I did a little experiment on flute ergonomics late last year, and have been too preoccupied (Latin, verb, past participle: lazy) to bring it to your attention. That’s OK, you were probably too relaxed (Latin, adj: blind drunk) over the holiday season to make any sense of it!
It was prompted by noticing how many good old flutes have the top hole just a little closer to the player than the subsequent holes. Anyway, have a peep and see what you make of it.
You can emulate the experiment yourself by holding your flute in the playing position, then moving the top finger towards you a little and the third finger away a little. You might feel a little less twisting across the hand.
Then reverse that. I certainly wouldn’t want the top hole any further away from me than the centreline! And a little closer is nice.
Yes, interesting concept. I’m thinking that setup might reduce a bit of the pressure on where my left hand supports the flute,as I tend to press a bit too hard sometimes and pinch the nerve slightly. Would like to try out a flute setup like that to see what difference it may make.
Thanks for sharing Terry!
Russ
Think you’ll be interested to see the final layout of my ‘four keys for nine fingers’ flute, where I’ve been planning to update that story with some photos for a while and hope to do so soon. But the holes are basically arranged like this (on the one-piece body we chose to accommodate my RH G# key) for a lengthy L2 finger and unnaturally short L3…
Not to scale!
----|--------------O----|-------------------|---- Big L3 offset for pinkie
----|-------------------|-------------------|----
----|-------------------|----O----O----O----|---- R1, R2 & R3 on top
----|----O----O---------|-------------------|---- L1 & L2 slightly towards me
My son … 10 years old … was tasked with making a musical instrument out of things around the house.
Since I had some 3/4" PVC tubing and … ahem … a few wine corks around … he made a flute using Doug Tipples directions.
Hacksaw, hand drill, tape measure and pencil. Since this was the first time he had used my drill … let’s just say the holes were not straight.
He had the top 3 holes spaced about 1/2 a hole width off line from each other. Top hole nearest the player, 2nd on line and 3rd further away.
I have small hands … I liked it! It was all just rough cut and unfinished since he had to do it all on his own but it plays pretty good too.
I think that would be a nice improvement. But for me, the
distance between holes 5 and 6 was a more significant problem
until I learned to raise up my right elbow a little bit to get a
better angle for stretching those fingers.
My Tom Aebi medium-hole Rudall (2011) was done this way, very similar to Terry’s keyless test flute. I’ve also seen one Olwell Pratten where the LH holes were slightly askew. For what it’s worth.