Hi:
All of the question you bring up are legitimate, but as they are
not *scientific questions*, and I don't have the cultural
background to answer what are essentially cultural questions
I cannot answer them.
Although I'm a scientist I also feel irrational pleasure
when I look at and play certain flutes more than others. I also feel
sympathetic vibrations when see objects once owned by members of my
family, gifts made by friends, etc. While these feelings make up the
"stuff-of-life" they are
are not scientifically quantifiable.
Questions like whether a flute with a particular bore plays in tune and with
certain quantifiable performance characteristics *are* scientifically
answerable and that is
what we are talking about here. For me an added bonus is that exploration of
those answers mathematically gives me pleasure --- also not scientifically
quantifiable.
The fact that this mathematical pleasure is not easily accessible to everyone
does not make *that* process of understanding illegitimate *either*.
And lew Paxton Price played it from a very
>scientific standpoint with I though was amuzing for a
>moment ( Being a software engineere).
As far as these pamphlets by price, don't worry if they didn't help.
I can tell you that they are almost worthless, and that both
in style and content that would rank extremely low, scientifically speaking.
They actually consistently puff up simple (mostly trivial) half-page
algebra calculations
into 30 pages of froth. One of the amusing things about reading
the pamphlets is trying to figure out how much of the puffery is just that,
and how much of it Price
believes himself. I must admit that what little pleasure I got out of
realizing that I had
just wasted money on some of his pamphlets came from execises of this kind.
Please don't take this as an example of any kind of "scientific"
approach *or*
of how to explain things to non-mathematically
inclined people.
Anyway, I'm talking about a whole different level of mathematics which
we would call in physics "starting from first principles", that is, by
solving the acoustic wave equation
inside the bore. I hope it will be a little bit fun. I don't
believe that I will (at least) have any problems, aesthetically, with
playing an instrument designed in this way.
For me it would, as I have said, give me great pleasure and would further
stimulate my curiosity.
And that's all I could ever ask for.
Marko
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