Something for the weekend...

So...camera is back, and so hopefully I'll be able to start posting some photos re classic old makers. I'm restoring a wonderful flute by Monzani which I'm going to use as the first example.
But for the moment, until I get my self organised, here's link to a YouTube video which Conor Byrne sent me a few weeks ago. He's playing an eight keyed mopane flute that I made for him a couple of years ago.

Happy New Year....

A Happy New Year to all my readers, or as we'd say in this part of the world...
Ath bliain faoi mhaise díbh go leir.
Mind you as far as I'm concerned the new year began on the 22nd of December when the days started to get longer....
Also apologies for those expecting a post about classic old flute makers, as suggested by Moritz, and agreed to by me....I'm afraid my camera is refusing to work, so it'll have to go off to the Nikon repair shop. God knows how long that will take....
In the meantime, I'll try and think of another topic that doesn't require photos....or at least ones I can do on my phone..
I'll also take the opportunity to comment on something that I said I would in my profile...the natural world...which is my other main passion.
The raven, that wonderful bird which features so much in folklore around the world, particularly in Scandinavian and Pacific Northwest Native American lore, has always been a feature of the Irish landscape as well, but in the twentieth century became much rarer, and whereas in times past it was a bird found all over the island, in my boyhood it was restricted to high mountains, and one only glimpsed it when walking in those areas.
Now I'm happy to say, it has been making a comeback, and even where I live, at the modest elevation of  185 metres is now a reasonably common bird.
At this time of year they're beginning to start their wonderfully acrobatic aerial displays where, especially in high winds they cavort and roll, fly upside down, and do this amazing thing where they fold their wings and drop from the sky, almost like the way notes on an iPhone disappear when you delete them.
Wonderful and uplifting.

Old Flute Economics

Hmm. Just noticed the date of the last blog! I think I'll have to change my approach to this, since the blog I've been meaning to write since then...the one about the cost of old flutes...keeps on retreating into the future. ( Can you use that expression? I read somewhere recently that there's a society somewhere who see the future as behind them and the past in front, logic being that you can't see the future, but can see the past. Makes sense to me)

I had written before about the cost and economics of the new flute, but as someone who is passionately interested in old flutes, both as a restorer and a collector myself, I really wanted to talk about the price of old flutes, vintage flutes, antique flutes, what ever you want to call them.

One thing that I have often remarked upon is how the emphasis among players shifted very quickly away from old flutes and towards the new in a short period time.

When I began making in 1979, and I was among the first, the vast, vast, majority of well known players played old flutes (I suppose to be more precise here I should say that what I have in mind when I talk about "old flutes" are generally English simple system flutes from the 19th century) By the late 1980s that situation had completely reversed, largely I believe because the quality and design of new flutes made them superior for the type of music being played.

This in itself had an effect on the price of old flutes, in a relative sense at least, as top quality new flutes began to be at least, and often more, expensive than the best old ones had been.

But there has always been something distinct about the market for old flutes, that sets it apart from the general area of antique musical instruments. Looking through the sales records of the major auction houses that have musical instrument sales, one of the most striking things, for me at any rate, is how with stringed, keyboard, and many other types of instrument, the price is controlled by such factors as age, rarity, and quality. We're all aware of the fabulous prices that Italian violins fetch, for example. Part of the reason for this, and one of the distinguishing factors between strings and woodwind is that the strings still have a musical functionality. Old Italian violins still feature largely in the hands of orchestral musicians worldwide. Since the advent of the Boehm flute the simple system flute has become very largely the concern of museums and collectors in general. It’s role in Irish traditional music and in the early music movement is a very small one overall, and as with Irish music, in early music modern copies nowdays have a bigger role to play.

Even given their bowing out to the modern flute, this does not quite explain how factors such as age, rarity, and quality seem to operate differently in this field. Antique firearms, for example have no practical modern role and yet the oldest and rarest, of the finest quality command very high prices.

