Custom Fingering
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I've notice mention of a possible feature - custom fingerings - and this is a key feature for me, so I'm wondering what the possibility or prospects are for this feature.
My main work is with Native American flutes, and I am interested in sampling a range of these instruments, including a wide range of current and historic (back to the 18th century) Plains and Woodlands flutes. The fingerings of these instruments are very different from all of the current Sylphyo choices (their primary scale is minor pentatonic).
Having a set of fingerings for Native American flutes would open up the Sylphyo to a rather substantial (and largely underground) community of players, but several sets of fingerings would be needed, which is why I am thinking about custom fingerings ...
From demos I have seen, I am thinking that the Sylphyo would be the most suitable instrument of the wind synths available for implemented an open-hope instrument.
Any info would be appreciated!
-- Clint Goss
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Thank you for addressing this, Maxence!
Native American flute fingerings are highly variable across the wide range of flute makers. My Flutopedia web site publishes a range of fingerings. Here is a summary chart - the black fingerings are primary:
https://flutopedia.com/fingeringChart_SixPentatonicMinor.htm
I could develop / suggest a set of "Sylphyo standard" fingerings that I think would be ideal Native American flute players ... if that would be helpful.
Please tell me the challenges / difficulty of implementing a new fingering pattern ... I would not want to venture down this road if it is too difficult for all concerned.
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@Clint I've had a look at your website. Some of those fingerings would be easy to replicate on Sylphyo but an issue would be the partially covered fingerings. We could replace those with a pinky finger or possibly another finger? It would of course be possible to do these fingerings with a half-hole but would most likely not be very accurate (although I suppose that is somewhat the nature of half-hole fingerings?)
If you would like to take the time to make them I think we'd be able to do some beta tests of a Native American flute fingering set.
Let me know if you can do something like that!
Maxence
Aodyo Instruments
Aodyo.com -
I have drafted a proposal for a set of fingerings that I think would make a good start. This single-page document is available in PNG and PDF at these addresses:
https://ClintGoss.com/img/FingeringChart_Sylphyo.png
https://ClintGoss.com/pdf/FingeringChart_Sylphyo.pdf
Feedback welcome!
Caveat: Please realize that I don't actually have a Sylphyo in my hands at this point. Ideally, I would love order one with an initial version of these Native American flute fingerings as an option, for testing and development ...
FYI, the finger diagrams are done as a TrueType .TTF font - I would be happy to make this freely available as this effort moves forward. I've done TTF finger diagram fonts for many ethnic flutes - see https://Flutopedia.com/fonts.htm
P.S. I just noticed that the Color Key examples were not changed to Sylphyo finger diagrams ... oops.
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@Clint Thanks for that! I've sent you a message asking for your email address so I can send you the specific format we would need to implement this. Send me your email so we can get this to move forward.
This is really great :)
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I've just sent my contact info ... looking forward to working on this.
