Well, late this afternoon it was a balmy 71 degrees here in SE Kansas. Wanda & I packed the flues in the car and went down to the local city park in search of good acoustics.

I've been waiting for a warm day so we could go try out the band shell.

It was really neat! The sound of the flutes was totally different than anything I've been able to get around the house.

Where do you go to get neat sound when you play?

Wow! I gotta get me one of those...

The best echo I've found close around is an 8-ft. diameter by about 60 ft culvert that runs under a road at a nature preserve I frequent. Huge echo which you can "tune" by moving through the tube.


Not very homey in there though...


Harold

Really the best acoustics I have played is in some churches in my area. Due to my profession as a pastor I happen to be in quite some churches, and I like to take the opportunity to try out the acoustics. If you have some large classic stone cathedral nearby try it. But even lesser and more modern churches can have surprizingly good acoustics.

I would think caves work very well as well. But I haven't dared to take a flute with me climbing down in the narrow and moisty caves we have around here. I would love to try to play in the Kiruna mine, which is the largest underground mine in the world. I might try to get that opportunity in due time...

No worries. I have 11 ft. ceilings, so I only use the amp, away from home.

I need to do that, not here in town. We don't have a band shell, but a town near here has a very interesting one. It is old and they didn't know what they were doing. It's a 1/4 sphere so it's acoustics are... interesting. I have run sound for a band there. It would be cool to play a flute there.....

AS you can see in the photo, our band shell is also a 1/4 sphere design. It's about 45 or 50 feet across the front (16 long paces)
We discovered real fast that our band shell had a couple of sweet spots. Looking at the picture, the sweet spots were in the corners next to the smallest arch in the back of the shell. The right hand corner, as viewed, was best. I think because there was a SW breeze blowing through the openings in the back wall into the other corner. The band shell faces North. Standing 4-5 ft away & facing toward the wall/ arch corner, instead of toward the front where an audience would be, produced the best sound. When doing that, any of my flutes still sounded loud over 100 ft away! The natural vibrato effect was pretty neat too.


Trivia note: J. J. Richards, whom the band shell is dedicated to, was a Pittsburg resident famous for his marching band compositions and noted for his work as a band leader. http://www.marineband.usmc.mil/learning_to...rs/richards.htm

Great Band Shell! Our flute circle meets at the Mockingbird Cafe which is located in a very old building that has incredibly tall ceilings, and the acoustics in there are truly outstanding! It is actually quite a treat to be able to play our flutes in there! The customers enjoy it too!

Jimbo, when I lived in Florida, a place not known for it's canyons or caves finding an acoustical environment was very difficult. One day I was walking with a flute down Coquina beach and stopped in a public restroom for, well for what you stop in a restroom for, and noticed,though it was a cinder block building, it had a concrete domed ceiling. I gave the flute a toot and I was in heaven! PERFECT, absolutly perfect acoustics for this instrument. There was a bench in there and I sat and played for a long time.
When I left there were dozens of folks sitting outside, all chilling on the flute.
I braved the kind of talk that can happen about guys that hang around public toilets and went back often. The building got taken out by one of the hurricanes, it was sad to see it being bulldozed.
With all the modern digital effects available I haven't been able to duplicate that sound, but will know it if it happens again!
Kuz

One of those situations where your playing was really in the toilet........


but it was a good thing!

In my TN home, we have a basement, and I discovered I can sit on the top step and play down into the basement and get a nice little echo. There are also many caves in the area, wonderful acoustics there!
peaceful Blessings,
Beth

Now that I play, I would like to try playing in the Sevierville Caverns, when I move back into that area, again.

Rick I have played in, I think it was Luray cavern. There is a very large room called the cathedral. Since it was a group tour I lagged behind and when all were gone I stood in the middle and played. Wonderful acoustics!!! Not sure how long I played but when done I intended to stand in the silence with my eyes closed but there was a great deal of applause from the tour group who had returned without my knowing.
Playe in another cave in that area this time just my family and the person guiding us. When finished she gave us some crystals and small stalagmite/tites.

Another place with very nice acoustics was a restroom in one of the big granite buildings in DC. I got really strange looks from guys who came in not expecting a concert

A friend of mine who is also a flutemaker took apart a Mr. Microphone and put the inner parts of it (springs and baffles) into a flute. It was so cool to have built in echo!

Our next flute circle meeting is to be held in Duke University Chapel, which is much more like a large stone Cathedral. We get to meet and play there about once per year. The acoustics there are incredible whether playing or listening to others play it give you goosebumps.

Here are some pics:



Can you believe that thing is in North Carolina?!

Never been in there, but it ought to be an awesome experience!

