Anyone play both silver and wooden flutes?

[franco]

I have been practising with a silver flute for years, and although I still want to use it for higher register tone exercises I am thinking of changing to one of my bamboo flutes for playing tunes.

Does anyone see that there might be a problem playing different flutes with regard to embouchure etc. I tried it before, but always went back to the silver flute as this was where I found it easier to work on my embouchure, and because I seem to take ten steps back with fingering and ornamentation when I change to a wooden flute. I have Olwell bamboo flutes in F and G.

[david quinn]

I play both Simple system and Boehm system and can change instrument with no hassle.

The simple system is great but to be honest the Boehm flutes are far superior in terms of clearness of notes plus you just have to touch it to get a note out of it.

[BillG]

I also play both. An embouchure seems to be an embouchure which ever flute you're playing. Simple adjustments and voila! I get a little frustrated with the simply system since it is primarily G, D and A - or whatever the flute is keyed in. I like to get with the chromatic now and again and so switch to the Boehm. Play them both and enjoy.

[I.D.10-t]

I play a flute and a fife (both poorly) I divide the tunes and rarely play one tune on the other instrument. It allows me to relax and just play the tune the way I want to. Some tunes sound good on one, some the other. If I want to play one I choose the proper instrument. No different than if I played the fife and the trombone.

Except for drills, why play anything on an instrument that you would never play on it?

If you are having problems with your embouchure, you might want to go back to the exercises that you did to get a good one with your silver flute.

[Cork]

...Does anyone see that there might be a problem playing different flutes with regard to embouchure etc. I tried it before, but always went back to the silver flute as this was where I found it easier to work on my embouchure, and because I seem to take ten steps back with fingering and ornamentation when I change to a wooden flute...

Because a keyless flute has no mechanism to get in the way, it's fast to finger, as a great feature.

Switching between silver (Boehm) and wood flutes indeed can be done, and the more you switch back and forth, the easier it gets.

Yes, you can play them both!

I use a keyless flute for ITM, and use a Boehm flute for other pursuits.

[daiv]

i dont think there should be any difficulty. you'll just have to spend some time on it. it should make your silver flute playing better.

i play both. i actually learned the silver flute to play irish music. as a child, i was not aware that there was such a thing as a wooden flute--my uncle plays the silver flute, and he only plays irish music. in the last two years i have learned how to play the wooden flute, but i didnt think it was much of a problem. i think i may be sort of unique, in that i have always played the silver flute with an irish embouchure, and had to actually learn how to play it the "classical" way in order to play in my school band.

i play the wooden flute almost exclusively now, as i need more work on it, but i still feel much more at home on the silver flute. here is an old recording of me playing the rakes of mallow on the silver flute, with the david copley, wooden headjoint you see in my avatar: http://www.box.net/shared/j9luq1fo2t

here are two sound clips of my uncle http://cdbaby.com/mp3lofi/kells2-09.m3u and http://cdbaby.com/mp3lofi/kells-06.m3u. to me, that is what the flute sounded like, and the flute to me was always a silver flute. the idea that the flute could be played as it is in classical music, or that the wooden flute even exists, came later.

[franco]

Thanks for the advice guys. I tried today and it initially feels like going back 10 steps. The main issue is I used to play the open hole flute with a pipers grip, but have been trying to change to a Brian Finnegan type grip so that the first pads of my fingers come into contact with the holes, thus making it easier to cross finger. It also just feels generally better for sliding and vibrato.

However, it feels like the flute is constantly about to fall out of my hands, and there seems to be no snap in my fingers to do cuts because of this. The ornaments will take a lot of time to get right, possibly more than 6 months. Was this your experience Daiv?

I like the fact you can get a wooden tone from the silver flute with that headjoint by the way. I don't know why more people don't use one.

One idea I had is to use the silver flute solely for tone exercises, and maybe some classical tunes for the third register, and use the wooden flute only for trad tunes.

[jemtheflute]

I started on metal Boehm flute (on which I made a reasonably woody tone - me or the particular flute? Dunno.....), switched briefly to a wooden one but found that I just couldn't get either the sound quality or the crispness of ornamentation I wanted and transferred to simple system (already played whistle and knew the effects of open holes) - straight on to 8-key, and as I messed about with baroque music, I worked at learning to (mostly) use the keys "correctly" with venting etc. It long ago became second nature. There are small details of my fingering on SS that reflect my Boehm introduction - such as cutting with R1 rather than R2 on E and in E rolls - as one would on Boehm.... and yes, I do use the Eb key classical fashion as it was established habit.

I still own my original Boehm flute but rarely get it out and when I do it takes a while for proper fluency in the fingering to start to reappear - and I never get beyond that as it doesn't appeal to me to play it seriously or work at it properly. I do find that, as I now have a much better embouchure (still sadly deficient, but much better than nearly 25 years ago!) I make a comparatively huge, rich sound on Boehm flutes, but the clumping of the keys is irritating even in classical music (and I don't play any advanced romantic or modern stuff anyway). I also find I have to roll my embouchure out on Boehms as otherwise I blow them flat - flatter than they can be tuned sharp to compensate for. I found this when recently doing up G1's old Gemeinhardt - makes a lovely rich sound, but I struggle to get it up to concert pitch! But I played it enough the other day to rattle through some favourite reels without too many fingering cock-ups.

So, yes, there is an adjustment of embouchure issue to address if one is to play each type of flute with an idiomatically appropriate embouchure. However, I'm sure with regular swapping and due practice on both types, one would soon become accustomed to it and adjust pretty automatically - after all, the basic discipline, use of bodily equipment and technique is the same; it is the stylistic adaptation that is different. Professional period flute specialists on baroque traverso and classical 4-key who also play C19th and modern Boehm flutes have to be able to accomodate these differences and do so at least adequately.

Ultimately, it's a question of how much you want to practice and how dedicated you are. There's only an initial practical barrier.