bradhurley wrote:
I've never played Boehm but have taught a number of people who either wanted to play Irish music on Boehm-system flutes or who were switching from Boehm to simple system.
It depends on what kind of music you want to play, but if you're playing traditional Irish music I think by far the biggest challenges in switching are not with respect to the flute itself but rather with "unlearning" classical techniques and replacing them with traditional approaches to ornamentation, phrasing, and articulation.
I played Boehm as a kid and semi retired before I started playing simple system flutes at age 42. The cobwebs in the back of my brain were loose enough to dislodge some basics. The unlearning of the classical stuff such as trills and vibrato and tonguing will take some retraining.
Listening to good players and getting a teacher that knows the Irish traditional playing style will be helpful.
Now that there are so many opportunities to view videos on YouTube you can immerse yourself in "the old guys" more easily than 30 years ago. Those young bucks like Matt Molloy were all folks were able to easily find on LPs and Cassettes in the 70s. You had to dig pretty deep to find some Peter Horan or John Mckenna. Shannon Heaton is a Trad player in Boston who made the switch. She played the silver flute through college and possibly still does, but she is known for her Irish Trad playing and teaching. She was my first teacher and delineated the differences well in our lessons. She's got a number of videos out on YouTube, but I don't know if she addresses this subject in any of them.