Flute is one of the oldest Indian musical instruments, and Lord Krishna is often portrayed as a young boy playing a flute. If you are a flautist or thinking of taking up the flute, you are truly blessed by Lord Krishna. So, if you are searching for a high quality, perfectly tuned flute, you have come to the correct place.
The conventional Flute Carnatic (South Indian) is made of Bamboo and has eight finger holes and one blow hole. As with Bamboo flutes, it is very difficult to get a perfectly tuned flute. Even more rarer to get two identically tuned flutes. The main reason for this scarcity is one, the variation in the inner diameter of Bamboo. Second reason is, the variation in positioning of finger holes when they make the Bamboo flute . Selecting a perfectly tuned Bamboo flutes is an extremely tedious task and most flautists would agree that if you sample 100 Bamboo flutes, you may be in luck to find 1 or 2 perfectly tuned flutes.
With poorly tuned Bamboo flutes, the flautist has to rotate the flute, adjust the blowing or adjust the finger hole opening to compensate for the inaccurate pitch of each note. For a novice, this would be frustrating and make it difficult to master the art of playing the flute. Furthermore, this could lead them to give up playing the flute or play the wrong pitch of those notes and annoy the listeners! Eventually they have to give up playing the flute or start searching for a better flute.
Carnatic Flute Design
After many years of experimenting with various sizes and types of materials, a synthetic material Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), also known as acrylic or acrylic glass is used to make Carnatic flutes. Acrylic flutes produce rich tonal quality comparable to high quality Bamboo flutes. Yarl Technologies introduces an acrylic Carnatic flute to the South Indian music community.
Yarl Technologies manufacture a range of special acrylic tube sizes with Inner diameter and wall thickness designed to suite the pitch of the flute. The very high quality light-weight acrylic material which produces rich tones and semitones that are very pleasing to the ears.
Pitch Range – Shruthi
At present, Yarl flutes are made for pitches from 1 Kattai to 5-1/2 Kattai (for 1 Kattai flute the pitch of ‘Sa’ is tuned to C5: 523.25Hz; for 1-1/2 Kattai flute the pitch of ‘Sa’ is tuned to C5#: 554.36Hz and so on).
The distance from the blow hole to each finger hole is calculated to suite the typical fingering technique used for playing the Carnatic flute. Precise positioning of finger-holes are achieved with laser cut finger holes that are a perfect fit to each finger, enabling full control of the openings.
The specially crafted blow-holes enable even the novice flautist to produce sharp, crisp and clear tones across two and a half octave ranges. Flautists will also find it extremely easy to modulate the blowing. Since each note is perfectly tuned you can play without the need for continual adjustment.
Quality Test
We test each note for accuracy of frequency and wave shape to ensure timbre quality using a spectrum analyser. Its light-weight design enables the flautist to play for long hours. Furthermore, the melodious tone of this Yarl Carnatic flute makes it hard for the flautist to stop playing!
Have you ever wondered why you have not heard more than two flautists play together? This may be because it is very difficult to get two identical Bamboo flutes. Obviously, with perfectly tuned identical Yarl flutes, this would now be possible!
Short video clips of Sridhar Gopalaratnam playing the Yarl Carnatic Flute – Pitch 3 Kattai (E).
Yarl Flutes are marketed by Yarl Technology Pty Ltd since 2016 to the South Indian music community.
Related Products
- Try our DGTAL – Talometer. Metronome to maintain the Laya.
- Watch this space for Yarl Tanpura and we would appreciate your expression of interest.