Chiff and Fipple Forums

If you're really trying to minimize the number of keys, my opinion is to skip Bb. On the flutes I have, cross-fingering Bb works pretty well. I would say F, D# and G# are the most useful. Not specifically for Irish music, but just in general. Long F is good specifically when you have to go FDF. Othe...

What Jayhawk says is a reference to the story that the ancient Romans supposedly put lead in their wine to make it taste sweet. Which may explain why some of those emperors were so squirrelly. What I've heard it said in reference to lead water pipes is that it's not really hazardous, because after a...

In Cathal McConnell's audio whistle course, he says that the old players he learned from used to play those high notes very short. I guess he's talking about reels and jigs here, not slow airs. Of course the old players he learned from would have been from northern Ireland. I don't know if that's a ...

In Janice Dockendorff Boland's book, she cites Quantz as recommending the F# fingering x x x | o x x K for use in the key of A because x x x | x o o K is too flat relative to G#. Quantz seems to have been very sensitive to such issues. I guess the point is that it's more noticeable when there's a G#...

I've been seeing ads for Chinese-made wooden Boehm flutes for prices around $800-$1000. It makes you wonder, if they can make metal Boehm flutes and sell them for $300, why does a wooden Boehm flute have to cost $15,000? There were student-grade wood Boehm flutes made in France in the 1920s. One of ...

I've been trying to figure out how to post images, without success. But anyway, check out this page.

http://www.oldflutes.com/misc/moe.htm

Perhaps a lot of people are already familiar with it.

A book I have has exercises on the lines of dD CD BD AD GD FD ED D or you could do the other way around, low then high. You can easily make up various permutations of the basic idea. Another one is DEFEDdD EFGFEeE FGAGFfF and so on. When I say F it could just as easily be F# ... and C# and whatever....

I would be interested in hearing about the different eras of Generations. I bought a full set of Generations in 1979, when that was not an easy thing to do. About 30 years ago I destroyed the C whistle with a misguided attempt to boil the mouthpiece free. (Thanks, Internet!) But I still have the res...

There was a discussion about Baroque flute embouchure a while back (2018). It may be helpful.

viewtopic.php?p=1205380

There's a product made for guitar players--stick-on silicon pads that make your grip on the guitar pick more secure. I've thought more than once that it might be useful for making your grip on a flute or whistle more secure too. I don't know if you'd want to put it on a wooden instrument, but with f...

I have read a few places in books from the early 19th century (couldn't find the references now) statements like "what young boy has not made himself a whistle from willow?" Usually in a discussion about the origin of the Flageolet. So I found this interesting video How To Make A Tradition...

The webpage doesn't even give the title of the book that is referenced correctly. It is <i>Toss the Feathers: Irish Set Dancing</i> by Pat Murphy. And the transcriptions from the book are inaccurate to the point of incomprehensibility. The book is basically a collection of set dances, but it has a b...

I can tell you how Boehm flutes go in my local area. There are plenty of people on Craigslist selling name-brand (like Yamaha) student grade flutes for prices around $250 or so. Or even less. Almost certainly the instrument will require a setup from a competent repair person. Many of these instrumen...

There is one advantage to the flute over the whistle. On the whistle, pitch varies with volume. The harder you blow, the sharper the pitch. So one of the skills of a whistle player is pitch control. The recorder is similar. That rather limits the dynamics of the instrument, but I wouldn't say it's a...

Looking at a Boehm flute with closed keys, the keys don't open all that far. I don't know if there's a standard distance, but it looks like less than 5 mm. Of course a Boehm flute has huge holes. I've experimented with the question of how close you can hold your finger without affecting the pitch, a...