Interesting thought but which woodwind instruments don't have at least 6 or
7 open (unkeyed) holes?
All mine have the standard unkeyed holes along with the other keyed ones.
Maybe the large amount of metalwork hides the fact the holes are there but
certainly flutes, clarinets, saxophones, bassoons and oboes have open holes.
Flutes, of course, go a step further in having keys with holes in them .
As far as I know, there is no member of the woodwind class made without open
holes (discounting some bass instruments which would be impossible for the
fingers to reach maybe).
Colin Hill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Boris" <matthew_p...@hotmail.com>
To: <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:06 PM
Subject: [NSP] Has there ever been an NSP with _all_ keys (no open holes)?
I was pondering recently, both on the stacatto effect of the keys, the
difficulties in only having two fingers free to hit keys, and also
thinking about whether a person missing a hand could play bagpipes in
general.
A thought occurred to me: have any NSP been made which had every hole
covered by a key? With such a settup, all fingers would be available
to hit keys. I think that's how a lot of modern woodwinds are made; is
there any reason besides tradition that this is not regularly done on
NSP?
-Matthew
Arlington, Virginia, USA
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