baroque flute

D5

Impedance

Acoustic and Fingering Schematic a covered tone hole or key pressed an uncovered tone hole or key not pressed a partly covered hole Details in fingering legend. Non-specialist introduction to acoustic impedance Non-specialist introduction to flute acoustics

This fingering is comparable to that for D4 except for the open register hole. This creates a pressure node (or flow antinode) at the midpoint of the pipe, and thus allows D5 but not D4. Compared with the D4 impedance spectrum, the low frequency minima are less deep, and at considerably higher frequency. The open hole acts as a register hole. For more detail on register holes see the section in the introduction to flute acoustics. Because there is no series of open holes to cause a tone hole filter, the 2nd, 4th and 6th minima (the 2nd, 4th and 6th harmonics of D4, or the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of D5) are all deep and harmonically related (frequencies 1:2:3), so they lead to strong 1st, 2nd and 3rd harmonics in the sound spectrum, and thus to a bright timbre. (The weak 1st, 2nd and 5th minima can be considered as extreme cross fingerings in which C# is flattened a long way.)

Sound

Sound spectrum of a baroque flute played using fingering for D5.

Sound Clip

You can hear D5 played by Matthew Ridley.