CE3K sound question

[Jeff Root]

Another object in need of analysis. This one is time critical.

This familiar sequence of five notes was recorded circa 1976
for the movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind':
http://www.freemars.org/jeff2/CE3K-0.wav

In the movie, it is performed using various instruments,
including onscreen by a human playing a keyboard-controlled
electronic synthesizer. I believe the snippet in the link
is supposed to eminate from the alien spacecraft, so of
course it is not explained how those sounds are made.

In a discussion, a person probably about 24 years old heard
my snippet and described the tones as having been made by a
flute. Another person, a 50's-something electrical engineer
of enormous competence and good judgement who I would trust
with my life without a moment's hesitation... went along with
that idea as if he accepted it.

Is it possible that this recording actually is of a flute?

If it is not actually the sound of a flute, is it close enough
to continue the pretense that it is, given the assumption
that anything which sounds like a flute is a flute sound?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[01101001]

It's got some flute timbre to it to my horribly inept ear.

Wikipedia: Close Encounters of the Third Kind: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Encounters_of_the_Third_Kind)

The synthesizer used to communicate with the aliens at the end of the film is an ARP 2500 modular system. Phil Dodds, a tech from ARP Instruments Inc., is the man playing the keyboard.

(I always wondered why that actor looked unactorly.)

But was it the Arp making that noise? If it was the Arp, how well could an Arp emulate a flute?

Oh, you say the sound came from the ship? I suspect John Williams orchestral sounds there. Flute wouldn't surprise me. Later there were horn-like noises from the ship.

The last note's got something else going on in background. String?

===

NASA connection:

close encounters of the ARP kind (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1996_articles/aug96/arp2500.html)

The [ARP] 2500 was designed in 1969 by former NASA engineer Alan R Pearlman (hence ARP) who was responsible for amplifier design on the Gemini and Apollo space programmes.