Ocarina, Xun, Hun

[Enthalpy]

Hello music lovers (and haters too if any)!

The ocarina has an embouchure resembling a recorder coupled with a Helmholtz resonator instead of a tube shortened by side holes
Menaglio and more manufacturers
ocarina on en.wiki, es.wiki, it.wiki
It's often made of terracotta and is very cheap among wind instruments. The fipple saves long training, and some fingering charts resemble the recorder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fipple

But the range is short, about 1.5 octave, and the instrument lacks horribly power, more so at the low notes. Though, a glass bottle, which is a Helmholtz resonator too, plays much stronger than an alto flute at the same height for instance. So here are suggestions for the ocarina, untested and not fully justified.

Let wide long note holes replace the narrow short ones. Keep the geometric L/S ratio that defines the inductance (each end of L gets a correction ~0.3*D). Round the ends. Viscosity losses drop, which may produce a stronger sound, possibly by adapting the fipple. Losses at the blow hole or wedge can be reduced too: a glass bottle outperforms a recorder.

The limit to wide long tone holes is their volume, which adds to the cavity. And if you put the hole lengths in series, you get a recorder, not an ocarina.

Rearrange the fingerings and holes to open fewer holes, but bigger. Viscosity losses drop. Proper intonation isn't trivial to design.

Let the musicican define the air jet thickness.

• After training, he can blow on the wedge directly with his lips. The Xun and Hun do it
  Xun and Hun at en.wiki
  hear on the record the even strength over 1.5 octave. Thicker and rectangular blow hole as on the flute, longer note holes?
• Or use a moveable of deformable fipple that directs properly a jet of adjustable thickness. This would apply to recorders too. If the parts always aim adequately, playing will be much easier than with the bare lips.

Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy

 

[John Cuthber]

Well, if this post achieves nothing else, it has informed me of what a fipple is.

40 minutes ago, Enthalpy said:

Let the musicican define the air jet thickness.

• After training, he can blow on the wedge directly with his lips. The Xun and Hun do it

Sounds like a flute to me.

[Enthalpy]

You can hear the Chinese Xun, the globular flute without fipple, on youtube:
96u1Ye1csB8
nX1q-E4tuF4 (music at 1:03)
eNzGLAGLLuE

The Corean Hun is rare there
LFb7IXblgzM
and I found no Japanese Tsuchibue (did I latin-spell properly?), only an ocarina mistaken for a Tsuchibue.

You can hear that the wedge without fipple enables stronger low notes and softer high ones, like on the flute.

On 12/9/2018 at 5:38 PM, John Cuthber said:

Well, if this post achieves nothing else, it has informed me of what a fipple is.

Sounds like a flute to me.

I had to find the word "fipple" on Wiki... Not only in English!

The sound varies among flutes, but we recognize the family, sure.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Enthalpy

[Enthalpy]

I suggested here on December 09, 2018 a moveable of deformable fipple to vary the thickness of the jet sent to the wedge. Here I propose an example of a variable fipple:

The musician presses together with his teeth the mobile parts drawn darker. This controls the jet thickness. Here elastomer parts, drawn red, give elasticity and tightness. Natural rubber doesn't creep under permanent compression and resists humidity.

The elastomer gets harder when it's thinner and wider. This helps control the jet when thinner. Two mobile parts define the jet thicknes, at the top and the bottom: the relative stiffness of the upper and lower elastomer parts define how the jet moves vertically with its thickness, or avoid this movement. The part drawn lighter is fixed to the wedge, directly or not, and may be the same part or not.

Other designs are possible, especially if giving up the nonlinear compression. The mobile parts could be elastic and fixed with the immobile ones, possibly a single part. Or slopes could define the vertical movements of the mobile parts. Though, I like the control by the musician's jaw, as his hands and fingers are already busy.

Up to now on the recorder and ocarina, the musician can only blow stronger or softer to choose the resonance mode or produce a sound in the first place. On the flute, xun, hun, tsuchibue, he controls additionally the jet thickness to play low notes stronger and high notes softer, after years of training. The variable fipple shall do that more easily, especially as it aims properly at the wedge, controls a thin jet easily, and keeps a good jet width. It hopefully keeps the recorder and ocarina almost as easy to play and gives them more possibilities.