Hope I get to go! Don't think I'll be wearing blue jeans, though!

My "conservatory" has tile floor, glass doored book shelves and no acoutical tile ceiling so I get pretty good acoustics there. To vary the sound I can play from different parts of the room and also I can open or close different bookshelf doors to get a reverb effect.

I, like Harter, have found a culvert that allows some railroad tracks to cross over our Rivers Edge Trail here in Great Falls. The acoustics seem best just inside the culvert, rather than in the center of it. Only problem is that it is located at the bottom of a long, steep hill with a blind curve leading into it. Been durn near runned over in there by folks on bicycles and on rollerblades!
Another place that I've enjoyed beautiful acoustics is at the cancer center that is associated with our hospital. There is a large atrium with 35-40 foot ceilings, and plenty of tile. There is also a man-made river that runs through it and a huge water wall on one end. When the pumps for the river/water wall are turned off for the night, the water makes these incredible "glugs" which sound and awful lot like the paint pots and mud pots down in Yellowstone as they echo through the atrium... Plus...time spent there allows me to meditate and pray for my brothers and sisters who have had cancer or are now fighting the disease. My flutes tend to take on a more reverent tone there, and they "pray" much more solumnly. Regardless of acoustics, I never forget where I am and the "price of admission." Peace...
Tom

Folks say that playing in stairwells, at the community colleges, works pretty good. Probably gets you some strange looks from students!

I'm like Rick, very high ceilings. I live in an old Victorian house built in 1901 with high ceilings and odd corners. Flutes sound great in my living room.

The only caves I've had a chance to play in are the sea caves on Santa Cruz Island (Channel Island National Park off Ventura-Santa Barbara CA).

The strange thing is that, while they have echo and are hauntingly beautiful, I haven't been able to hear the veverb when I'm playing in the ones I've managed to play in. Others in my group who are floating outside the cave report that it sounds good, but I think the water "floor" somehow dampens the sound back to me.

Of course, playing inside a sea cave, sitting in a kayak while you're watching for "sneaker" waves to come inside and dash you to the ceiling does distract one a bit...

I'm still hoping for that rare perfectly-flat day when I can get into all my favorite, tightest and deepest caves, and be able to close the eyes and let 'er rip.



Harold

If anyone ever takes a trip to Key West, make sure that you tote a flute or two to Fort Zachary Taylor !!! I have not had the chance to do so myself, but many years ago I heard someone playing the flute when I was touring the fort and it was an absolutely magical sound!

I teach at a community college, and yeah the stairwells (and bathrooms) would be great. I prefer to go out by the lake on campus when it's warm enough ... in the 60s today. We have a lot of music students who practice all sorts of intruments, so the looks are no stranger than the ones I get from the ducks and geese.

Hmmmm. Wonder how it would sound in the Dry Tortugas? Lots of ghosts in that old prison, you know.

we have a 1949 house with coved ceilings and the inside porch and the hallway sound good.

thanks for the tip on the basement steps. Works well, now if only the steps were wider than 4 inches to sit on.

My stairwells are 7 stories, so that gets to be a little much.

I've run across some wonderful reverbs in some interesting places. the stairwell next to the main elevator at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite is amazing. And I once found a sort of cupola thing on one of the main streets of Scottsdale, AZ that has the most amazing reverb/echo. If you stand exactly in the middle, it sounds like the flute is playing in the middle of your head. If you move slightly in any direction, the reverb moves outside your head and away from the direction you're moving in. If you simply move your body in a sort of circular swaying, the reverb moves around you as you sway. Quite remarkable.

Culverts, stairways, concrete structures, etc. all are possibilities. The fun is in exploring them. If any of y'all get out to San Francisco, check out the old tunnels and gun emplacements along the coast on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge in the Marin Headlands park. There are some amazing places there.

You just made me think of Bluefield College on the VA/W. VA line. If you stood in front of the admin building and faced the mountains across the road, you could hear a really loud echo of everything you said. It was so cool!

Man! If I had only had my flutes then!

At work we have a meeting room that has great acoustics.

I stayed late to use it and one of my coworkers discovered me. He was bringing in his banjo to practice

If you've got a spare room at home, I suggest removing everything from the room and try playing there. A couple years back my wife decided to paint and refurnish one of our bedrooms. After the painting was done and before we put anything back in it, I played my flute in there. Wow! The house has old lath and plaster walls instead of drywall, so perhaps that contributed to the reverb, but it was quite nice. Of course, when we put everything back in, I lost the reverb. Oh well.

I have those old plaster walls, too! Only problem is I don't have enough space to empty out one of the rooms and use it for flute playing.

Hmm ... wonder if I emptied out the bedroom closet and got in there .......

