Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
During a flute workshop a couple of weeks ago, my flute teacher advised our class that you must "never...ever" use someone else's flute or whistle because you are liable to blow it out of tune? And she sounded very sure of herself. At the time, I didn't disagree with her but the more I think about it, the more I think that this admonition is a "shaggy dog" story i.e. pure fiction. If she had mention sthg. about diseases (like TB which is becoming a recent phenomenon in Ireland in this regard) I would have nodded in agreement but "blowing smn. else's flute/wind instrument out of tune" doesn't really make sense to me. Nevertheless, I don't let other people use my instruments anyway for hygiene reasons.
I should add that her brother, who is a well-known professional musician in Ireland, told her this so she passed on this information to us at a workshop a few weeks ago.
This is the first time that I've heard this and I would tend to disagree with this opinion. What are your opinions?
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Gorden Bennett - what a pile of doo doo folk in positions of so called authority come out with some times.
Dee Havlin rests her Flute on her shoulder when she plays & was once marked down at a Fleadh competition for holding it - 'the wrong way'! Now, I might add that her holding it the so called wrong way won her All Ireland medals in every age group!!
Another great flute player I play with regularly, holds his flute at a very acute angle, which is ideal for crowded sessions, but is certainly not the way your book bound tutor might recommend. However his technique works well for him!
Now I'm not a flute player but I'd agree with Show-man - utter nonsense!
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Any chance she meant that someone playing another person's flute will play it out of tune because, IMHO, most simple system flutes have their own tuning issues and it's the player who plays them into tune?
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
If someone else uses a stronger bowing technique (speed of bow + bowing pressure) on your fiddle than you do, then strings can go slightly out of tune; but fiddle strings go out of tune in a session anyway and need retuning a couple of times in an evening, so that's no big deal.
As to flutes, the only thing I can think of is if someone takes someone else's cold instrument and plays it then it is going to warm up and its tuning will change slightly. Because the owner hasn't done this themself then the flute may give the impression of having been "blown out of tune" by the other player.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Simple wooden flutes are very individual things, so you are quite likely to need some time experimenting to get them right, and YOU are likely to be out of tune somewhere in the compass. But unless you pull the slide out and the owner doesn't notice, or fiddle with the cork (stoning offence), you are not going to change it for the owner, apart from make it a bit wetter.
Whistles are pretty fixed, unless your breath is so laden with congealed Guinness and old hardened fried-egg grease that you block the airway up.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
You can't knock another player's flute out of tune just by playing it. However, keep in mind that two different players will most likely play a particular flute at different relative pitches (i.e. several cents different, not anything like a quarter or half tone - usually) for a given setting of the tuning slide. So, if you borrow someone else's flute in a session, you're likely to have to adjust it to play it in tune with the session, either by moving the slide or rolling the headjoint in or out a bit. Then when you hand the flute back to its owner, he/she will have to shift it back to where it was so that they won't be out of tune with the rest of the session. Some players may not appreciate having to do this after they loan their flutes out to someone else for a blow, especially if they are insecure themselves about playing in tune. Or some players may just be unaware that the person they loaned their flute to has adjusted it, and then wonder why they're no longer in tune when they get it back. So I can see why a teacher in a beginning/intermediate situation might want to discourage students from swapping flutes around (especially if the teacher has spent a lot of time getting a group of students in tune with everyone else) and use this shorthand expression to do so. It is indeed true that if you're sitting in a session and the flute player next to you hands you his/her flute, you will "blow it out of tune" when compared to the rest of the session. But strictly speaking it's not the flute that's out of tune, it's your playing of the flute that's out of tune.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Complete tripe, of course. But if she meant that your individual embouchure means you're blowing it sharp or flat, and you then retune it to suit that, then she has a point. But that doesn't seem to be what was said here.
Once at a session, this non-trad player picked up a whistle of mine and started noodling all sorts of jazzy sh!te out of it, in the middle of a set which other players were playying. I told him could he please stop as the whistle contained resonances of my individual psychic energy vibes and he would upset their harmony. He knew I was bullsh!tting of course and took the hump, but it stopped him effing up the set.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Trevor, I am aware of the change of temperature issue and I agree with you. And it's a real problem in Dublin with our humid and cold weather especially in the winter. If you open or a window, it would change everything...I tune my flute several times a night in a session because of this temperature rise and fall problem.