The xun, hun, tsuchibue equipped with a variable fipple would be ocarinas. Should flutists use such a fipple, fixed at the instrument or hold in the mouth? I doubt it. To produce strong low notes, flutists incline the jet more, starting higher and aiming lower, which is difficult to mimic by mechanical design.

Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy

[Enthalpy]

At low notes, all flutes, recorders, ocarinas... take more throughput but less airspeed hence pressure. The organ copes with that but the limited capacity of human lungs can't. While the piccolo's treble are satisfying and pass over a symphonic orchestra, the soprano flute's first octave is too weak, and to hear an alto flute, the orchestra must whisper.

I suggest to multiply the throughput with a "Venturi" (...it's the usual name) like a bladeless fan does
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bladeless_fan
as the lungs provide easily more pressure than the jet needs. Dyson claim to multiply the flow by 15 in their fan, that would be fantastic for flutes. How quickly the big flow reacts is an interrogation.

 

The sketched construction can be rectangular, wide and thin, where the breathpipe passes successively on both sides. The pipe could make a circle, a torus, pass several times to mix better with atmospheric air... or the breath could produce a swirl in a cylindrical tube like industrial designs do. A chamber shall dampen the turbulence before the nozzle and may contain obstacles.

This applies directly to the instruments with a nozzle: the recorder, the ocarina, and the many I ignore. The xun, hun and tsuchibue with a nozzle would become ocarinas. The multiplier can combine with the already suggested variable fipple.

Recorders too can get a wide bore, huge tone holes and some adequate fingerings as Boehm did for the flute, possibly with a metal body. If the resulting instrument plays louder than a low flute, it would be a reason to use it instead.

Could the musician hold the multiplier (partly) in the mouth? He could then control with the jaw the variable fipple, if any, and maybe control the blowing angle. One or several pipes would bring atmospheric air in the mouth. The chamber's size constraints the blowhole's position, for instance if playing a flute or a xun and similar.

Marc Schaefer, aka Enthalpy

[Enthalpy]

The bass flute is a tenor, one octave below the soprano, and is quite rare in symphonic music because it plays far too softly, but louder than the miniumm achievable on a saxophone. Amplification is mandatory. It also empties the flutist's lungs far too quickly. This one flutist gives the best demo I've found on the Web, jump to 6:07 here
0ogwt5yvmbw at 6:07
She achieves decent articulation by mere virtuosity, but the instrument has by nature a huge inertia, especially on low notes, and the score is chosen accordingly. I suppose the inertia results from the big tube fed by a small blowhole to fit human lungs. At organs, the low flute pipes articulate well.

Already the alto flute, a fourth below the soprano, makes rarely sense at a symphonic orchestra in its huge hall. Fainter than a soprano, especially at low notes, and squanders breath even more. Same flutist and video, jump to 5:19 here
0ogwt5yvmbw at 5:19
and to other times to hear a piccolo or metal and wooden sopranos. By the way, the wooden soprano must be the Yamaha; others sound much more like metal, so only a part of the sound results from the material.

Even lower flutes are built. The musicians use to play one spicato note per breath, which sounds like a noise vaguely suggesting a note height, as the note has too little time to appear. I won't link examples of that.

That's why I suggest to amplify the air throughput by some Venturi for low flutes, building them as recorders if necessary.

[Enthalpy]

Last time I tried a tenor flute (often called bass) and lower ones, I couldn't achieve anything decent despite being easier on the alto than most other flautists. But here are "contrabass and subcontrabass" flutes that work obviously: the horn player achieves a sound, the flautist plays a score with long notes.
Ns7NwOjG5wg at t=572s
If the microphone setting was kept between voice and flute, the instrument would even be perceptible.

Do you see the long blow hole overflown for longer by the fast blown air? The instruments I tried lacked it. Fine, I don't need to explain the idea any more, but I can forget the patents.

The alto flute should have a longer blow hole too.