Before I go any further it should be pointed out that from the buyer’s point of view there are two distinct levels of price…that of the auction and that of the dealer. A little consideration establishes that the auction price depends on the number of buyers who are interested in a particular flute, which can vary widely from day to day and place to place. The dealer on the other hand has a fixed price which is almost always higher, based on such factors as immediate availability, the availability of fully restored instruments, and often the ability to see and try the flute before buying.

The advent of the new flute has had an effect on the prices of old flutes simply because of the forces of supply and demand, as has the current economic downturn, to use a euphenism. And yet, the major element controlling the price of old flutes seems to be whether they are made by Rudall and Rose or not. There are of course many exceptions to this rule, but as a generalisation it certainly works.

I would emphasize that, contrary to what most people think, the auctioneers, even those from prestigious houses selling high end instruments, have a very limited level of knowledge and expertise. So, I think that one way to look at what’s going on is to realise that a lot of people in the area (these days encouraged by internet boards), buyers, sellers, auctioneers, have latched onto the idea that flutes by Rudall and Rose ( and of course the other combinations of the firm with Carte) are the epitome of the 19^th century simple system flute, and this idea is perpetuated to the exclusion of anything else. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, as long as it keeps going, it just gets bigger and bigger. One of the strongest points supporting this approach is, of course, that the flutes made by this firm are wonderful instruments, and truly deserve a central role. But the converse of this is that it diminishes the wonderful work done by many other makers, whose reputations in modern times lie in obscurity in the shadow cast by the promotion of Rudall and Rose.

In terms of the criteria mentioned above which normally determine the price of antiques, flutes by R & R certainly don’t score highly on the rarity front…with somewhere in the region of 7000 8 key flutes made between 1821 and the end of the century they are among the commonest of the type. In terms of age, all the flutes I’m talking about here are from the same period so that doesn’t really enter into it, and in terms of quality, doubtless though the quality of Rudall & Rose’s output is, it is easily matched, and often surpassed by the work of contemporaries.

Although the market for old flutes has fallen quite a bit in recent years, the large numbers of flutes made by Rudall and Rose ensures that they still come on the market frequently, and despite the fall in the market generally, appear to realise an average price of somewhere in the region of £stg2500. This will be for what we might call a standard R & R 8 keyed flute.

At the same time instruments of much greater beauty, rarity, and significance to the world of the simple system flute in general often change hands for around a third of this price.

Remarkable and confusing, but true.

I suppose one advantage, looking at it from a collectors point of view, is that it allows someone of restricted means to buy high quality instruments, and a large part of the fun of collecting anything is the satisfaction of discovering and buying something for a fraction of it’s real value.

And just to show that it’s dangerous to deal in generalities, or perhaps it really is the exception that proves the rule, consider this;

Within the last year a bog standard “German” flute was sold on ebay for $2000 and an absolutely mint Rudall, Rose & Carte 8 keyed flute in original case was sold at auction for £180…

And on my windowsill today...

Just in passing here's a shot of the windowsill in my workshop just above my silver work bench.

From left to right, this is what was on it on the 3rd of October:
A length of 6mm stainless steel threaded bar...part of the make up of a screw cork.
A bellows from a set of Northumbrian pipes, which I made in the early 80s. The bellows alone survives.
Sticking up behind the bellows, and not very visible...a bore measuring gauge.
The strange yoke with holes, is a tensioner from the rear stay of a small sail boat ( anyone want to buy a small sail boat?)
An old boxwood folding carpenters rule, and just beside it a double pencil sharpener.
A piece of coral, picked up on the beach on Aitutaki, Cook Islands.
A Phaleanopsis orchid, that I'm trying to encourage to flower again. (seems to be working!)
A cable tie (not everything here is interesting) Sticking up is the handles of a large artery forceps which makes a great clamp for holding very small things.
The tip of what must have been a very large elephant tusk.
A Banksia nut, turned to a cylinder.
A .270 cartridge ( spent)
An engineers square.
Finally a series of books, mostly workshop notebooks, but also including:
Traditional Slow Airs of Ireland, Ó Canainn
Workshop technology Part 2, Chapman
An Index of Musical Wind-Instrument Makers, Langwill ( Ist ed. 1960)
Band Instrument Repair Manual, Brand
Harrison Horizontal Milling Machine Manual
Hardening, Tempering, and Heat Treatment, Cain
A Zeus book
Running a Milling Machine, Colvin

So there you are now...

