This material is known as Ambrosia Maple. I thought ambrosia was a fruit salad, and I was wrong. It’s a tiny bug that loves eating maple wood. If a flute has a pin hole from one of these bugs, the flute will know it, and sound like a duck call instead of a flute....
In flute making, I’m particularly fond of equatorial hardwoods, for their beauty and voicing. My tools are never fond of them. Ever. This is Hawaiian curly Koa. It has a 1” bore diameter, and is tuned to Gm. I had other...
I decided I wanted to defy the laws of physics, and build a flute with a 7/8” bore diameter…over two ft. long, tuned to E4m. Shortly thereafter, I decided there are some rules of acoustics that have no work around. I...
So while I was downstairs in my shop fashioning the fetish block for my latest instrument, my bride, Ms. Denise was up on our deck, taking random photos of the storm clouds brewing out over the ocean. When she came down to show me the result, the cloud formation in...
So I again tried to create a shade tree tribute to the people of the Zuni Pueblo. A people who’s culture, language, and spirituality are unique among Pueblo tribes, and who have by and...
Yep……, this flute has yet another bird for the fetish block. However, the flute itself is significantly different; It has an Amaj melodic tuning, in a Hitzaz (Ousak) scale. The 8 note sequences of this scale are divided into...
So I tried hardening the bore of this “Rainbow” poplar F#m flute, without a ton of success. In addition to having large cellular voids like cedar, which dampen the ringing voice typical of a hardwood, the...
During my 20 years in the flute trade, I’ve met many great performers and makers. Three stand out as being most influential in this journey, One continues in that capacity, one hasn’t spoken to me in about 9 years, and the...
I’m working on a new flute with a mode 2/5 tuning, and exploring it’s possibilities with a Celtic flavor….I should add, I don’t play it very well……. In the meantime, in an effort to make my website a little more entertaining, I’ve incorporated an audio file into the...
So this cedar F#m was the second of three planned experiments, in an effort to create a predictable process of generating a hardwood voice, from a soft wood. Last month’s flute and this instrument exceeded my expectations such...