I’ve had a keyless D Forbes delrin; just received a keyless C Dave Copley delrin. Very sweet sound. I’m finding the breath/embouchure I use for the D doesn’t work for the C. Since I’ve had it all of 2 days, I figure there’s a learning curve. Is that right? I’m ignorant (been playing 2 years). Does a 1-step lengthening from D to C really change embouchure requirements that much?
Thanks for any wisdom.
John
Perhaps it’s more likely the difference in embouchure cut tween the Forbes and the Copley
than the difference in key. Anyhow the solution is practice and long tones. Have fun!
yeah, what Jim said.
I’ve a Forbes and a Copley D flutes in delrin.
Both are fine flutes.
Quite different though.
I also have a Copley C (delrin) and it took me a little bit to get used to it. I got a great sound out of it almost immediately, but I realized later that I was playing quite flat. I would strongly recommend that you take some time to sit and work on the tone and tuning, since it is a slightly different beast than a D. It’s definitely worth a little bit of re-learning. There’s just something incredibly soothing about that low C and Dave’s flutes are fantastic.
I make a low combo flute with one head joint and enough bodies and parts so that you can have a flute in C, B, Bb and A. All with one head joint. See the photo below.
The bores are all similar in terms of inside diameters. But note that with the lower pitched flutes the ratio of bore to length is narrower as the flute gets longer and lower pitch. Thus the lower the pitch, the quieter the instrument - and the lighter touch one must apply to it when playing it. On my C flutes, with the inside head joint bore at 20.3mm one can honk on them like a Pratten almost. But you can’t do this on the low A. You have to treat it gently.
It would be possible to redesign the A to play similarly to the C. But then the bore would have to be considerably bigger and steeper. Also, the position of the finger holes would have to change and these would most likely become unreachable, at least to my hands!
Thus it may be that the difference between your C and D flutes is a result of the bore taper being narrower on the C compared to the D. Or it may simply be the embouchures as others suggested here.
You might try this experiment - fitting the head joint from the flute with the larger socket diameter onto the body of the other flute (most likely the C head on to the D body) and compare the difference between the two bodies. Simply wrap some thread like dental floss on the tenon to make a snug fit. I’d be curious as to your observations.
Casey
In this photo of one of my Low Flute Combos:
…head joint used for all of these pitches
…low A body upper and lower middle joints (this uses same foot joint as the Bb body)
…Bb body (with the foot joint used on the low A)
…B upper middle joint (uses the Bb lower middle joint and foot joint)
…C body (note that this uses its own slightly shorter foot joint)
Yikes! I thing the two foot joints in this photo are actually reversed. The longer one is for Bb, B and A. The shorter one for C.
I have to agree with what the others have said but I would like to add that different flutes will always have slightly different requirements regardless of pitch. The particular make of a flute is important too; I recently sold a Copley Eb and I remember when I got it years ago ('06 I think) it took me ages to get a powerful bottom note on it but it came together after I got used to it. I think it takes time to get to know a flute so you just need to spend more time with the C flute and it will eventually come together for you.