But I'm referring to how my teacher put it to us in a reputable flute workshop....I would be loath to give any names.
Yes....If, for example, I were to play on your flute and you were to take it up again it would be blown out of tune "definitively"...Sounds hilarious now that I think of it again....
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Well every workshop I've ever been to (tutors including Niall Keegan, Mick McGoldrick and Eamon Cotter), everyone tutors included use it as an opportunity to try out each others flutes... it's often the only chance you'll get to try a McGee or Hamilton or whatever prior to purchase. So even if common sense and rudimentry science didn't alert one to the voodoo nonsense of that advice, some of the best players and makers in the land seem oblivious to it too
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Someone at our session once picked up my brown Susato whistle and started playing. I was playing guitar at the time so I couldn't really stop them and I watched in horror as my whistle slowly started to melt in their hands as they played! Luckily they had positioned a glass to collect it as it melted and at the end of the tune they simply drank it! They said it tasted like chocolate.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
I'm sure she means that if you were to pick up someone else's flute and just start playing it it would be out of tune - or if you adjusted it to be in tune for you it would therefore be out of tune once returned to the owner. Either that or she's having you on, of course.
I tend to play with the headjoint rolled a bit towards me and therefore not pulled very far out (just suits my embouchure that way). If anyone borrows my flute at a session they tend to try it, look very puzzled, roll it back and pull it out half a mile to flatten it that way. Everyone is different.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
It's a myth that comes from the days of fountain pens. Someone could ruin your fountain pen by writing at a different angle or pressure from you. Well, it doesn't actually ruin it, it just doesn't feel the same when you get it back, so it ruins it for you. Fountain pens were very personal objects, just like musical instruments, but where it's true for fountain pens, it is not for flutes or whistles.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Not sure. Flautists seem to have different methods of blowing.
Some players can get a great tone immediately while others, like myself, start slowly and get better after a while. Still, I`d love to get that full sound immediately. Some flutes have a lovely ` barking ` sound while others are dull and flat sounding.
I think that all wooden flutes are flawed..they all sound slightly off at times..maybe this is what makes the fwooden flute interesting!!
I was always amused at Packie Duignan`s preparation when he played at concerts. He would walk straight on to the stage, take the flute out of the case in front of the audience and blow up straight away.
For the first 30 seconds all you would hear was air...then the flute would take off and by the end of the session he would be getting better by the minute! Packie didn`t belong to the cautious group of flute players...they would spend ages heating the instrument up, pouring water into it, practising it etc. before venturing near the stage. Vive le difference!
Awful instruments to learn...the flute and the pipes, but awesome when played by experts.
Tommy Thornley
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
I've noticed that when good fiddlers (or classical violinists) borrow someone else's fiddle they'll often do a quick check on the tuning and perhaps adjust it. No, they're not making a comment about the other player's "ear". What happens is that a fiddle gradually drifts off tune as it is played - with me it's usually the A-string that goes a tad flat - but you automatically adjust your fingers so that the sound is still in tune. The borrower, on the other hand, hasn't had a chance to automatically adjust to the strange instrument so therefore has to check the tuning and do something about it if necessary.
BTW, I've found this is a convenient way to have my fiddle retuned if I can't be bothered to do it myself Thank you, Gavin, Jill, Vanessa, and others.
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Please... of course, blow once or twice, check yourself against a fixed pitch instrument (if available), then as a friend used to say, "horse into it!' Players and instruments are individualistic. Find the commonality between yourself and the instrument.
Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
During a flute workshop a couple of weeks ago, my flute teacher advised our class that you must "never...ever" use someone else's flute or whistle because you are liable to blow it out of tune? And she sounded very sure of herself. At the time, I didn't disagree with her but the more I think about it, the more I think that this admonition is a "shaggy dog" story i.e. pure fiction. If she had mention sthg. about diseases (like TB which is becoming a recent phenomenon in Ireland in this regard) I would have nodded in agreement but "blowing smn. else's flute/wind instrument out of tune" doesn't really make sense to me. Nevertheless, I don't let other people use my instruments anyway for hygiene reasons.
I should add that her brother, who is a well-known professional musician in Ireland, told her this so she passed on this information to us at a workshop a few weeks ago.
This is the first time that I've heard this and I would tend to disagree with this opinion. What are your opinions?
