Fluteland.com Flute Message Board

Wow, you people seem to be watching this forum very very very closely compared to me. pp, umm I think you're talking about the paste kind of polish? Otherwise I wouldn't worry too much about the stuff getting into my pads and mechanism. I actually meant the kind of silver polish cloth... There is no...

Ummm you can trill either trill key, but one will be flatter and one will be sharper. It depends on a few things, like the placement of your trill key tone holes, how much you pull out your head joint, and stuff like that. Personally, I'd use different "sized" trills (i.e. different intonation) for ...

Hahahaha stomach muscles! Ahhh one of my long long long ago flute teachers (an excellent guy, I must say) said that he was very very confused for a really really really long time because someone told him to use his "stomach muscles." There ARE no such thing as 'stomach muscles', as far as muscles yo...

Tarnish is a layer of oxidised silver. [ EDIT: oh my, my chemistry fail! it's not oxidised silver, it's sulfide compounds. ]There are only two ways of removing it: physically or chemically. Physically meaning you actually rub the top layer off... only works for really really thin layers of tarnish. ...

You must realise that the difficulty in getting high notes soft is because the instrument is utterly flawed at that range, i.e. they have very weak resonances. To even make a sound, you must match exactly to that resonance, otherwise the instrument won't sound, i.e. very precise embouchure, angle of...

I usually experiment and memorise them, keeping a whole library of fingerings in my head. Sometimes I derive them using acoustical principles, but I don't expect most people to do that. For those really exotic ones that I really can't remember, I write it down on the first page of my notebook =) Usu...

I would suggest you stop practising for a while and just stare at your hands holding the flute. Keep adjusting it until you got a really really really comfortable position with all the fingers on the holes. This may involve rotating the headjoint or the footjoint, and sometimes I even rotate halfway...

A few things that might help: 1) Make sure your airstream angle is correct. Although yes, pouting, frowning, whatever, they all are needed, but I often find myself having problems when I do not adjust the angle properly. Practice this until it's second nature. Low notes have a generally low angle, h...

Heehee I want the high F# for concerto purposes! So a whispertone will not do! Anyway I have conducted many trials since I last posted, and I am sure that it's because I have my cork pushed further out than I did in the past, else if I push it in (significantly) I can play a high F# just as easy as ...

I think here the matter is the approach to a particular problem: can it be solved by purely theoretical means? Or does one need empirical knowledge? For example, teaching flute tone. You may fiddle around and somehow find out that, "hey, I need to keep my throat open." You then go around telling eve...

I agree with PP. A large chunk of the most respectable flute makers out that don't play flute, for example David Wimberly, some people at Powell, some other people at Burkart. Can you truly trust them that they're mechanism has the perfect touch, that their scale is as accurate as the player needs, ...

Oh and point of note, I used to be able to sqeak out an F#, so it really is the flute's fault.

It's better described as a "high G# facilitator". Stephen Wessel and David Straubinger also offer this option on their flutes. (No suprise, Straubinger got his skillz from Brannen.) Hammig and Burkart offer it on their piccolos, but personally I find Burkart's a wonder but Hammig's a sloppy job. The...

I was told that what pad you should use also depends on your climate. Here, in sunny, tropical, damp and moist Singapore, the technician told me that JS Gold pads weren't a good choice because they kinda got "wet".

I'm having a strange problem: I can't get the altissimo F#. My embouchure is definitely strong enough, and I can even get that *hint* of altissimo G. Strangest thing is, I'm getting an F when I finger F#. (At least it's an in-tune F.) I suspect it's because of my cork and headjoint position. I push ...