So, the wisdom of this board has encouraged me to pursue the flute. That said, I have done a little research. There are basic 6-hole Irish flutes which seem like they are the natural transition from the whistle. I'm assuming these are the same diatonic instrument that the whistle is and seem to be predominantly tuned to D. My first question would be, does the flute respond just as the whistle in terms of half-holing and bends?
Then there are keyed flutes, for chromatic play. Is there an importance in going with a keyed flute? Should I just go with a keyless flute and half-hole? Please keep your newbie comments to a minimum ;)
You can definitely get by with a keyless flute for quite some time, all the half-holes and bends are similar to whistle. The keys do have their advantages as far as getting a solid tone on notes like F and C natural, but the majority of the trad repertoire can be played on a keyless flute.
Depending on your half-holing ability, embouchure and the flute, some half holes will not work. On my keyless, I have been unsuccessful in producing a bottom register Fnat, any kind of Eb or G#
Not that I've put much effort into it.
And I don't use the keys on my keyed flute for playing irish tunes (aside the occasional accidental).
On my keyless flute I can get Fnat and G# but not Eb. But then I can't get Eb on the whistle. You might care to investigate Hall's Crystal Flutes, made as the name implies, from glass. The range of notes is impressive and relatively easy to cross-finger, they are not expensive, or subject to atmospheric problems. The only disadvantage is that they are not tunable; but mine is never far out anyway,
A Keyless flute will do for almost all of the tunes in this repertoire. In order of importance (and in ordeer of increasing difficulty), the accidentals CNat, FNat and Gsharp are all doable with either half holing or cross fingering - half holing being easier on a flute with larger holes. Bflat is questionable but also doable for short notes and Eflat is impossible.
Most bending of tones will be done by the embouchure and breath support.
A keyed flute of high quality is far harder to come by and lots more expensive than a keyless. So the advice is to go with a keyless until you know enough about flutes not to need to listen to my advice, at which point you can start the quest to find the right top end keyed flute for you.
Frequently recommended startup options are (in order of roughly increasing price/quality)
a. PVC cylindrical flute from Doug Tipple with Fajardo wedge - not to be confused with plain cylindrical PVC flutes by "someone on ebay". These are playable and in tune.
b. Sweetheart D Flute. Good value for the money. I don't own one in D, but I do have one in F which is fine.
c. M&E, Seery or Dixon conical polymer flutes - I don't know anything about these but a lot of people start on them - make sure that a dixon is a three piece conical one, not the two piece cylindrical one.
d. Folk flute by Casey Burns - Real wood, acoustically very nice (at least the one I have is, as are all the others I've seen in the flesh.). No tuning slide, but tunable within the range of most player/session combinations that are likely to crop up. I personally would recommend this as a good starter. Mine fills the role of the campfire flute admirably. The minimalist style is also very atractive.
e. keyless flutes by named and admired makers (Including Casey Burn's standard flutes). The sky is the limit. Prices can go up to 1200 Euros, waiting times can vary enormously and people's preferences as to which maker is "best" also vary enormously. Start to look at this area when you have played another flute for a while and know more about what you want.
f. Keyed flutes - starting with the M&E as the cheapest keyed option I think and continuing up to the expensive flutes by the top makers. As an extreme example, a new Wilkes flute has a ten year waiting list.
g. Used flutes. Bargains can be had, especially if you know what you want and watch the Chiff and Fipple boards for flutes offered for sale. If you don't know what you want nor what price is appropriate, then this is a very easy way to not get what you want.
h. Antique flutes - forget this. Maybe in a few years time if you stumble over a good one that you know is in playable nick, but otherwise, you won't be able to afford a good one nor will you be able to cope with the strange tuning that many have.
This started my day of with a smile....... "I have been unsuccessful in producing a bottom register Fnat, any kind of Eb or G#
Not that I've put much effort into it."
