10-hole Flute Finger Chart

[Feadoggie]

Notice where Skip Healy places the left hand thumb hole (between L2 and L3). I used what I consider the standard position for the LH thumbhole (between L1 and L2).

Yes, Healy puts the thumb hole between L2 and L3. I play a Healy ten-hole fife. The Healy layout makes sense to me. I'll try to explain why. Let's use a D flute as an example.

Because I have played whistle and simple system flute for many years, I am very much accustomed to playing a half-holed C nat, or with a cross fingering. Many flute designs give a strong note with a half-hole Cnat. Same for cross fingered C. It's the one note players have to either half-hole or cross finger to play all of those tunes in G. A thumb hole is not a "standard" hole for the Cnat, IMO. The Cnat hole on my keyed flute is not activated with my thumb. The Cnat thumb hole makes no sense to me in that frame of reference.

The Bb hole is another story. Is that really the Bb? It doesn't come up as frequently as the C nat, at least not in traditional music played in the keys of D and G. You can half hole it or cross finger Bb. The results are not always as strong as the Cnat note though. The Healy thumb hole gives a strong and stable Bb. And yes, I do have an Bb key of my keyed flute. And that key is activated by my thumb. So that is "standard" to my mind. Is that making any sense?

Anyway my point is that the Healy layout has a lot in common with my keyed Irish flute.

Now the instrument I am playing is the ten-hole Healy Bb fife. It's a smaller instrument in the flute realm, relatively speaking. The upper hand thumb hole is not placed on the back of the flute but more to the side near my face. It's comfortable for a Bb instrument but not where I would place that hole on a D flute which would be more in line with where the touch of my Ab key is on a keyed flute. But that touch is no where near where the tuned Ab hole should be. So I am not sure where the ergonomics work best on the larger ten-hole flute. Geeze, keys just make so much sense.

Feadoggie

[Doug_Tipple]

Since I posted this inquiry about a 10-hole flute fingerchart, I have been busy thinking about and making 10 and 11-hole chromatic flutes. The photo below shows what I have accomplished thus far. I soon will have a page about the flutes at my website. A couple of flutes in the photo look like they are closely related to the banana family, but actually they are all straight. The low D and G flutes do not have a hole for the half-tone above the fundamental. I need to think about keys for this. The other 3 flutes are fully chromatic. All of the flutes can be played as standard 6-hole flutes by taping up the chromatic finger and thumb holes. Please send me an email or PM if you have questions about the flutes.