Prehistoric flute in Germany is oldest known | Hacker News Reader

Prehistoric flute in Germany is oldest known

news.yahoo.com

11 pointsaswanson16 comments

Makes me wonder how it was invented. Directly, or maybe there were some incremental steps? Would I have invented a flute?

HN submission of link to New York Times article on same archeological find, with perhaps some different details:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672935

Geez, they don't even tell us what kind of scale it's tuned to?

They played a couple of recreated samples on NPR. One sounded roughly pentatonic to me; the other sounded... of indeterminate scale and/or out of tune. It's hard to say exactly how it would have sounded, because the flute allows a lot of room for bending the pitch based on things like embouchure and whatnot (I'm a former flutist).

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1058231...

It may simply be in a different temperament or just/pure intonation rather than out of tune. I'm rather curious if anyone can work it out.

http://www.kylegann.com/microtonality.html

http://music.cwru.edu/duffin/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_temperament

msluyter, do you know what flutes (and other wind instruments) are generally tuned to these days? I noticed some of my sister's clarinet music books show different fingerings for sharps and flats so presumably an extended meantone? Ta :-)

Clarinets are in A or B bémol iirc.

Modern flutes are all in C. Not sure what you mean by "extended meantone." Most wind instruments can have slightly different fingerings for the same note (more prevalent in clarinet than flute, actually). These may have slightly different intonation/sound. Perhaps that's what you're seeing?

> Perhaps that's what you're seeing?

Indeed yes, I'm talking about what temperament they use not what key they are in. Check the articles I posted if you're interested.

EDIT: could be this..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_musical_system

Harmonie erst. (Our german mates will have to let me know if I am anywhere near grammatical correctness).

That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Sorry.

Ah, well. It was an attempt at saying "Harmony first." Verdamung babelfish.

That would be: Harmonie zuerst.

But "Harmonie" does not have the same (con-) notation in German as "harmony" has in English.

And "Verdamung babelfish." could be taken that you wish babelfish would turn into a lady ("Dame"). ;o)

Oh, thanks. I better quit while I'm ahead. During Oktoberfest I'll just keep my mouth shut (unless imbibing) :).

And remember to drink beer in Maßen not in Massen.

Alles klar, Herr Kommissar. Danke. :).

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