There are tunes with Eb and I'm very surprised that crackpot can't play it on the flute considering he recently said that anything that could be played on the whistle he could play on the flute. Or is a keyed flute required to play anything that can be played on the whistle?
Jimmy,
I am a whistle player (and maker for that matter) and I have just graduated to the flute with a Casey Burns 6 -hole keyless flute.
I find that it works pretty much the same as my LowD whistle. The difference being that you have more complex correlations between fingering and embrochure to achieve the note than you do with a whistle.
Having your hands to the side seems to screw things up a bit too!
Getting good half-holed notes on the flute is just a matter of spending some time practicing it.
Likewise you can bend all the notes just as you would on the whistle. Well, it's a bit different because if you use the "classical" upper hand grip, in which the flute rests on the base of the upper hand index finger and the upper hand fingers curl round the flute tube, the finger action used to bend up to upper hand notes is different than you would use on those same holes on the whistle.
Specifically some people find it a bit clumsy bending up to C, and doing pats and cuts with that upper hand index finger, though most people don't seem to have any issue with those things.
The bottom-hand finger action can be the same as on the whistle.
Half-holeing on the flute is related to hole size. I can't half-hole Eb on my small-holed D flute. The maker recommends a key for that. Some people with large-holed flutes say they can do it (Eb that is) especially on a Tipple in D. I have a Tipple in G which has big holes and I automaticaly start playing it more like a whistle. It invites bending, the small-holed flute does not (but I am probably multiple decades behind Richard in terms of experience).
When I got the single key I systematically went through this chart, http://www.oldflutes.com/charts/onekey/index.htm
experimenting with embouchure, watching a tuner and listening to the character of the note. It is not designed for a modern 'irish' flute so some things (e.g. the Fs) were way off but, for the rest, having two options for most 'chromatic' notes was useful. Having an Eb key to vent does help some.
I did not expect such in-depth and outstanding advice. My thanks to everyone. I did see some prices for 5-key flutes and, yes, I'm not ready to spend that on a new instrument yet. I looks like the transition from whistle to flute will go well.
I do have one other concern. I am in Arizona, which, if anyone has been here, knows it is hot, but also very, very dry. The dryness has been known to crack guitars that are introduced to the climate. I have an acoustic guitar and a mandolin that have both acclimated to the desert, and once that happens, then they are fine, but I have personally seen cracked and warped stringed instruments. Now, I know I can go with a polymer flute, but somehow I just can't see myself playing anything but real wood. Is there anyone that knows of the risks with a desert climate and, if so, are there some tonewoods that are better than others for this super-dry climate?
If playing Irish trad is your focus, forget the keys, at least until you're comfortable with the instrument. Yes, there will the odd tune you can't play or need to rework a bit, but there are thousands of tunes that will fit beautifully.
I found this site. This seems a bit too low to believe, but rosewood and cocuswood flutes for $198, including case? They look decent. Any comments or experience with these? Would they be okay for a beginner?
"does the flute respond just as the whistle in terms of half-holing and bends?" IMO...no.
"Should I just go with a keyless flute and half-hole?" IMO again no. A two keyed flute with a Cn key and Fn covers a lot of ground in Irish music. I eventually got a G# key added to my Hammy flute and while it's good to have the option I managed grand for years with two keys. Went back to keyless recently (bought a lovely Olwell) still torn between the two flutes, both have lovely tone, both have different characteristics I like but I miss the keys,
Basically agreeing with much of the above - congratulations on your choice!
E flat by half-holing might be just possible on some flutes, but it's not a great idea - after all, that was the first key added in the history of flute development. Admittedly those flutes had what we now call small holes, so all the extra chromatic notes had to be done by cross-fingering of some sort.
There are a few tunes that, while someone might want to show off and say that it's possible, are not worth the effort without a few keys, but there is a good majority for which a Dmaj scale with cross-fingered Cnat is all you need, and a good keyless is *so* much cheaper. Again, I'm not the first to say this, but if you get one of those it will keep you going for a long time; by the time you really want keys you will know for yourself which ones are important.
