The choice of which finger to use for cuts is similar to the choice of whether or not to vent the top index finger hole when playing the second octave D (i.e. xxx xxx vs oxx xxx as the fingering for that note). Here again, some great players do it one way, while others do it differently. There's no right or wrong way - you need to do whatever sounds best for you and your flute. As to how these players each decided to do things the way they do, be it fingers for cutting with or venting the top D or whatever, my guess is that they all started off doing it one way or the other, based on what they were told by their first teacher, or by their first mentor, or (as Peter points out) by looking over someone's shoulder to see how it's done. Probably they kept at it the way they first started unless and until something caused them to change. Probably that "something" was that they were unhappy with their sound, and then either experimented around to find a better way or got a tip from some fellow player as to how else it could be done. If the new way sounded better, they went with that, if not they didn't. The goal with cuts is to have them be as crisp as possible as consistently as possible, and any player worth his salt is going to find the best way that they can to do them consistently and crisply, no matter what the next guy (or the Larsen book) says is the "right" or "best" way to do it.Jennie wrote:Do (or did) any of the great traditional players ever actually analyze which finger to cut with? Or did they just learn from other players, or by "steeping," and end up with what works for them?
I mean, did any of them spend a whole bunch of time messing around with different cut fingerings? Or is it only when someone makes them stop and go over and over and over it again? I'm guessing that most of them didn't arrive there by puzzling it out the way we seem to be doing. They don't actually consider lots of different possibilities and then choose one for each place in a tune, do they? I can't imagine thinking that hard while I'm playing, or preparing that carefully for traditional music. Classical, yes, but not this.
And Jennie, why can't you imagine thinking that hard while youi're playing, or preparing that carefully for traditional music, but doing so for classical? Don't you want to sound as good as you possibly can when playing trad music? If so, you've got to do the work. Trad music is not a holiday cruise for the bored classical player! It may indeed be peasant's music, but those peasants care about and appreciate how the music sounds. They know what's good and what's not, and they don't appreciate those who think there are short cuts to good playing. As I've said before, there are no short cuts.
