I have been eyeing Ebay for an inexpensive, but quality irish 'keyless" flute and I believe I found one. I do have two questions for you flute players before I decide to make a purchase:
How difficult is the transition from whistle to keyless flute?
here are the two that I am looking at…is there any preference. Would this be a good one for the transition?
The six hole keyless flute has the same fingering as a whistle. The degree of ease in changing from whistle to flute, or adding the flute, will depend on your motivation.
Do yourself a favour and don’t buy any of those flutes. Look for a real flute by a reputable maker, and don’t look at E-bay. The flute board is where you should look for advice. I can highly recomend M&E flutes by Michael Cronnolly of Co. Mayo. There are others out there as well. But any of the flutes you listed are probably nearly unplayable.
First of all, here is a quick guide to buying a flute, just to get you started: http://www.irishflutes.net/mef/quality.html
(the flutes you listed does not make it trough the 6th, in my opinion the most important one.)
As for playing, the flute is much harder to master than the whistle, but it is a natural transition. It is basically a harder and more expressive version of the whistle. It will take lots of time to learn, but most people that plays the flute well has walked that road.
For me its a pain in the butt. I bought an inexpensive PVC flute that was recommended in the flute forum a year or so back. I dont enjoy holding it up, my embui, my embouchea, my embryo, my lips never got used to it, and smoking 2 packs of Lucky Strikes, non-filtered, a day doesnt help.
On a good day, I can make a tune or 5 come out of it. It is not a bad beginner flute.
Let me know if you want to borrow it to try before you spend $$. It’s collecting dust and I hate to see instruments go to waste
Those two instruments have Pakistan or India written ALL over them. I don’t know of very many people that have been satisfied with either the instruments purchased like that or the customer support from the seller/makers of them.
One of them is in the low $100 range. For about $100 more you could get a VERY nice flute from Casey Burns. He will make it to fit YOU and will support it in EVERY way without question. Go to his website
and look at his Folk Flute. Renee has one and she loves it. It is back with Casey for its one year check and she misses it dearly. Doc Jones has played it and says that until you get into flutes costing $1000 or more it can’t be beat.
There are lots of good options. The CB is probably a great buy. I’ve heard lots of good stuff about them. However, they lack some things the M&E (for example has), like a tuning slide, zero maintenance, possibility to add keys later and so on. The M&E is more like a pro flute in many ways, that’s probably why you would pay $150 more than for the CB. I also don’t think that Casey would do a lot of customising on the Folk model. It’s a question of how far you wish to go. Below the CB in the price range is the Tipple for example, a great flute according to many, but without the conical bore. You add things the further up you go, but as long as a reputable maker, like Doug Tipple, Casey Burns or Michael Cronnolly, has made the flute you can be sure you get what you payed for, that it is a quality instrument.
It’s definitely work, but don’t get overintimidated (if that’s a word?). I’ve played whistle, very sporadically, for years, and just got an M&E less than three months ago. Having never played a transverse anything before in my life, I can now play along in sessions if I know the tune. In fact, I “sat in” with the local trad band at a recent festival for a few tunes. In public! Scary, but good fun.
It’s very rewarding to play flute and learn it. The biggest thing is, as everyone has said, getting the breathing and embouchure down. But if you enjoy playing, it will come naturally in time. And not a tremendous amount of time at that.
here are the two that I am looking at…is there any preference. Would this be a good one for the transition?
I own the M&E R.R. and it is a very forgiving flute to learn on, and sounds good in a session. I’ve played a Burns flute too (briefly) and it was nice.
Before my flute arrived in the mail, I messed around with a $6 plastic cooperman fife for a couple weeks, just worrying about getting notes out of it. When the MERR showed up, I was (somewhat) more prepared. Just a tip.
It didn’t take me long to get a pretty good sound out of mine when I first got it, but I find that holding it is more than I’m willing to work at, even though Jim Stone kindly pointed out some relevant threads on the flute forum for me (and they really did help). As a result, I’m [u]trying to trade mine for a low D whistle[/u].
I know that an experienced fl(a)utist can get a wider variety of sound out of a flute than most (any?) of us can get out of a whistle, but I just want to relax and play for myself, and the extra work isn’t worth it to me. I’ve had my fling with the flute, but now it’s over. (I do still have a couple of nice bamboo flutes that I got from JessieK, just in case the mood comes over me again.)
Cranberry said- "But breath control and mouth shape are more of an issue.‘’
An issue is a point of controversy, and breath control with mouth shape are steps to learn in playing a flute. Neither are more important than the other. The combination of all the steps is the goal. The foundation for learning is motivation and self motivation is the higest form.
You could get a Tipple they are way better than the two you have linked up.
He sells them on ebay I know lots of people on the Flute Board will reccommend them. The transition comes with time but playing whistle helps a lot.