Thanks,
F.D.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by flauta dolce
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Its complete and utter nonsense.
So is most of the hygiene concern - what are you doing? licking it, sucking it, or blowing through it.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by showaddydadito
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Gorden Bennett - what a pile of doo doo folk in positions of so called authority come out with some times.
Dee Havlin rests her Flute on her shoulder when she plays & was once marked down at a Fleadh competition for holding it - 'the wrong way'! Now, I might add that her holding it the so called wrong way won her All Ireland medals in every age group!!
Another great flute player I play with regularly, holds his flute at a very acute angle, which is ideal for crowded sessions, but is certainly not the way your book bound tutor might recommend. However his technique works well for him!
Now I'm not a flute player but I'd agree with Show-man - utter nonsense!
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
I borrowed someone's bodhrán once,. and by the time I'd finished with it I'd played the poor thing in-tune.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Any chance she meant that someone playing another person's flute will play it out of tune because, IMHO, most simple system flutes have their own tuning issues and it's the player who plays them into tune?
Then again, perhaps she's just a nutter?
Eric
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Jayhawk
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
If someone else uses a stronger bowing technique (speed of bow + bowing pressure) on your fiddle than you do, then strings can go slightly out of tune; but fiddle strings go out of tune in a session anyway and need retuning a couple of times in an evening, so that's no big deal.
As to flutes, the only thing I can think of is if someone takes someone else's cold instrument and plays it then it is going to warm up and its tuning will change slightly. Because the owner hasn't done this themself then the flute may give the impression of having been "blown out of tune" by the other player.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Simple wooden flutes are very individual things, so you are quite likely to need some time experimenting to get them right, and YOU are likely to be out of tune somewhere in the compass. But unless you pull the slide out and the owner doesn't notice, or fiddle with the cork (stoning offence), you are not going to change it for the owner, apart from make it a bit wetter.
Whistles are pretty fixed, unless your breath is so laden with congealed Guinness and old hardened fried-egg grease that you block the airway up.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by LastToFinish
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
You can't knock another player's flute out of tune just by playing it. However, keep in mind that two different players will most likely play a particular flute at different relative pitches (i.e. several cents different, not anything like a quarter or half tone - usually) for a given setting of the tuning slide. So, if you borrow someone else's flute in a session, you're likely to have to adjust it to play it in tune with the session, either by moving the slide or rolling the headjoint in or out a bit. Then when you hand the flute back to its owner, he/she will have to shift it back to where it was so that they won't be out of tune with the rest of the session. Some players may not appreciate having to do this after they loan their flutes out to someone else for a blow, especially if they are insecure themselves about playing in tune. Or some players may just be unaware that the person they loaned their flute to has adjusted it, and then wonder why they're no longer in tune when they get it back. So I can see why a teacher in a beginning/intermediate situation might want to discourage students from swapping flutes around (especially if the teacher has spent a lot of time getting a group of students in tune with everyone else) and use this shorthand expression to do so. It is indeed true that if you're sitting in a session and the flute player next to you hands you his/her flute, you will "blow it out of tune" when compared to the rest of the session. But strictly speaking it's not the flute that's out of tune, it's your playing of the flute that's out of tune.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by johnkerr
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Complete tripe, of course. But if she meant that your individual embouchure means you're blowing it sharp or flat, and you then retune it to suit that, then she has a point. But that doesn't seem to be what was said here.
Once at a session, this non-trad player picked up a whistle of mine and started noodling all sorts of jazzy sh!te out of it, in the middle of a set which other players were playying. I told him could he please stop as the whistle contained resonances of my individual psychic energy vibes and he would upset their harmony. He knew I was bullsh!tting of course and took the hump, but it stopped him effing up the set.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Trevor, I am aware of the change of temperature issue and I agree with you. And it's a real problem in Dublin with our humid and cold weather especially in the winter. If you open or a window, it would change everything...I tune my flute several times a night in a session because of this temperature rise and fall problem.
But I'm referring to how my teacher put it to us in a reputable flute workshop....I would be loath to give any names.
Yes....If, for example, I were to play on your flute and you were to take it up again it would be blown out of tune "definitively"...Sounds hilarious now that I think of it again....