Flutes and Economics

That adage about people overly concerned with money that suggests that they know the price of everything but the value of nothing got me thinking about the price, and the value of flutes. As someone whose profession is intimately tied up with this, it’s something that I give quite a bit of thought to, and yet find it hard to come to any logical conclusion.

There are two quite distinct areas here, new flutes, such as I make, and associated with them in the same general area of interest, old, mainly English, 8 keyed flutes.

What determines price and value in both areas is distinct.

Lets look at new flutes first.

Here the normal factors that determine the price of most handmade products have an obvious importance. Firstly objective things, which are inescapable for all makers, but will obviously vary according to location and other circumstances:

Cost of raw materials

Time taken in manufacture

Cost of manufacture ( workshop costs, insurance, purchase and replacement of tools and machinery)

Secondly ( largely) subjective things:

Quality of work

Reputation of maker

These last two not necessarily being the same thing.

Supply and demand then positions a particular makers work in the market.

(I should add here that I’m talking about fully professional makers here, that rely totally on the income generated. Hobby makers, I’d argue, are able to operate in a very different financial environment.)

The supply and demand thing is quite different, or rather was quite different for newly made flutes, for prior to the late seventies there was no supply, and the demand only began when myself and others began to provide a supply.

In my own case, the first instruments that I produced commercially were priced at £100. To try and place this figure,  which is in the currency of the time, the punt, the average industrial manufacturing wage at the time was £82 per week, and a pint would have cost you 55 pence. Lets put all this into current Euros, and the flutes cost €127, the wages were €105, and the pint 70 cent. Put another way you could get 150 pints for the price of a flute in 1979, and today you would get 178 (at  sensible rural pub prices!)

That initial £100 pricing was really a shot in the dark. It seemed a nice round figure, but I really had no idea whether it was commercially viable or not, whether people would pay it for a new flute, and whether, depending on demand of course, it would provide me with a living. It should be remembered that a good old flute could be bought for £100-200 at the time. I had bought my first Rudall and Rose in 1977 for £150, and that was a dealer’s price…they could be had considerably cheaper at auctions. It pays to remember, though, that there was no one at the time available to restore a flute, unless you did it yourself.

Eventually, with more and more makers coming into the market throughout the 1980s, individual makers began to specialise, supplying particular markets with an increasing range of what was now widely known as the “Irish flute”.

The interesting thing to note here is that broadly speaking new flutes are basically the same price in comparison to the cost of living as they were when they first came on the market.

Where does this leave makers who are trying to make a living from flute making?

The fact that there are many many professional makers out there ( I proposed around 60 at the level I’m talking about in the second edition of the Flute Player’s Handbook, a couple of years ago) means that it is possible to make a living, and from what I know of other makers, I’d propose that professionals, no matter where they’re living, or what markets they are selling into, are making incomes in the same ballpark. This is despite levels of production, price to the consumer, waiting lists etc.

On the subject of waiting lists, one thing many people don’t realise is that the length of a waiting list is not necessarily related to demand, but rather is more closely related to the speed at which a particular maker works. Thus (and this statistic is quoted from a real situation] a five year waiting list may be the result of one maker producing five flutes a year against an order backlog of twenty five orders, where as a two year wait may be the result of another makers yearly production of twenty instruments, and an order backlog of forty.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll get onto the pricing of old flutes in the next post.