Wanted to second the Rob Forbes recommendation. I got one of his flutes earlier this year and absolutely love it. I also have a Tipple D that's equally wonderful, albeit, in a different way.
@bogman - I've yet to hear an convincing EFlat on a D whistle. I've heard some close approximations and those from some very good players, but none that would be good enough for anything more than a passing note. On both whistle and flute I can manage to get a note "somewhere between" E and D - Sadly that is not good enough for me and I reach for the keyed flute if I really need the note. Maybe some whistles are different?
Also, "considering he recently said that anything that could be played on the whistle he could play on the flute." is not what I claimed, my personal ability on the flute not being up to the whole realm of what can be done on the whistle. I would claim that anything I can play on the whistle I can play on the flute too, but that is not a very strong claim What I actually claimed at the time was that a flute could produce any sound quality that a low whistle can - i.e.that it could be played so that it sounds like a low whistle.
All the comments about the impact of hole size on half-holing are very good. My keyless has a nice big hole for the RH2 finger which can be nicely half holed for FNat - my keyed flute has a much smaller hole which is far harder to half hole - so I use the key on that flute... CNat I never half hole anyway - I cross finger or use the thumbholes (acoustically equivalent to a CNat key) on my flutes. On almost every flute I have seen the RH3 hole is pretty small, especially compared to the RH2 - which is why I can't get a convincing half holed Eflat out of the things.
And do not buy any pakistani flutes from ebay or any other source.
And the musicoutfitters link mentioned above look like the standard Pakistani flutes - beware. Do a search for "pakistani flutes" or read the sticky thread on Chiff and Fipple for more information about the problems with these flutes.
The thing about keys on a flute is that, yes, there are a number of tunes out there which have Fnats, a number of tunes which have Gsharps, and these will be far easier to play on a flute with those keys.
Far fewer traditional Irish dance tunes require Bflat and/or Eflat.
But...it's a very common thing for uilleann pipers to through Eflats into tunes, because the pipes have an open hole for that note, so I (playing pipes and flute) used the Eflat key on my flute quite a bit, not because I was playing tunes in flat key signatures but because I was using Eflat in the way pipers do: little passing tones, little gracenotes.
I played for over 30 years on vintage 8-key flutes and at one time or another I used every single key on the things, including the low C and low Csharp footjoint keys.
Bottom line is if you get a flute with two keys, Fnat and Gsharp, there is a large number of fiddle/banjo/box tunes that will be a lot easier to play.
Oh I should add that it's possible to halfhole an E flat or any other note no matter how small the hole is, but the smaller the hole is, the more precision in finger placement is required. On a flute with a very small E hole it's very difficult to get the pitch of the halfholed Eflat right but it's possible with practice.
On Low D whistles it's far easier to nail an in-tune halfholed Eflat.
Ok Richard and Bogman, I'll go away and see if I can get my Eflats working... Maybe I've just been spoilt by having the Eflat key available on my other flute so I've always reached for that whenever the note crops up?
And I would also agree FNat and Gsharp would be the first two keys to get. Some makers - if you ask them - will add the blocks for a full set of keys, but only install a couple of keys to save money, but still leaving the option of adding the other keys later.
I still think the original poster would be best served by a keyless flute if they want to play most music in the Irish/Scottish repertoire. Maybe a C nat thumbhole - but that is a matter of taste and stops you being able to play anyone else's flutes unless you also practice playing without using the thumbhole. And they would need to learn to half hole FNat and Gsharp - no avoiding that!
Money is certainly a factor, but I don't want cheap. The link on Pakistani flutes was illuminating. I think I'll go with a cocus or rosewood Sweetheart, and since I live in Arizona, oil the f*** out of it.
Check with mr Sweet, but I believe all his flutes are finished with Tung oil, i.e. a drying/hardening oil, effectively lacquering them and making them pretty much impervious to moisture changes.
