Fifer’s Web site — on the Web since 1995!

The Exciting Fife

By: Janis E. Kenderdine ©2005

Introduction
“Key” Differences Between the Modern Flute and the Fife
Confessions of a Pipe Organ Builder
   - That Glorious Noise
   - Au Natural
   - Harmonics
Exciting Stuff
Boring Stuff
Endnotes

Introduction

Just a couple from my collection...

There are many fifers out there who really don't know a whole lot about the instrument they're playing. They just picked it up and started fiddling around with it until they got the right notes out, and might have had some instruction as to how to play it. Technique abounds, but did anybody stop to explain the science behind it? Most of us, unfortunately, don't really care—but it may help you grasp a better understanding of how it “works,” and will give you plenty of fodder to bore the heck out of your fellow players over a few beers or a few decibels at the next muster.

I'm no different—I'd been playing at a top level for close to 2 decades before anyone explained to me the complex reasons of why and how a note is created. I never really thought about it too much—kind of like turning on the car and being a champion NASCAR driver without really knowing how the car worked. “You turn the steering wheel a direction, the wheels turn that way, and you move forward in that direction.” But what turns the wheels? How does the engine work? How are you able to move 2 wheels under several thousand pounds with your pinky? We all know it's not as simple as all that, but we seem to think creating sound out of a stick with holes poked in it is easier.

I won't get into the different techniques of playing - you can read that sort of thing on my articulation page or “Taming the 10-hole beastie.” What I will discuss, however, is the physics of sound, and how blowing air into a tube can produce a sound. And just why the heck the 3rd octave fingerings on a fife is so screwy compared to the first two (bottom) octaves.

“Key” Differences Between the Modern Flute and the Fife

The flute (and subsequent keyed instruments like sax, bassoon, etc.) uses the Boehm schema, developed in the early 1800's by Theobald Boehm. The main reason for the keys, is because Boehm was trying to get the mathematically “perfect” positioning to “temper1” the flute—which is too far a stretch for your hand, and sometimes requires more holes than you have fingers. So, the whole key/stringing system was created to compensate.

The fife, 6-hole or 10-hole, however, does not have the benefit of keys2. To produce 3 full octaves, the notes are impure, untempered, and use the concept of “tone” holes and “vent” holes to try to make up for its lack of accuracy. This leads us to the concept of how the sound is created, and why holes need to be positioned in a certain way to achieve the desired notes.

Confessions of a Pipe Organ Builder

Among the varied and interesting jobs I've held throughout my life, probably one the most personally valuable learning experiences I had was working for a pipe organ builder. It gave me an in-depth and first-hand view of the mechanics behind creating sound, what we're listening for when we're tuning, and some really great woodworking skills. I've used hardly any of it in my actual career as a computer geek, but it's made me a better artisan, musician, and instrumental teacher.

That Glorious Noise

Imagine you're standing next to a still pond. The surface looks like glass, until you throw a stone in it. This causes a disturbance in the water, because the water is suddenly pushed out of the way to make way for the stone. The water quickly fills in the void left behind, over-compensating, undercompensating, overcompensating... trying to reach a state of equilibrium. Thus a ripple is created around it as a wave of compressed and expanded water extends out seeking to equalize.

Now imagine the pond is made up of air. Air, like water, can shift and move, compress and expand. A sound is created when something disturbs the air pressure in such a way that a ripple of varying pressure is created.

Au Natural

If you strike any object, it will have a sound, because it vibrates. You will hear a frequency of sound relative to the material, density, and dimensions of that object. This frequency is known as the natural frequency of the object.

If you've ever witnessed the strange phenomenon of drummers at a drumstick vendor hitting themselves in the head, mouth open, with one stick at a time, it's an invitation to jokes, sure, but what they're actually doing is listening to the natural frequency of the sticks to make sure that they sound the same. Even the most meticulous manufacturing of drumsticks can not compensate for the fact that the wood varies in density and grain in the wood. Drummer-weirdness aside, the quality or timbre of the sound produced by vibrating an object depends on the natural frequencies of the sound waves produced by the object itself.