Here’s something to think about before I leave. In late 19^th century England, a top quality 8 keyed flute cost somewhere in the region of £12. If this flute was bought in, as very many were at this stage when the Boehm flute had become dominant, the maker would have received around £4. A middle class wage was in the range of £50-£150, so for someone in the lower eschelons a good flute (remembering that the 8 key flute was just about obsolete at that time ] would cost you a quarter of your yearly income.

On the one hand.....

Bit of an accident last Friday is keeping me out of the workshop so I have a bit of time on my hands (or rather hand) resulting in this and maybe one or two other rather long posts. 

This is something that I’ve been meaning to write about for quite some time.

I’m sure that, like me, many of you read and sometimes contribute to the on-line boards and discussion lists relating to traditional flute/Irish music.

            For those from outside Ireland in particular, this has become one of the main ways in which they keep in contact with the Irish music community in general, and in their own area of enthusiasm in particular.

            To those who have come to the music in the digital era, it can be hard to explain just how different it was back in the day, when the cassette recorder was considered to be the cutting edge of technology.

            When my own interest began to develop in the early 1970s the only sources of tunes or the way of playing them were a couple of dozen LP recordings, the players themselves, and if you were lucky what you or your friends recorded on the new fangled cassettes. There were also a few printed collections, but abc notation was unheard of, so this source was barred to anyone who wasn’t musically literate, and even then one still needed to hear the notes played by a traditional player to make any progress.

            Classes and formal tuition were scarce in general and unavailable in many areas. It required serious effort to try to learn traditional music.

            Of course this was not all bad. There’s an expression in Irish - cad is anamh is iontach- which simply means what’s rare is wonderful, which I think is appropriate here. Nowdays one can access even the most obscure recordings - even video recordings -  with a few clicks of the mouse, and there’s an element, for me anyway, of over exposure taking some of the good out of it. Eating an exotic food every day soon reduces it to the level of the mundane. I suppose that part of the attraction for me, and I’d suggest many others, was the esoteric and non-commercial nature of the music scene in those days.

            I have to confess to being partly resposible for this whole internet/traditional music thing. When I was a PhD student at UCC in the early 90s myself and one of my colleagues, Paul McGettrick set up the Irtrad-L discussion list which was the first of it’s kind, and amazingly this year has it’s 20th anniversary.

            Since then of course, there are such resources almost without number. But the question that has to be asked is...what effect has this had on the traditional music community?

One the major effects is that this community is now more than ever an international one, not that this is totally due to the internet. Since the first days of Irish emmigration Irish music has been international, but with the advent of the internet, this internationality has moved far beyond the original limits of the Irish diaspora, which were largely the USA and UK. Recently, for example, I have sold instruments to Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Belarus, and the Ukraine, something which definitely would not have happened in pre-internet  days.

However despite all this internationalism, is the internet really leading to a more homogenous traditional music culture?

One major factor that has become apparent to me, speaking as someone who is familiar with the Irish traditional music community both in Ireland and abroad, is that those outside Ireland are much more likely to be involved in the internet music community than those Irish born and still living in Ireland, despite the fact that the Irish are major participants in every other aspect of digital communications and social networks, twitter etc.

This of course, is one of the results of the spread of the popularity of Irish music abroad, and that popularity has,  for a considerable number of years spread far beyond the Irish diaspora, something which in some part has been due to the influence of the internet.

Within a comparitively short period of time, we have moved from a situation where Irish traditional music was the concern of a minority within Ireland, ( lets include the diaspora for accuracy) to the current state of affairs where that same group now find themselves as a minority in a world wide community.

How this situation is now presenting via the online media is essentially what concerns me in this post.

Having been, as I’ve pointed out, there from the very start, and having been at times a keen enough participant in the whole online area, I find that recently I’ve become simply a lurker, with little interest in active participation.

There are several reasons for this.

One of course, is lack of time, but if I were honest with myself and my readers here, I’d have to admit that in general the discussions and exchanges that take place among the online Irish music community are of little to interest me, and the reason I have no interest is that they largely deal with situations, topics, and areas of interest that have no relevance to me as a practising musician and instrument maker living in Ireland.