I am sure there most be a quicker method. This is how did it.
In Windows XP
All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map
Font: Arial Unicode MS
U+266D:Music Flat Sign ♭
U+266E:Music Natural Sign ♮
U+266F:Music Sharp Sign ♯
Question for Flutists
Question for Flutists
So, the wisdom of this board has encouraged me to pursue the flute. That said, I have done a little research. There are basic 6-hole Irish flutes which seem like they are the natural transition from the whistle. I'm assuming these are the same diatonic instrument that the whistle is and seem to be predominantly tuned to D. My first question would be, does the flute respond just as the whistle in terms of half-holing and bends?
Then there are keyed flutes, for chromatic play. Is there an importance in going with a keyed flute? Should I just go with a keyless flute and half-hole? Please keep your newbie comments to a minimum ;)
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Jimmy B
Re: Question for Flutists
You can definitely get by with a keyless flute for quite some time, all the half-holes and bends are similar to whistle. The keys do have their advantages as far as getting a solid tone on notes like F and C natural, but the majority of the trad repertoire can be played on a keyless flute.
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Michael Eskin
Re: Question for Flutists
Depending on your half-holing ability, embouchure and the flute, some half holes will not work. On my keyless, I have been unsuccessful in producing a bottom register Fnat, any kind of Eb or G#
Not that I've put much effort into it.
And I don't use the keys on my keyed flute for playing irish tunes (aside the occasional accidental).
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Tirno
Re: Question for Flutists
On my keyless flute I can get Fnat and G# but not Eb. But then I can't get Eb on the whistle. You might care to investigate Hall's Crystal Flutes, made as the name implies, from glass. The range of notes is impressive and relatively easy to cross-finger, they are not expensive, or subject to atmospheric problems. The only disadvantage is that they are not tunable; but mine is never far out anyway,
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by gam
Re: Question for Flutists
A Keyless flute will do for almost all of the tunes in this repertoire. In order of importance (and in ordeer of increasing difficulty), the accidentals CNat, FNat and Gsharp are all doable with either half holing or cross fingering - half holing being easier on a flute with larger holes. Bflat is questionable but also doable for short notes and Eflat is impossible.
Most bending of tones will be done by the embouchure and breath support.
A keyed flute of high quality is far harder to come by and lots more expensive than a keyless. So the advice is to go with a keyless until you know enough about flutes not to need to listen to my advice, at which point you can start the quest to find the right top end keyed flute for you.
Frequently recommended startup options are (in order of roughly increasing price/quality)
a. PVC cylindrical flute from Doug Tipple with Fajardo wedge - not to be confused with plain cylindrical PVC flutes by "someone on ebay". These are playable and in tune.
b. Sweetheart D Flute. Good value for the money. I don't own one in D, but I do have one in F which is fine.
c. M&E, Seery or Dixon conical polymer flutes - I don't know anything about these but a lot of people start on them - make sure that a dixon is a three piece conical one, not the two piece cylindrical one.
d. Folk flute by Casey Burns - Real wood, acoustically very nice (at least the one I have is, as are all the others I've seen in the flesh.). No tuning slide, but tunable within the range of most player/session combinations that are likely to crop up. I personally would recommend this as a good starter. Mine fills the role of the campfire flute admirably. The minimalist style is also very atractive.
e. keyless flutes by named and admired makers (Including Casey Burn's standard flutes). The sky is the limit. Prices can go up to 1200 Euros, waiting times can vary enormously and people's preferences as to which maker is "best" also vary enormously. Start to look at this area when you have played another flute for a while and know more about what you want.
f. Keyed flutes - starting with the M&E as the cheapest keyed option I think and continuing up to the expensive flutes by the top makers. As an extreme example, a new Wilkes flute has a ten year waiting list.
g. Used flutes. Bargains can be had, especially if you know what you want and watch the Chiff and Fipple boards for flutes offered for sale. If you don't know what you want nor what price is appropriate, then this is a very easy way to not get what you want.
h. Antique flutes - forget this. Maybe in a few years time if you stumble over a good one that you know is in playable nick, but otherwise, you won't be able to afford a good one nor will you be able to cope with the strange tuning that many have.