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by flauta dolce
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Well every workshop I've ever been to (tutors including Niall Keegan, Mick McGoldrick and Eamon Cotter), everyone tutors included use it as an opportunity to try out each others flutes... it's often the only chance you'll get to try a McGee or Hamilton or whatever prior to purchase. So even if common sense and rudimentry science didn't alert one to the voodoo nonsense of that advice, some of the best players and makers in the land seem oblivious to it too
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by NeilC
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
On re-readng my post it sounds a bit like I've been to hundreds of workshops... actually, just two but my point still stands
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by NeilC
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Someone at our session once picked up my brown Susato whistle and started playing. I was playing guitar at the time so I couldn't really stop them and I watched in horror as my whistle slowly started to melt in their hands as they played! Luckily they had positioned a glass to collect it as it melted and at the end of the tune they simply drank it! They said it tasted like chocolate.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Cammy
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Cammy - that's wonderful.
I rather suspect that when this person dies, you will be able to make a harp from her/his breastbone.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by showaddydadito
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
I'm sure she means that if you were to pick up someone else's flute and just start playing it it would be out of tune - or if you adjusted it to be in tune for you it would therefore be out of tune once returned to the owner. Either that or she's having you on, of course.
I tend to play with the headjoint rolled a bit towards me and therefore not pulled very far out (just suits my embouchure that way). If anyone borrows my flute at a session they tend to try it, look very puzzled, roll it back and pull it out half a mile to flatten it that way. Everyone is different.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Biddy
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
It's a myth that comes from the days of fountain pens. Someone could ruin your fountain pen by writing at a different angle or pressure from you. Well, it doesn't actually ruin it, it just doesn't feel the same when you get it back, so it ruins it for you. Fountain pens were very personal objects, just like musical instruments, but where it's true for fountain pens, it is not for flutes or whistles.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Shrog
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Well someone should go and invent Biro disposable flutes, they'd become ubiquitous and this "problem" would become obsolete.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Rudall the time
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Was this person;s meaning garbled in transition somehow?
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by wormdiet
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Not sure. Flautists seem to have different methods of blowing.
Some players can get a great tone immediately while others, like myself, start slowly and get better after a while. Still, I`d love to get that full sound immediately. Some flutes have a lovely ` barking ` sound while others are dull and flat sounding.
I think that all wooden flutes are flawed..they all sound slightly off at times..maybe this is what makes the fwooden flute interesting!!
I was always amused at Packie Duignan`s preparation when he played at concerts. He would walk straight on to the stage, take the flute out of the case in front of the audience and blow up straight away.
For the first 30 seconds all you would hear was air...then the flute would take off and by the end of the session he would be getting better by the minute! Packie didn`t belong to the cautious group of flute players...they would spend ages heating the instrument up, pouring water into it, practising it etc. before venturing near the stage. Vive le difference!
Awful instruments to learn...the flute and the pipes, but awesome when played by experts.
Tommy Thornley
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by THORNLEY
Re. I really would like to separate fact from fiction.
Thanks for that nice compliment, Jim.
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by flauta dolce
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
I've noticed that when good fiddlers (or classical violinists) borrow someone else's fiddle they'll often do a quick check on the tuning and perhaps adjust it. No, they're not making a comment about the other player's "ear". What happens is that a fiddle gradually drifts off tune as it is played - with me it's usually the A-string that goes a tad flat - but you automatically adjust your fingers so that the sound is still in tune. The borrower, on the other hand, hasn't had a chance to automatically adjust to the strange instrument so therefore has to check the tuning and do something about it if necessary.
Thank you, Gavin, Jill, Vanessa, and others.
BTW, I've found this is a convenient way to have my fiddle retuned if I can't be bothered to do it myself
# Posted on November 10th 2005 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Please... of course, blow once or twice, check yourself against a fixed pitch instrument (if available), then as a friend used to say, "horse into it!' Players and instruments are individualistic. Find the commonality between yourself and the instrument.
# Posted on November 11th 2005 by Imnotirish
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
THORNLEY - I spent a weekend with Packie in Drumshambo one time & I remember him carrying his Flute in his inside pocket at that time.
He would take it out & then gob on his hand & smear the spit over the holes!
I remember Dessie Wilkinson used to do that long air blow too, before he started playing.
# Posted on November 11th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: Blowing someone else's flute out of tune. True or False ?
Sorry Jim - dat's me knuckles well an' truly ratted!
# Posted on November 11th 2005 by Ptarmigan