I recently purchased a flute in the key of E from Doug Tipple. I brought it to the session last night. Everyone there said, hey, that’s for playing fiddle tunes, isn’t it? They instantly knew what it was for. And then all the fiddlers started playing tunes in A and even in E (I didn’t even know there were any in E.) They were so excited we went through my whole list of A tunes that I can play on it right away.
After that, every time an A tune came up that I couldn’t even take a stab at (which was all but a couple of them) the other flute player asked to borrow my E flute. He got a real kick out of it. At the end, he said it’s so cool to have something like that.
I just don’t understand why there aren’t more E flutes or whistles. It’s going to be incredibly useful. And Doug makes such a nice instrument. The other flute player plays Olwell flutes only and he thinks Doug’s flutes sound great. He won’t tolerate anything out of tune, that’s for sure.
Well, one gets in the habit of playing the second register softly.
You can do that on a flute, thankfully. It’s possible to make
higher pitched flutes easy enough on the ears. Generally
a good idea to control the second octave, no matter what the flute’s key.
And E gets you A with the ability to play notes below the low A, which is how most A tunes are. An A flute just won’t cut it. An A flute wouldn’t play D tunes very well unless you were very good at those really really high notes. I am not.
The notes on the A flute are no higher than they are on an A whistle, which is not considered prohibitively
high and/or shrill. The way you get good on the high notes on such flutes is
to practice playing them softly. I take the 11th commandment to be:
when learning to play flute, address your difficulties.
I don’t know the fingerings for the notes above the high XOO OOO and I don’t think I want to. Anything higher than that and I get too self-conscious about mistakes. I won’t play my whistle in sessions or that reason, too.
High B is at the top of the second octave, yes?
C natural is 0X0 XXX.
Csharp is all fingers off
and high D (third octave)
is the same as second octave D.
Higher than that you don’t need to go
and you will rarely go that high.
It’s doable on a G flute, an A flute, a Bb flute.
I find conical flutes, like the sweetheart, easier
to control upstairs than cylindrical, FWIW.
But the name of the game is to control
the high notes so that you can play them
softly. This builds embouchure and that
solves most flute-related problems,
except not having enough money to
buy more flutes.
Methodical practice, fifteen minutes a day.
E.G. sound the A note in the first octave,
then in the second, the B note in the first
octave, then in the second… Try to play
the high notes softly.
It’s really helpful to play second octave notes on
a flute more softly than first octave notes,
to deliberately address them and not let them
‘soar.’
Well, fine. Plenty of other flutes to play.
Nowhere written that you must play a flute
in A. But this ‘for someone like me’ stuff is silly.
What you are is what you do. And if you
practice you can do these things. Just
like anybody else. The only question is
whether you want to, which is entirely up
to you to answer. We’re made of plastic,
you and me. Limitations like these aren’t written
in our bone marrow. Do the work, get the result.
Don’t do it, we don’t get it. That’s all there is.
Leave the thing to you.
All the best.
If you really want to get the neighborhood dogs riled up, try a G … XOX XOX Easy to play on the Forbes D but my Alaskan Husky doesn’t care a bit for it.
Easy to play on the Forbes D but my Alaskan Husky doesn’t care a bit for it.