The bass flute: A systematic exploration in using new acoustic and electronic sound possibilites

Recent investigations were made by Donald Andrus with flutist Gretel Shanley in adapting “new” flute techniques to the bass flute. The study attempted to find what material in T. Howell's The Avantgarde Flute (Univ. of Calif., 1974) and R. Dick's The Other Flute (Oxford U.P., 1975) could be effectively adapted to bass flute composition. Of Howell's 1826 multiphonics, most cannot be used due to design limitations in the bass flute. Other sounds worked with include: pitch bending, microtones, fluttertonguing, percussion tones, whistle tones, harmonic sweep, and singing into the instrument. As might be expected, some of the original examples gave different but equally interesting results: in playing what Howell refers to as a tongue ram, an 11-tone scale emerges one octave below the bass flute's lowest written pitch. There is a short illustrative composition by Dr. Andrus which can be performed acoustically or fed as input to a synthesizer for processing. Waveform spectra slides of some multiphonics have been prepared.