Getting in the closet is never a problem. Coming out of the closet is what usually has repercussions............

I am so lucky to live here in Southern Utah, and I really do get to go play in the canyons at times. That's a good thing, 'cause my bathroom isn't much for sound. There is a lot of variety in the acoustics outside, depending on the terrain, and it isn't always a good thing. If the wind is blowing, often my song is lifted away......

But I do have a cool story! Once we were out with friends, looking at petroglyphs, and ran into a man who was doing the same thing. He joined up with our group, and they all started climbing the opposite cliff wall together, looking for more petroglyphs. I have bad knees, so I stayed behind, with my "loud mouth" Mountainflutes Alaskan Yellow Cedar F#. I settled down in the warm sun, with my back to the canyon wall, shut my eyes, and let 'er rip! The sound was amazing, bouncing off the cliff face in back of me and the opposite cliff face in front of me, with all sorts of secondary echoes too. It sounded like a whole Pueblo was playing! The stranger didn't know me from a tree stump, or know that I had flutes with me, and I heard later that he really freaked out, saying "What is THAT? Where is that coming from" and that he kept looking around and kept an eye out in back of him, until someone had mercy on him, and clued him in!

Ah, I live for such moments!

Wow Kat, what a nifty experience!!! Maybe I'll head west one of these days and we can sit in the sun, tell stories, raise a toast to mother earth with a wee bit of Captain Greybeard Rum, and then bounce some tunes off the cliff together with our sibling Alaskan Yellow Cedar F# flutes!

I have a basement too and it works well. Just sit on the steps and play.I also go to a place near me that has a doulble arch train bridge with a road under it.You can sit under it and play.The sound seems to just go up and around the arch.Sounds pretty cool.There's also a bridge near me that you can site under and play,it has a nice stream that goes under it as well.

I like to play occasionally in the alleyway between the building I work at,and the place next to it! The acoustics are kinda cool...it sounds like being in a cave in a way! I get some weird ringing overtones out of both My flutes and My Didges there! I got a really crazy ringing note out of overblowing on one of My didges in that spot,that I have never heard anywhere else I played it. And today I took My new Meadowlark flute to that spot and got some similar ringing reverb like sounds from it! Pretty Cool!!!!

Kuz ... I can't stop laughing - that's perfect!

Leave it to ya Kuz to have a concert in the potty I know some public parks have the concrete facilities. Time to take the flutes out and check one out.

Hey Legrande,

Welcome to the forum!

Glad you've joined us here!

You are kidding!! You have the same one? Ha! We would really kick up a ruckus! Come out next year for Zion (I have to miss this year) but I have a feeling that thee and me, rum and flutes might be a dangerous combination. Better put the credit cards in a LOCKED freezer lol!

By the way, I lived in Florida for 17 years.
Kat

I got a great cave close to my house named Rawhiti. It is shaped like an orchestral shell and in the morning the sun comes streaming through the opening offering beautiful visuals as well as acoustics. So, all you gotta do is get on a plane and head down to Golden Bay, which is on the South Island of New Zealand and look me up, I will take you there...

If that's a hassle for some of you, I have a great toilet here in my house that offers great acoustics as well and is easier to get to than the cave because we don't have to drive...

Plus, it's Summer here now...

Just a rootin' tootin', good time flootin' offer,

Tenzin

For a while now, I've wanted to go to Echo Canyon in New Mexico about an hour west of Taos. Has anyone ever been there and played there?

http://photos.igougo.com/pictures-photos-l...cho_Canyon.html

Well, I figure I have been close. Oh yeah, I haven't been to it.....but I have been by it.

When I lived in Santa Fe, my friend David drove there and played our shakuhachi. I was playing with my eyes closed and after a while I heard this buzz, when I opened my eyes there was a hummingbird hovering a few inches above my shakuhachi and I play for a few more minutes, and when finished it flew off. David, said unbelievable, that bird didn't move for 5 minutes.

Musicman

That must have been amazing!!

Wow!! If you can get a hummingbird to stop in his tracks, you've really done something! I bet it was an amazing experience.

The Reed Gold mine is near here. I'm going to try and see if I can work it out to play in the mine. When I was at Zion last year, I found a few nice places to play. In 2010, I hope to find places in the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and several parts of New Mexico and Arizona. There's just something about those canyons that inspires you. I kept wondering if hundreds or thousands of years earlier someone was playing a flute in the same spot as me. It was very humbling.

Monument Valley is probably my favorite place in the world. It would be amazing to play a flute there!!

Y'all are describing all these wonderful canyons, caves and such and all I have is my little band shell in the park - and I gotta watch out for City officials or they will get me for using the facilities without a permit!

AWESOME!!!