Flute and dizi Comparisons

Just found this old picture that I took for the Flute Forum in Facebook that compares the dimensions of the more common flutes and dizi.

The flutes featured in the picture are (from top to bottom):

1. Concert flute in C (with B foot);
2. G 大笛;
3. C 曲笛;
4. D 曲笛;
5. Treble flute in G;
6. G 梆笛;
7. Piccolo.

I've tried to align them along the embouchure hole to make it easier to compare the differences and similarities.

Right off, it is easy to see that the G 大笛 and the concert flute in C are basically ``identical'', as far as the tone holes are concerned, as are the G 梆笛 and piccolo. The main thing to note is that the lowest tone holes of the 笛子, when covered, extends the effective acoustic tube length to somewhere slightly behind the closest high-pitch vent hole (see this article for the names of parts) where the fundamental tone holes are. The other thing to note is that almost all the flutes (except the piccolo) have at least two more tone-hole extensions than the ``six''-hole 笛子.

The most interesting comparisons are between the C/D 曲笛 against that of the treble flute in G. The full acoustic length of the treble flute in G is closer to the acoustic length of the fully-covered C 曲笛, but the fingering is closer to that of the D 曲笛.

The other interesting thing is the additional length beyond the embouchure hole---it is roughly 50% of the acoustic length. It's subtle, but it does change the weight distribution, bringing it closer to the embouchure hole than the shelf-location for the flutes---this means that if one were to use the concert flute holding pattern [of the left hand], the 笛子 will be less stable.

Does it affect the acoustics at all? Probably indirectly---the change in the weight does affect how much pressure is being dealt with at the chin/lips, and the fingers. But for now, there is no good methodology for testing this.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Till the next update.

Edit: Just wanted to quickly add a reference to an older post from 2015 that provides more textual descriptions of the relationship between 笛子 and flutes in general. The major difference between this post and then is that here we have a more visual illustration, and have some preliminary thoughts about the additional length beyond the embouchure hole in the headjoint for the 笛子.