Handmade Flutes, Research, Repair, Training

RESEARCH

Since the beginning, Landell Flutes has been proud of its technical and innovative spirit, a spirit that sets us apart from the crowded field of flutemakers. The flute community has always been very history-conscious, and despite a lamentable decline craftsmanship, flutists still love a well-made professional flute in the old style. This is good news for small companies like ours which cater to the upper tier and eschew mass-manufacturing: its downside, however, is that many good flutists remain uneducated in the tedious but rewarding lessons to be found in technical research, and are uninterested when breakthroughs come along. Some giants in the field of acoustics, such as our friend Dr. John Coltman, have contributed greatly to our understanding of this mystical instrument, and yet most flutists have an expectation of performance from their equipment far below their colleagues in other artistic professions such as recording, photography, and graphic art. Our aim in this section is to provide a series of technical articles that will critically educate the serious student and allow him/her to speak intelligently about flute technology. At some point we hope to have more information than what is presented below - if you have ideas about useful articles please feel free to drop us a line with suggestions; they're always welcome.

What Is a Handmade Flute, Anyway? -J. Landell Sr., Flute Talk 2002
How to Test a Head Joint - Excerpts with Explanations - J. Landell Jr.
- view screen-quality PDF (472k)
- view print-quality PDF (904k)

The following articles will also be of interest; they specifically focus on the ground breaking work going on in our own shop. In case you haven't noticed, our big buzz these days is Titanium...

Press Release 1996 The day we gave birth to the world's first Titanium flute. And he's such a big, healthy boy we can't stop bragging about him. So please don't mind if we keep this press release up until he's old enough to drive.
Abstract of Experiment by Junru Wu, PhD. Why a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America thinks that our Titanium head joint can take a silver head to the woodshed.
Why I Chose Titanium - J. Landell Sr. Flute Talk 1997
Advantages of Titanium - J. Landell Sr.