What worries me, is that very many of the participants appear to be involved for just that very reason...that in some way they’re now, even if vicariously part of the Irish traditional community that those of us living in Ireland (the heartland of it, I think you’d have to admit) are part of.

A board that perhaps many of you are probably familiar with, and one which I’ve been a member of for some years is the Chiff and Fipple forum.

This forum currently has over 10,000 members so to the uninitiated it can appear that they’re reading the distilled wisdom of a group of this size. Like almost every other online forum without exception though, the regular posters are a tiny percentage of the overall membership...not the fault of this or any other forum, of course.

What’s more worrying, and what has encouraged me into almost complete lurker mode on this and other forums, is that the opinions expressed, taken in total, reflect something completely different to those that I know are held by the traditional flute community in Ireland, on just about every thread discussed.

I’d argue that as a group, flute enthusiasts based in Ireland hold radically different views on all the common issues that are discussed from day to day on such forums, such as favourite recordings, players, styles, makers etc. This is not to say of course that such opinions are invalid in any way...except as being representative of Irish opinion, which is presumably what the majority of the forum members are keen to find out.

Of course such forums cannot and should not be restricted as to membership, something that would quickly lead to elitism.

But perhaps more people should be aware that many traditional Irish music forums are dominated by opinion from outside what might be considered the core group.

Catching up.

Well, what with travelling and teaching etc., I haven’t posted in quite a while, so this is what I’ve been up to.

Travelled to St. John’s Newfoundland to play at the Feile Seamus Creagh, and spent a great few days there. The connection is that Seamus spent about 5 years living in St. John’s from 1987 to 1992, and apart from knowing Seamus well from when I arrived in Cork in 1976, I recorded a CD with him and Con Fada Ó Drisceoil ,  “It’s No Secret” in 2001.  I’ve been lucky enough to have visited Newfoundland a good few times since my initial visit in 2003, and have made good friends there among the music ( and angling ) community.

Initiailly I was asked up to play at the Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival, since I was “next door” at the Boxwood flute camp that year, and I think this year was my eighth or ninth visit... and hopefully not the last.

Directly off the plane from St. John’s and onto the train to Westport to do my annual  teaching gig at Scoil Acla, where I meet up with Harry Bradley and Liam O’Connor again, my  co-conspirators from Bordeaux. No burning pianos this time, it’s too wet!

Scoil Acla, held every year on Achill Island Co. Mayo, is a great summer school, and is going from strength to strength. This year the teachers were myself, Harry Bradley, Peter Molloy ( yes, son of that Molloy!), Emer Mayock, and Maureen McGrattan.

Shortly after I come back from Achill, sad news of the death of Leslie Bingham, one the major figures in the revival of traditional flute playing in the north of Ireland.

When I was just begining to become aware of the flute in traditional music, Leslie was one of the few players that were around in Belfast, constantly encouraging to young players, and in the days when flutes were like hen’s teeth both giving me the loan of the first wooden flute that I ever played, and advising Dessie Wilkinson and myself before our first flute buying trip to Dublin.

We had heard the CCÉ had some flutes for sale at their headquarters in Dublin, which in those days was in Harcourt St.  I sold my guitar and we headed off. We both bought German flutes for £45, which in today’s money was somewhere around €300-€350. Given the fact that you can buy a similar flute today for more like €250, you can see that flutes weren’t cheap back in the day, as some think.

Leslie had told us to look out for a type of flute called a Rudall and Rose...that was the first time I ever heard those words...but of  course what we found there was a bunch of old fairly battered German flutes. I also remember that the person we dealt with in Harcourt St. was Mary Bergin.

After all the galivanting ( more of it this week with 7 visiting musicians from Newfoundland getting their own back) I’ll really have to get the nose against the grindstone in the coming weeks.

The first flute with the new style keys is nearly finished, so I hope to post some pictures of it soon.