Is it my imagination or does June McCormack severely turn in the head joint (and thus significantly turn out the lower finger hole joints). I was just watching this 2004 video:
The section from 2:53 to 3:05 caught my eye. I took classes with her at Irish Arts Week, and have seen her play live on more than one occasion, and never noticed this. Is this a trick of the camera, or is she really turning the head joint in to a dramatic degree.
Made by some Yank called Oil-Well, or something like that…
I turn my headjoint in that far as well. Note the position of June’s right arm; she’s almost reaching over the flute to reach the RH holes. Not a bother on her!
I’ve recently started to see the benefits of moving towards that sort of angle. It’s easier on a flute with the extra joint between the left and right hands - you can get your right hand much further over without making things awkard for the left hand, so in that case you might think of it as turning the bottom part out rather than turning the head in.
The advantage is that with the left thumb coming up so much higher, you get a triple support between left thumb, right forefinger base and jaw - the playing fingers are then released from flute-support duties, and are left to hole-opening and closing duties.
As I understand it these sort of angles - or even much more acute versions of them - were standard in the early 19th century. The estimable Terry McGee is one of the experts who can tell you more about this. (There may be stuff on his site, I can’t quite recall).
June certainly demonstrates the advantages of the 19th century grip - right hand fingers well extended where they can be much more flexible in operation.
Is the light playing tricks, or can I imagine a bit of flattening, a la Nicholson, around the R1 and R2 area?
So, again, we are seeing the energy steered firmly away from the low D (D4) and into its harmonics. Again it’s the even numbered harmonics that are the beneficiaries (D5 and D6, 9dB and 9.5dB higher respectively), although even the third harmonic, A5, does better than the nominal note by 4.6dB. Higher harmonics are severely attenuated by the flute’s cut-off frequency; none are higher than about 10dB below the fundamental, and therefore about 25dB below the sum of all the energy.
The advantage is that with the left thumb coming up so much higher, you get a triple support between left thumb, right forefinger base and jaw
You might be right that you get a little more support from the left index finger base (not so much the thumb) using that grip in that sort of position (which I do) but you’ll also see plenty of people rolling the head inwards and using a very different, sometimes very awkward, thumb position. The advantage is in the tone from the rotated angle of the embouchure, the hands just have to make do around it I think?
PS. my humble learner’s tip, if you can get a clean tone blowing a standard (pastic fipple) C whistle in ‘flute’ position then the focus and downward direction of embouchure seems about the same as getting a nice reedy tone on my Grinter R&R
Well of course I was talking through my hat. When I said left, I meant right. At least I can claim consistency: when I said right, I meant left. I promise you that I was not drunk.
OTOH (pun intended), when you say “The advantage is in the tone from the rotated angle of the embouchure, the hands just have to make do around it I think?”
I think not. You can rotate the head to any angle you like to get any effect on tone you think it has, and you can do that with your hands at any angle you like. The reason for the rotation has to do with the combination of the embouchoure angle and the angles of the hands.
Congratulations. Not a very difficult call, this one, given the video evidence.
I’m still very much in “calibration mode”, where I’m looking for “known examples” to see if the measurement techniques seem to hold up. So far so good, but still early days. (For measurements, not necessarily ears - they’ve been around longer!)
What will be interesting is to see how ear and measurement fare as we get to finer discriminations. How confidently can either identify, from a recording, if a flute is a Rudall, a Pratten, a GLP, a simple-system Boehm, a Boehm-system Boehm, whether it has a rectangular or elliptical embouchure, a C or a D foot and so on? And can ear or science deal with combinations? A rectangular embouchure GLP with a D foot vs a C-footed Rudall with an elliptical? I frankly don’t know the answers, but I look forward to finding out.
I’ll be looking for Champions of the Humble Ear to step right up there with the FFT to see who proves to be better at what. Many expect science to be able to do better than humans in all fields, but the ear is a particularly well developed sense. But some bold types have advanced claims that the ear can never be beaten, equalled or even approached. That seems improbable to me, and we immediately have to recognise that not all ears are born equal. I think I’ll be pretty happy if we can coax science to be as good as the average ear. Then we will be able to take advantage of science’s greater repeatability and impartiality.
I can anticipate some of our readers submitting recordings they have made, to challenge both ears and science to match description and sound. That will be a test for both of us. I hope you’ll be up for it.
Looks very uncomfortable to me - and I wonder what the long term effects will be for her left hand/wrist. Obviously June is used to this position and is cool with it, but to me it looks very strained, also holding the right upper arm/elbow like that surely can’t be good in the long run. Nice flute playing all the same, but I hope she adopts a more relaxed posture
Looks very uncomfortable to me - and I wonder what the long term effects will be for her left hand/wrist. Obviously June is used to this position and is cool with it, but to me it looks very strained, also holding the right upper arm/elbow like that surely can’t be good in the long run. Nice flute playing all the same, but I hope she adopts a more relaxed posture