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Comment by msluyter | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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 :-)

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

Clarinets are in A or B bémol iirc.

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