Several Instruments

The instruments that I make are all wood. Occasionally I copy instruments with keys, but its tedious work, and they spoil the lines. Plain wood is best. Of course it has its limtations musically, but for reasons that I may explain later, I have a deep mistrust of all things that tend to overcomplication in life, and in music.

This whistle of mine is made from cherry wood, photographed within yards of my home on a cherry tree.

When a woodwind instrument warms up, its pitch sharpens. Not a problem if you are on your own, but difficult when you're playing with other people, as it must be pre-warmed to bring it to its correct pitch. Some makers add a tuning slide, but this is something I havent attempted yet. Unless the inner metal sleeve is very thin indeed, it will introduce perturbations into the bore with dire tuning complications.

A slight dissappointment to me has been that I cant make a whistle as loud as a plastic susato whistle. This is mostly due to the material. Wood is porous, and will remain so no matter how much oil you put in it. The porosity absorbs some of the sound energy. Box wood is amazingly tight grained and very impermeable. You can test the permeability of woods by trying to blow down the end grain, sealing your lips onto the wood.Try it with oak - you can almost breathe through it. Try it with box; nothing. Box wood is the ultimate wood for flutes. However, it is very difficult to obtain in decent sizes. Cherry on the other hand, you can buy in huge lumps from a hardwood dealer, or blag it from tree surgeons.

This is a rennaisance recorder that I made last year. I like the simplicity of the shape. I like the fact that I found the wood lying about on a dump, and I made a pair that play together beautifully.

The block in this recorder is made from Cedar of Lebanon.Strictly speaking its not the best wood - pencil cedar is the more stable for this critical role. However, it smells wonderful when you work it.

Here are some more instruments. The background is not representative of the species that they were made from. On the left is another rennaisance recorder, an early model with poorly undercut toneholes, but nice american cherry that coloured nicely with oiling. The other two are fifes/flutes in maple, which is another suitably dense but easily obtainable wood.