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Crackpot
Re: Question for Flutists
This started my day of with a smile....... "I have been unsuccessful in producing a bottom register Fnat, any kind of Eb or G#
Not that I've put much effort into it."
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by bogman
Re: Question for Flutists
Newbie (2 years) comment. What I find is exactly what Crackpot says in his first paragraph. I now have an Eb key but it is not for 'this repertoire'.
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by David50
Re: Question for Flutists
There are tunes with Eb and I'm very surprised that crackpot can't play it on the flute considering he recently said that anything that could be played on the whistle he could play on the flute. Or is a keyed flute required to play anything that can be played on the whistle?
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by bogman
Re: Question for Flutists
Jimmy,
I am a whistle player (and maker for that matter) and I have just graduated to the flute with a Casey Burns 6 -hole keyless flute.
I find that it works pretty much the same as my LowD whistle. The difference being that you have more complex correlations between fingering and embrochure to achieve the note than you do with a whistle.
Having your hands to the side seems to screw things up a bit too!
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Elmwood161
Re: Question for Flutists
Getting good half-holed notes on the flute is just a matter of spending some time practicing it.
Likewise you can bend all the notes just as you would on the whistle. Well, it's a bit different because if you use the "classical" upper hand grip, in which the flute rests on the base of the upper hand index finger and the upper hand fingers curl round the flute tube, the finger action used to bend up to upper hand notes is different than you would use on those same holes on the whistle.
Specifically some people find it a bit clumsy bending up to C, and doing pats and cuts with that upper hand index finger, though most people don't seem to have any issue with those things.
The bottom-hand finger action can be the same as on the whistle.
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Richard D Cook
Re: Question for Flutists
Half-holeing on the flute is related to hole size. I can't half-hole Eb on my small-holed D flute. The maker recommends a key for that. Some people with large-holed flutes say they can do it (Eb that is) especially on a Tipple in D. I have a Tipple in G which has big holes and I automaticaly start playing it more like a whistle. It invites bending, the small-holed flute does not (but I am probably multiple decades behind Richard in terms of experience).
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by David50
Re: Question for Flutists
Here's what I'd like to know.
There have been numerous threads (and one very recently) about the improbability of learning even a majority of the tunes in this tradition.
Given this, wouldn't a flute player be happy to just focus on tunes in the keys of D, G and maybe C? And isn't that a majority of the songs anyway?
With time, do folks find they want to be playing with more accidentals? Or is it just a "anything the fiddle can do I can do" sort of thing?
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by a sheamuis
Re: Question for Flutists
When I got the single key I systematically went through this chart,
http://www.oldflutes.com/charts/onekey/index.htm
experimenting with embouchure, watching a tuner and listening to the character of the note. It is not designed for a modern 'irish' flute so some things (e.g. the Fs) were way off but, for the rest, having two options for most 'chromatic' notes was useful. Having an Eb key to vent does help some.
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by David50
Re: Question for Flutists
I did not expect such in-depth and outstanding advice. My thanks to everyone. I did see some prices for 5-key flutes and, yes, I'm not ready to spend that on a new instrument yet. I looks like the transition from whistle to flute will go well.
I do have one other concern. I am in Arizona, which, if anyone has been here, knows it is hot, but also very, very dry. The dryness has been known to crack guitars that are introduced to the climate. I have an acoustic guitar and a mandolin that have both acclimated to the desert, and once that happens, then they are fine, but I have personally seen cracked and warped stringed instruments. Now, I know I can go with a polymer flute, but somehow I just can't see myself playing anything but real wood. Is there anyone that knows of the risks with a desert climate and, if so, are there some tonewoods that are better than others for this super-dry climate?
