the ergonomics it does.
The violin posture allows the performer to walk and jump and dance while playing the instrument.
Have you seen performers like Lindsey Stirling? That would be the last showperson I'd call "awkwardly postured".
I've played a show once where we shared some instruments with another band due to cramped stage. The keyboardist in the other band was playing a Nord Stage, which is a very expensive, but still plastic keyboard (they go for $4-5K).
Despite its iconic look already being a thing that people shell out extra $$$ for ("gotta have the red one!"), the performer put hers in a grand piano shell.
That is, a gutted grand piano (or a mock-up), with the Nord Stage on the keybed.
Looks matter to performers.
For example, I would vote for the return of the Shawm [1] (played here by the late and very much missed David Munrow). Lots of other interesting instruments in this clip too.
It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation I suppose with these instruments. If there isn't a critical mass of players we don't hear them played well and so no-one picks them up.
I think Mahler would have loved Shawms in an orchestra. They sound very Mahlerian to me!
Too bad their reputation is tied to being a first instrument taught in schools in the US
you clearly have not heard my child playing the recorder.
[0]: https://www.mollenhauer.com/en/catalog/recorders/series-over...
The reason to do this is so that lip position is no longer important. I can play these instruments, but I've never put in the time to get a good sound from a non-fipple flute. This is also why they're used in schools: you can immediately make a sound, just by blowing naturally.
But in moving the musician farther from the creation of the sound they also have less control over it. You can't really manipulate pitch and volume independently, and there are many more subtle tone choices available without a fipple.
This is one of the key trade-offs in designing a musical instrument. I wrote more about it in a 2012 post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/instrument-complexity-and-automatio...
Why is that bad? It's never bothered me. The only ergonomic complaints I have about my Miyazawa are its inline G key (really stretching my left ring finger to seal the open hole properly) and how much pressure I need with my right pinky to make the C#/C keys work (uncomfortable, and I do actually mess it up sometimes).
Presumably because of https://www.techopedia.com/definition/31480/gorilla-arm. If you're only playing the flute for an hour a day, you might not notice it; but if you're doing it for eight hours a day, as a professional performer, your arm muscles are going to be tired and shaking at the end of each day. And they don't have to be!
Also, re: the page linked in the sibling comment (https://www.flutespecialists.com/product/flute-lab-vertical-...):
> The Vertical Headjoint allows flutists who thought they would never play the flute again to do so.
I take that to mean "people with Parkinsonism, and other conditions that mean that holding your arms up becomes hard."
Maybe? I've done 4+ hour days and my arms were fine. [edit: I recall my embouchure/lips giving out on particularly long days, not my arms!] I wasn't a big weight lifter or anything at the time either. If I tried that right now, when I'm way out of practice, it might be hard at first, but I think I'd be fine again before long. Muscles adapt to use.
Your arms are bent and not really that far out when playing the flute, and flutes aren't that heavy.
> I take that to mean "people with Parkinsonism, and other conditions that mean that holding your arms up becomes hard."
Interesting. Yeah, that's great if it makes that kind of a difference for someone. I'm not sure there's any widespread demand though.
If I thought I’d play enough, I’d consider a vertical head joint, even at that kind of outlay.
However, I play a lot of musical instruments in various semi-professional capacities (on stage for money, but not enough to live off of) including pedal steel guitar, piano, clarinet, trumpet, double bass, cello, drums, accordion, among other stuff.
Every instrument has issues.
If the flute works it works, but I have an okay sliver armstrong flute I am supposed to re-pad and return to my mother, and after playing through the Rubank beginner's book I feel like the ergonomics aren't good at all.
Like, I gave myself a wrist injury learning trumpet and trumpet still feels like a way more ergonomic device.
If it doesn't bother you then I can't argue with ya. But as someone who has a whole pantheon of badly-designed instruments to look at it's easy for me to say it's not my favorite. I spend a lot of time with a clarinet lately and can see the value in a vertical flute.
[1] https://www.flutespecialists.com/product/flute-lab-vertical-...
Yes, you could. But you're not going to attract the same buyers.
Similarly, in this case, I bet any boilermaker (or steam turbine engineer) could make a better flute mouthpiece than an instrument-maker could. At scale, for cheap. They're pipe fittings, with mouth gaskets!
Sort of. With most pipe we don't care that much about the exact paths the fluid or gas takes because it's for moving things and not making sound. Small choices that would be completely irrelevant in building an industrial boiler would still have clear effects on the sound of a flute.
[1] price when I bought it. More now. Musical instruments appreciate, unlike electronics.
Different, sure. But better? Two orders of magnitude better? Seems improbable to me.
How do you quantify a unit of "better"? And perhaps more importantly, how many musicians agree with you?
If you want to fall back to economic evidence, centuries of musicians appear to have wallet-voted the other way.
But it's not the existence of the high end that I'm remarking on, it's the apparent lack of low-end competition. Where is the two-buck chuck of vertical flute adapters?
If they were so clever, why weren’t they rich? https://www.robertbigio.com/cleverandrich.htm
> Most woodwinds use a much more natural playing position where the arms are comfortably in front of you, including some ("end-blown") flutes.