The Tao of Walking Ridge

The simpified estimatation of hole placement for typical Native American flutes developed in method-tuning-native-american-flutes-pt-1 enabled the development of a Flash based GUI that allow for quick comparison of the hole placement for flutes of different modes and even custom scale flutes.   It shows combinations of notes that are impractical to make (without cross fingering).  It also provides a graphical view of what the hole placement will look like.

For example, on longer flutes the space between playing hole D and E is not an issue.  But for short flutes, the holes can become closer than is comfortable.  An optional 7/8″ “finger pad” gives an idea of the space between fingers to make decisions about the trade off between moving the holes closer together or accepting a slightly smaller E hole that would be closer to the TSH.

Once the length of a barrel is known, then the length can be put into the tool and starting points for placement of playing holes are easily calculated.  They are based upon flutes that typically had about 0.3″ playing holes, with the E hole closest to the TSH typically a bit smaller. The tool easily calculates the hole placement for different key flutes.  It also quickly calculates the difference in placement for Mode 1, Mode 4, and Mode 5 minor pentatonic scales.  Depending on the particular details used by a flute maker, the estimate may be high or low.  Input for improvement of the tool is welcome.  Send comments to WalkingRidge.

The GUI is avalailable on this static page for convenient access.

An empirical approach to creating a simple intuitive tool and GUI for determining the hole placement for five hole pentatonic Native American style end blown flutes.  Part 1 covers the basic approach and conclusions for calculating placement of the playing holes.

The following represents the author’s opinions and observations based upon flutes that he owns.  Apply to your flute projects at your own risk.
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One of my back burner project is to build a cool retro RC airplane.  I’m still working on which one, but decided to start to get the skills ready so I could crash less at the flying field.  The newest sims have great graphics, but I’d be happy with just something that would let me learn the reflexes, in particular getting used to reversed controls when flying at myself and adjusting the elevator in a turn.

Before I started using Linux, I picked up an old old copy of RealFlight for the dark side with a “transmitter” controller that had a USB adapter.  It was supposed to work with Win2K and WinXP, but I couldn’t get it to work with either.  Finally after much searching I finally found an open source RC flight trainer for Linux that was really hard to find, but worked remarkably well for the purpose of honing your RC flying skills for model airplanes.
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Until now, the only way I knew to move, copy, delete, or edit files or directories in Linux that were in protected directories was by using the terminal and typing sudo (for super user) before the file management commands.  I am running Ubuntu Hardy Heron.  If you have many files to move, this isn’t bad once the exact phrases are worked out, but after not needing them for a while I forget and they are just enough different than the old DOS commands to cause me grief.  Then I found a great time saving trick (especially for Linux newbies) that provides a GUI (graphical user interface) file manager for protected files:

sudo nautilus

Open a terminal and type “sudo nautilus”.  Copying, moving, deleting, or editing files in a protected directory requires the root user password.  Starting nautilus from the terminal with the sudo command asks for the root user password, then opens Nautilus in the root directory.  You now have the normal file management GUI but it has super user authority.  I find I am less likely to make mistakes this way, as I’ve become used to the file manager GUI in Linux.

I find the terminal a great part of Linux that lets you accomplish things a bit out of the ordinary.  Without it, you are limited to the capabilities built into the GUI.  In this case, you are limited to normal user authority using Nautilus.  This is a good thing, as it prevents you from accidentally altering protected files.  But when you are sure you want to work in the protected area, it can be launched from the terminal with sudo authority.