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Jimmy B
Re: Question for Flutists
http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/search.php?keywords=arizona&terms=all&author=&fid%5B%5D=2&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by David50
Re: Question for Flutists
Sorry I hit post too soon. I just recalled that 'arizona' 'dry' and 'crack' come up so often together that just the one word is enough for a search !
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by David50
Re: Question for Flutists
If playing Irish trad is your focus, forget the keys, at least until you're comfortable with the instrument. Yes, there will the odd tune you can't play or need to rework a bit, but there are thousands of tunes that will fit beautifully.
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by mcswiss
Re: Question for Flutists
http://www.forbesflutes.com/
I just looked back over the responses & did not see a mention of Rob's flutes.
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Ben Steen
More info on delrins . . .
Buying a Delrin-polymer flute.
July 3rd 2009 by bigyabby
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/21987
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Question for Flutists
http://www.musicoutfitters.com/ethnic/irish.htm
I found this site. This seems a bit too low to believe, but rosewood and cocuswood flutes for $198, including case? They look decent. Any comments or experience with these? Would they be okay for a beginner?
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by Jimmy B
Re: Question for Flutists
"does the flute respond just as the whistle in terms of half-holing and bends?" IMO...no.
"Should I just go with a keyless flute and half-hole?" IMO again no. A two keyed flute with a Cn key and Fn covers a lot of ground in Irish music. I eventually got a G# key added to my Hammy flute and while it's good to have the option I managed grand for years with two keys. Went back to keyless recently (bought a lovely Olwell) still torn between the two flutes, both have lovely tone, both have different characteristics I like but I miss the keys,
# Posted on September 29th 2009 by gtag
Re: Question for Flutists
Basically agreeing with much of the above - congratulations on your choice!
E flat by half-holing might be just possible on some flutes, but it's not a great idea - after all, that was the first key added in the history of flute development. Admittedly those flutes had what we now call small holes, so all the extra chromatic notes had to be done by cross-fingering of some sort.
There are a few tunes that, while someone might want to show off and say that it's possible, are not worth the effort without a few keys, but there is a good majority for which a Dmaj scale with cross-fingered Cnat is all you need, and a good keyless is *so* much cheaper. Again, I'm not the first to say this, but if you get one of those it will keep you going for a long time; by the time you really want keys you will know for yourself which ones are important.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Linsey Doyle
Re: Question for Flutists
Page 1 ~ *sticky thread* about Pakistani flutes (ebay)
http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34685
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Question for Flutists
Wanted to second the Rob Forbes recommendation. I got one of his flutes earlier this year and absolutely love it. I also have a Tipple D that's equally wonderful, albeit, in a different way.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by waltcamp45
Re: Question for Flutists
@bogman - I've yet to hear an convincing EFlat on a D whistle. I've heard some close approximations and those from some very good players, but none that would be good enough for anything more than a passing note. On both whistle and flute I can manage to get a note "somewhere between" E and D - Sadly that is not good enough for me and I reach for the keyed flute if I really need the note. Maybe some whistles are different?
What I actually claimed at the time was that a flute could produce any sound quality that a low whistle can - i.e.that it could be played so that it sounds like a low whistle.
Also, "considering he recently said that anything that could be played on the whistle he could play on the flute." is not what I claimed, my personal ability on the flute not being up to the whole realm of what can be done on the whistle. I would claim that anything I can play on the whistle I can play on the flute too, but that is not a very strong claim
All the comments about the impact of hole size on half-holing are very good. My keyless has a nice big hole for the RH2 finger which can be nicely half holed for FNat - my keyed flute has a much smaller hole which is far harder to half hole - so I use the key on that flute... CNat I never half hole anyway - I cross finger or use the thumbholes (acoustically equivalent to a CNat key) on my flutes. On almost every flute I have seen the RH3 hole is pretty small, especially compared to the RH2 - which is why I can't get a convincing half holed Eflat out of the things.
