Thomas Blazek
from Vienna, Austria
Some time around 2005, while I was playing the piano, a friend asked me if I liked to found an Irish Folk-Band with him. It wasn't long aftef that call that I bought my first tin whistle. As I played, I accumulated Whistles and stumbled upon a small session scene in Vienna.
That was the time when I really found "my" music, I started to completely dive in. Not long after I bought a Tony Dixon-3-piece flute and started building my session repertoire. It was mostly "getting an idea of the music by learning it from the dots, changing it the first time while learning if I felt like it, changed it the second time when adapting it to our session version and then honing it (ALL tunes I've learnt so far are still in the honing-process, can't see an end to it)". Not to long ago I got my Gilles Lehart-Flute and totally fell in love with it. By now, I'm slowly trying to train my ear, and otherwise playing like a madman.
Since I've found many asking (myself included) about the Tony Dixon 3-piece flute, here are my experiences, from the view of a newbie:
Embouchure Hole: Great for beginners, easy to produce a sound, still it gives the ability to improve the sound through a focused embouchure. Though not really a hard D, you can even get that extra punch out of the bottom D if your embouchure is up to it, still I was only able to do this after I adapted to the very precise embouchure of my Lehart.
Holes: Small, trying with a tuner and every, in reels not even applicable posture, it is virtually impossible to half hole f natural.
Sound: Better than on pure plastic sounds, as said with a trained embouchure the sound is decent enough to take it to a session instead of your other flute if you are busy and just want to throw it in your bagpack and go off. However, it is by no means a substitute for a wooden flute.
In conclusion, if you want a beginner's instrument that will always find spots to come in handy because of its undestroyable nature, go for it. Also if you are not sure if you will persist on the flute, it is cheaper than wooden flutes. If, however, you are sure you will persist, and are in no doubt, by a wooden flute straight away, it saves you the price of the Dixon, because you will outgrow it at some point.
To follow a recent trend (yeah, we all want to be part of the gang sometimes;-)) I put my feeble tries on the irish flute and the tin whistle up here: http://www.soundlantern.com/UserSounds.do?UserPageId=151&UserPageName=TMB&UsId=151&UsName=TMB
Tunes in TMB's tunebook: 0
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