An object like a flute is able to achieve a very distinct single frequency, and can produce a very pure tone, as opposed to dropping a drumstick or some other clanky object that produces a number of frequencies and a complex sound wave. However, to achieve more than one frequency or tone depends on the ability to change the characteristics of the object, in the case of a fife, flute or other open-end air column3 - the length of the tube.

Harmonics

As discussed, every object has its own “natural frequency.” The natural frequency produced by a fife is anywhere from 423 - 447 Hz. Generally speaking, we'll assume a concert 440 Hz for the sake of clarity here. This is the frequency of a “D” - when the entire tube is closed, and you're blowing in the top, and the air and sound is escaping out the bottom, this is the rate at which the air is compressing and expanding.

Exciting Stuff

So how is this frequency of expanding/compressing air created? Certainly it doesn't feel like we're vibrating our lips at a fast rate! That's because we're not - the vibration of the air is a result of blowing across the mouth-hole. If you notice, we blow across the hole, and not directly in it. The idea is to get some of the air in the hole, and some of it out.

Boring Stuff

The bore of the tube is an interesting thing. The bore could be a “straight” bore—an even cylinder the length of the tube, a “conoidal” bore—increasing very gradually over the first two-thirds or so of its length and then expanding rapidly to end in a large everted bell (like a straight trumpet), a “conical” (cone-shaped) bore increasing or decreasing at an even rate, or a curved parabolic bore. Fifes are generally thought of as being a “straight” or cylindrical bore, although modern fife designs such as the McDonagh use a parabolic bore, or the Healy, which uses a parabolic head-joint and a cylindrical body.

The reason for some of these different shapes is the velocity of the air.

To create pitch in a tube, you're exciting the air to a certain level, and then by cutting that tube length in half, or increasing the air velocity (excitement) you create higher notes. If you look at a pipe organ, it's just a collection of tubes cut at different lengths to produce different sounds. On a single tube though, you need a way to “change the length” - that is, how far the air has to go before it escapes.

By lifting your fingers one by one, you're shortening the tube, and creating vents. Because this is how each tone is produced, the one controlling the sound is called the “tone” hole, and the rest are “vent” holes, creating, or releasing extra pressure.

This is fairly simple in the bottom two octaves, because the air is moving fairly slowly, and you're able to just go up the octave by lifting fingers and shortening the tube.

However, the 3rd octave of the fife, is very touchy and flakey. This third octave is likely the entire reason Boehm even bothered with his schema - otherwise, it's not too hard to get fairly consistently in-tune notes on the bottom 2 octaves. So to compensate, the “vent” holes play a much more important role in the 3rd octave. Because the air is moving so quickly, we need to keep enough in the tube to create pressure, but still effectively “shorten the tube.”
-------------------

What you have to do:
So instead of having (X closed hole O open)
X X X X X O for an E, we have:
X X O O X O - essentially using the harmonics and overtones of an A, but forcing some of the air past the E, as well. Your hole all the way at the bottom would be the “tone” hole, and the other two up top would be “vent” holes.

X X X X O O - F# in bottom 2 octaves
X O X X O O - F# in 3rd octave (usually really sharp)

X X X O O O - G in bottom 2
X O X O O O - G in 3rd

X X O O O O - A in bottom 2
O X X X X O - A in 3rd

X O O O O O - B in bottom 2
X O X O X O - B in 3rd (usually really sharp)

So, while there's some pattern you can sort of see in some, it doesn't apply to all notes. Just be aware that the third octave is different.

Here's a fingering chart for a 6-hole fife starting from the 2nd octave:
http://www.fifedrum.org/fifes/fingering.shtml

For E3, use the one I have above
X X O O X O <-- right
X X O O O X <-- wrong

Don't worry about going above B - nobody does. B is kind of a throw-away note anyway, because it's so horrible.

Hope that helps! Let me know what kind of fife you have (6-hole, 10-hole, & manufacturer or markings) and I could give you more specifics.

Endnotes:

Reference: