my flute seems sharp ?

[JPcares]

In order to get my flute to play in tune, I must pull the tuning slide out at least twice as far as any other player I have ever seen. It's a Terry McGee Rudall & Rose. Maybe I am overblowing the flute?

[jim stone]

rolling the head in somewhat will flatten.
Otherwise terry is the man to consult.

[Jon C.]

In order to get my flute to play in tune, I must pull the tuning slide out at least twice as far as any other player I have ever seen. It's a Terry McGee Rudall & Rose. Maybe I am overblowing the flute?

Jims right, you need to blow more into the emb. hole then across it. I'm sure that Terry's R&R's are "spot on". You have to work at the R&R more then other designs, like the Pratten.

[Loren]

When in doubt, consult the maker directly, only he knows specifically what the precise specs for your instrument are. Might be an issue of blowing angle relative to the embouchure hole, might be the way the flute was designed (to be played with the slide very extended, although I doubt it), or it could be one of several other things. I happen to know of one Eb flute that went through several years, and more than one owner, being played as a D flute........

Seriously, advice given on the board is well intentioned, but it's a bit like trying to do a long distance medical evaluation on a patient you know nothing about. My opinion, of course.


Loren

[Henke]

Ditto on all.

And you might want to experiment with the cork placement as well. It might have shifted, and if that happens your flute will go way off both in overall pitch and internal tuning. With Terry's flutes, just turn the end-cap and the cork will move as there is some sort of screw mechanism in there. Have a tuner handy and test both first and second octave on any position so you don't screw up the internal tuning of the flute.

If that doesn't help, ask Terry.

[Loren]

Ditto on all.

And you might want to experiment with the cork placement as well. It might have shifted, and if that happens your flute will go way off both in overall pitch and internal tuning. With Terry's flutes, just turn the end-cap and the cork will move as there is some sort of screw mechanism in there. Have a tuner handy and test both first and second octave on any position so you don't screw up the internal tuning of the flute.

If that doesn't help, ask Terry.

This is exactly why I suggested contacting Terry: Easier to get the cork placement specs from him first, and then check the location, rather than mucking about with the cork and THEN contacting Terry, in part because you'll save yourself time and energy, and in part because knowing exactly where the cork was when the problem was noticed, may help with a diagnosis. If you move the cork around, and still don't solve the problem, you'll have added another variable to the equation, and you'll simply have to move the cork again anyway.


At this juncture, I'd like to add a thought, and I hope folks will read this and take it in the spirit with which I offer it, which is simply hoping to provide some food for thought, and another perspective, I do NOT intend this as slight to anyone, nor is it directed at any person(s) in particular.

Imagine, if you will, that you are an instrument maker, someone who has worked very hard, for a number of years, to learn his/her craft. You strive to produce high quality instruments, and you take pride in providing excellent customer service.

Now, you have sent good instruments into the world, but you know, occasionally, things will go slightly astray - things may break, or crack, or go out of adjustment, or come loose, or perhaps only the operator fails

How would you then feel to have people that you've probabaly never met, people with little or no instrument making experience, or other instrument makers (some with little experience themselves) giving advice to the owners of the flutes you made? How would you feel if people other than yourself were suggesting making adjustments to your instrument, or telling the owner, sight unseen, what the problem is? Think about this for a moment. Is this behavior appropriate, given the maker is quite available to deal with the situation himself? I am in no way intending to speak for Terry here, he's quite capable of doing that himself, and he may very well not be bothered in the least by all of this, I have no idea, however I do believe that if most of you out there found youselves in a situation where some stranger or unqualified person was telling a customer of yours how they should fix YOUR work, you might get more than a little annoyed, and rightly so. I don't see why an instrument maker should deserve less respect in that regard than you would expect yourself.

Thanks for listening.

Loren

[Henke]

Very good points Loren, and I agree.

I have always, however, been an advocate of do it yourself cork adjustment. The cork is there to be adjusted if it has shifted or if your personal approach requires it to be adjusted, similar to the tuning slide, and it's not that hard to do it yourself, especially not with Terry's flutes where all you have to do is turn the end-cap. Now, a newbie might not know of this feathure in traverse flutes and what it does. It's not as obvious that adjusting the cork changes the pitch as adjusting the tuning slide, but it's almost just as simple. If someone ask you, "how do I make my flute sound lower, I'm not in tune" you wouldn't say "ask the maker", you'd tell him to pull the tuning slide out. Similarly, if my flute was extremely sharp, I'd just to adjust the cork. If that doesn't help I would contact the maker. But the flute has a cork in there which is moveable for just this purpuse. It's also entierly possible that the specs you get from the maker wouldn't work for you.

Now, if it was a problem with the design of the instrument, giving advice about how to fix it yourself would be wrong. But this is a case of informing someone about adjustable feathures of a flute, which you are suposed to set up yourself.

Again, if this doesn't solve it, contact the maker directly.

[Loren]

In general, I agree Henke: Of course, adjusting the cork placement is no big deal, and certainly is part and parcel of home maintenance that one should be comfortable and familiar with. Usually though, stopper adjustments (outside the maker's spec) would be made after one gets used to playing the instrument. And, if one should get a used flute with a loose stopper, then first call would be to ask the maker what the placement should be, place the stopper in that position, and get used to how the flute plays as it was designed, then make changes if needed, once you know the flute.

In this case, knowing little about the flute owner as a player, and with the owner sounding like the flute is perhaps new to them, mucking around with different stopper placements may very well cause more problems and frustration in the long term: Let's say the stopper IS in the right place, and it's a matter of the player not blowing the flute "properly", the stopper could be adjusted to compensate, but this will throw off the overall intonation somewhat, and affect other playing characteristics as well, causing the player once again to try and compensate for these other "issues".

Or, perhaps the stopper IS in the right place but there is another issue that needs to be addressed: A leak, the previous owner or another maker made changes to the embouchure hole, tone holes, or foot, the body is actually an Eb etc., etc. Again moving the stopper may or may not seem to solve the problem, but it will cause other problems in the process.


And what if the stopper isn't in the correct position? Adjustment may very well be the ticket, but there is also the possibility that the stopper placement is wrong AND there is something else out of spec as well, so maybe moving the stopper around is just the beginning of the process to sort things out. Best to simply start with the known optimum position and go from there, otherwise you might try the best position (without knowing it) and then keep adjusting without success, or worse yet with seeming success (see above) that causes other issues.

I'm just saying that an owner with a flute that is new to them, can save a lot of time and effort by simply contacting the maker to find out what's what, before starting to tinker One email, usually returned (in Terry's case for sure) within 24 hours.

As I said in another post a few months back, it's not at all about being possesive as a maker - you own the flute and are quite free to do with it as you please, as instrument makers we are typically just fine with that as we've already been compensated, thank you very much, all we would like is the opportunity to help you get the most out of your instrument with the least amount of frustration, because we made the instrument so that you can enjoy PLAYING it, rather than having to spend your free time fussing with it. That said, I realize some folks like to tinker as much as they like to make music, and that's fine too. In this case, if it pleases the original poster to futz around with the stopper placement, then by all means, have at it - I'm simply suggesting it's not the fastest or easiest means to get the flute to optimal performance.

My other comments were really not directed towards the stopper adjustment advice Henke, but rather towards the general trend we have around here for folks other than the maker of an instrument to jump in and suggest courses of action when there is a "problem". My comments in that regard were meant simply to offer a different point of view, that perhaps some had not considered.

Loren

[Jack Bradshaw]

In the event all else seems to be correct, check for a leak around the stopper (it might just need to be greased) This will cause the whole thing to go sharp.....just went thru this w/ dried out cork.

[Henke]

Okay, maybe your right. I'll let it pass just this once

But what if he asks Terry for the right specs, tries it out and it doesn't work. You still wouldn't know if there is some other problem with the flute or if his playing just requires another position on the cork.

My best advice at this point would probably be to ask Terry for the correct position, try it out and if it doesn't work, start experimenting with the position and see if you can get it to work.

It's also fairly easy to test a flute for leaks. Just take it apart, cover the holes with your fingers and the end with your free palm, suck at the open end and see if it pops when you remove your hand from the bottom.

I know your post wasn't directed at my post specifically, I just needed to clearify why I thought it was okay to give advice about how you might try fix this issue yourself in this situation. It's likely that this issue has nothing to do with the flute except a normal setup problem which can be solved easily. When I think about it though, you're probably right, if this is a newbie he might not be able to tell if there's another problem with the flute appart from that.

[Wormdiet]

EDIT: The FIRST thing to do is to get another player to try the flute and see where they put the tuning slide when they are in tune at concert pitch. Then you know whether the flute or the lips are the problem.


Nanohedron posted this on another thread:

If it's a dark, reedy "Irish" tone you're after, there's a particular way to form the embouchure that is very effective for tonal consistency and is the bee's knees for a hard, low D that doesn't easily break, and if you have low C#/Cnat keys the result is very satisfying and strong:

Rather than stretching the corners of the mouth or turning them up as if in a sort of smile, keep the corners of the mouth turned down and tucked inward so that the upper lip forms a "canopy" over the embouchure hole (blowing more downwardly into the aperture, of course, so turning the headjoint in is helpful). Drop the jaw, keep the tongue away from the lower lip, and "blowing" becomes more of a sense of "breathing", and a lot of volume can be got from a surprisingly gentle breath and good abdominal support. For me there isn't so much a sense of lip aperture compression, now, as there is one of easy positioning instead. It took me a long while to get this form down, and I'm glad I tried. Some may get it more easily than I did.

A friend of mine showed me this technique in person, and my pitch dropped significantly after I learned to NOT stick out the lower jaw, which I had been doing in an effort to tighten my lips. No amount of rolling in the flute had helped before I tried the "canopy" technique.

[Cathy Wilde]

And yes, playing too hard CAN make you go sharp, especially if you're finding this happening in a session where you're trying to out-honk other people.

... from the one who has not only been there/done that, but ALSO played the famous "Eb Masquerading as a D" for two years .... believe me, I know for fighting with sharp!

[Denny]

believe me, I know for fighting with sharp!

From all of the dull people in the world trying to be sharper, we feel your pain...

[Cathy Wilde]

Speaking of, a good quote I saw today .... "The physiological effects of tiredness are well-known. You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by overworking him." -- Peter Capelli, Management Professor at Wharton School O' B

A-ha, that explains a lot about a whole lot of things.

[Jumbuk]

EDIT: The FIRST thing to do is to get another player to try the flute and see where they put the tuning slide when they are in tune at concert pitch. Then you know whether the flute or the lips are the problem.

<snip>

A friend of mine showed me this technique in person, and my pitch dropped significantly after I learned to NOT stick out the lower jaw, which I had been doing in an effort to tighten my lips. No amount of rolling in the flute had helped before I tried the "canopy" technique.

Same here. It is ironic that someone has just recently posted about their flute playing the other way (way too flat). I have learned the hard way that you can get a huge range of pitch variation just by the way you blow the flute. There ought to be a script for testing "too flat" "too sharp" posts:

Step 1: how long have you been playing?

Step 2: if answer to Step 1 is "short time" (requires definiton), standard information about how the emboucher affects pitch plus suggestion that you get an experienced player to test the flute.

Otherwise: standard information about cork position etc plus suggestion that you contact the maker.

Maybe there should be a FAQ or a sticky post on this topic?