And do not buy any pakistani flutes from ebay or any other source.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Crackpot
Re: Question for Flutists
And the musicoutfitters link mentioned above look like the standard Pakistani flutes - beware. Do a search for "pakistani flutes" or read the sticky thread on Chiff and Fipple for more information about the problems with these flutes.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Crackpot
Re: Question for Flutists
The thing about keys on a flute is that, yes, there are a number of tunes out there which have Fnats, a number of tunes which have Gsharps, and these will be far easier to play on a flute with those keys.
Far fewer traditional Irish dance tunes require Bflat and/or Eflat.
But...it's a very common thing for uilleann pipers to through Eflats into tunes, because the pipes have an open hole for that note, so I (playing pipes and flute) used the Eflat key on my flute quite a bit, not because I was playing tunes in flat key signatures but because I was using Eflat in the way pipers do: little passing tones, little gracenotes.
I played for over 30 years on vintage 8-key flutes and at one time or another I used every single key on the things, including the low C and low Csharp footjoint keys.
Bottom line is if you get a flute with two keys, Fnat and Gsharp, there is a large number of fiddle/banjo/box tunes that will be a lot easier to play.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Richard D Cook
Re: Question for Flutists
Oh I should add that it's possible to halfhole an E flat or any other note no matter how small the hole is, but the smaller the hole is, the more precision in finger placement is required. On a flute with a very small E hole it's very difficult to get the pitch of the halfholed Eflat right but it's possible with practice.
On Low D whistles it's far easier to nail an in-tune halfholed Eflat.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Richard D Cook
Re: Question for Flutists
Ok Richard and Bogman, I'll go away and see if I can get my Eflats working... Maybe I've just been spoilt by having the Eflat key available on my other flute so I've always reached for that whenever the note crops up?
And I would also agree FNat and Gsharp would be the first two keys to get. Some makers - if you ask them - will add the blocks for a full set of keys, but only install a couple of keys to save money, but still leaving the option of adding the other keys later.
I still think the original poster would be best served by a keyless flute if they want to play most music in the Irish/Scottish repertoire. Maybe a C nat thumbhole - but that is a matter of taste and stops you being able to play anyone else's flutes unless you also practice playing without using the thumbhole. And they would need to learn to half hole FNat and Gsharp - no avoiding that!
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Crackpot
Re: Question for Flutists
Money is certainly a factor, but I don't want cheap. The link on Pakistani flutes was illuminating. I think I'll go with a cocus or rosewood Sweetheart, and since I live in Arizona, oil the f*** out of it.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Jimmy B
Testing ~ this will only take a second
D♯/E♭
F♮
G♯
can everyone see the flat & natural symbols above, or are they just little boxes?
. . . & now back to the flute question.
Thanks!
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Ben Steen
Re: Question for Flutists
I can see them. Can every one hear them ?
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by bazouki dave
Re: Question for Flutists
Check with mr Sweet, but I believe all his flutes are finished with Tung oil, i.e. a drying/hardening oil, effectively lacquering them and making them pretty much impervious to moisture changes.
Certainly the F flute of his that I have is.
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by Crackpot
Re: Question for Flutists
On the hillside, Random
- chris
# Posted on September 30th 2009 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: Question for Flutists
Wow Random how did you do that?
# Posted on October 1st 2009 by Richard D Cook
♭ ♮ ♯
I am sure there most be a quicker method. This is how did it.
In Windows XP
All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map
Font: Arial Unicode MS
U+266D:Music Flat Sign ♭
U+266E:Music Natural Sign ♮
U+266F:Music Sharp Sign ♯
# Posted on October 1st 2009 by Ben Steen
If this helps (so you don't have to scroll)
✓ Advanced view
Group by: Unicode Subrange
Symbols & Dingbats
# Posted on October 1st 2009 by Ben Steen