After reading some really good ones over the past few months I've analysed what makes a good review 'good', and have condensed (almost) the salient points for prospective reviewers to follow. I've also developed an online Automatic Flute Review Generator (AFRG) so that all the folks who are new to the flute can create a compelling review for themselves (the link is given at the bottom of the page).
If you don't want to use the online AFRG, then you should at least consider the following 'guidelines' when posting the review of your new Patrick Kintastick flute just after it arrives in the post, or even better, after you've played it for ten minutes. Use the following headings to create a uniform look and feel to your review; it's professional.
1. Construction.
If the flute cost more than $250, then cut and paste at least 6 of the following into your review. If the flute cost you more than $50 but less than $250, go with a, b, d, and optionally e (g is unlikely in this price range). Don't use f if the flute hasn't got rings (ask on the forum if you don't know what rings are).
a. Workmanship is exquisite.
b. Fit and finish is impeccable.
c. You can actually see the grain! (but only if the flute is made of wood. Note that the exclamation point is mandatory for readers to experience the full shock of this astonishing woody effect).
d. Tone holes are well-cut and round.
e. Screams quality.
f. The rings are beautifully formed and tight.
g. Keys are wonderfully ornate, but not clunky and don't impede playing.
h. Just wants to be held.
Always remember, no-one wants to spend money on a flute that looks like an agricultural implement.
Always remember, someone else may have bought a flute just like yours, from the same maker and all, and if they've had to sell the wife or kids to buy it, they don't want *you* telling them horrible lies about poor craftsmanship or dodgey fit and finish.
You can substitute 'craftsmanship' for 'workmanship' in a. above if you like
No-one is interested in hole-dimensions, bore dimensions, or what size hands you have. In the very rare event that someone *is* interested in these things, it's mostly because a) they're odd, b) they're conducting scientific research (see a) or c) see "Pictures and Soundclips" below.
2. Tone
The flute is an embouchure instrument, which pretty much means that its tone primarily comes from the player's embouchure (ie, you). It's why your flute will sound brilliant when Kevin Crawford plays it but complete shyte if my sister gave it a go. But don't let that stop you when it comes to describing the tone that you get out of your new Paddy McChud. To describe your tone, pick at least one adjective from each of the following five categories, and put it in your review.
a. Light and Colour: Clear, Dark, Bright, Focussed, Unfocussed, Glistening.
b. The Animal Kingdom: Honking, Barking, Buzzing, Growling.
c. Foodstuffs: Creamy, Buttery, Fluid, Sweet.
d. Textures and Shapes: Rough, Woody, Solid, Thick, Gritty, Firm, Hollow, Soft, Warm, Round, Big, Fat, Wide, Narrower, Smaller.
e. The Abstract, which of course holds the highest number: Clear, Rich, Complex, Simple, Pure, Centred, Edgey, Powerful, Reedy, Airy, Breathy, Crisp, Chiffy, Hissy, Robust, Reedy-edged, Strong, Beautiful, Wonderful, Clean, Dirty, Deep, Well-Mannered, Refined, Eloquent, Fast, Mellow, Dead*.
* Be careful of this one, it has slightly negative connotations.
Once you've picked your adjectives and described your tone, pick five more and add the following line to your review:
"With this flute, you can vary the tone depending on your embouchure...to explore all the colours in the tonal palette from <your first list of adjectives> to <your second list of adjectives>!"
This helps to remind people that the flute is an embouchure instrument, and the exclamation point will help to reinforce the astounding fact that varying your embouchure on an embouchure instrument will actually affect its tone. Trouble is, it's so obvious, people nearly always forget!
Always remember that there are a few people on the board who actually play their flutes with other musicians and they all play the same tune at the same time (seriously, it's true). They call such gatherings 'a session'. To cater for this small but not insignificant group, you should always add a line or two describing your flute as a weapon. This is because 'session players' regard playing with other musicians as a form of barely-civilised warfare, and the object is to be heard above everybody else, always. Pick one of the following and insert into your review:
"Cuts through like a knife", "Blasts through the tunes" "Is a tune canon" "Rattles the windows" "is a session powerhouse". The biggest fear of any session-playing fluter is blending in with other musicians, so using the weapon approach puts their minds at rest and spares you a bunch of session-related questions later.
3. Response
Pick any two of the following adjectives to describe the flute's response:
Agile, nimble, responsive, fast, athletic, sensitive.
If you've been playing the flute for less than a couple of years, insert the following line:
"Obviously I haven't mastered all the ornaments yet, but you can just feel how impressively responsive this flute is under your fingers!" (don't forget the exclamation mark!).
If you've been playing flute for less than 3 years, add the following line:
"I'm certain this flute will always be able to play a lot faster than I can!"
Always compare your new 'stick' (pros and old-timers always call their flute a 'stick', you should too or you'll come across as naive) to a motor car. Try to pick an expensive sporty model, not something stupid like a bus, even if your new stick handles like a bus. No-one wants one of those flutes like a Fiat 126, where you put your foot down and wait five minutes for the engine to wind up to speed. Who wants one of those crappy unresponsive flutes where you have start playing 3 seconds before anyone else to let the notes catch up?
Here are some good examples, some have been used already by famous names in the fluting community so you might want to rewrite them a bit (like I have):
"It's like having a sports car that allows you to run through the twist and turns, but put your foot on the throttle, and you're off!"
"It's like a McLaren Formula One car. Loud, fast and awe-inspiring!"
"Man, this stick is a Porche 911, classy, sexy, all-out speed with beauty and power."
People can relate to cars. Never say your new stick is like a Skoda or a Yugo. Or a Zil. Even if your flute didn't cost as much as a Ferrari, looks nothing like a Ferrari, sounds buggerall like a Ferrari, conferring all the qualities of a Ferrari to your flute is easy and informative!
4. Pictures and Soundclips
You can guarantee that *someone* will ask you for pictures and/or soundclips, so try to prepare them in advance. This isn't as difficult as it sounds, usually someone else has posted a review of the same flute you have and if you do a search for "review" you'll probably find it. Then you can link to the photos they've posted. It saves forum readers a lot of time, otherwise they have to do stuff like use their initiative and look at the maker's website, or search the forum for the previous review. Or even look at their own flute! Of course, it's entirely possible that the flute you're reviewing is the only one ever made by that maker, or is a rare find unseen before, in which case finding photos and other reviews might be a bit difficult. You can always say you'll post photos later
Don't be frightened of soundclips. Although they're completely useless as a review item, there are valid reasons why folks will ask you to post a soundclip of your new flute:
a. Because people refuse to believe that an instrument which relies on an embouchure will produce a totally different tone from one player to the next.
b. In spite of a. above, someone who already has Flute Mc.X will want to hear what someone else can do with a Mc.X flute. In this way, they can either go "snerk, mine sounds better than that!" or "Feck. Mine sounds like complete chud compared to his; I must've got a Mc.X that he made on a feckin' Friday afternoon! I'm sending it back! But not without asking a shipload of stupid questions about dimensions, hole sizes, and shyte like "does your Mc.X have what looks like a scratch in the bore 3mm from the end of the footjoint too?" in the hope that said scratch will be responsible for the chuddiness of the one and the brilliantitude of the other.
c. People are malicious and want to go "snerk, I can play better than that!"
d. People are terrified that the cheap Mc.X brand will (look better and) sound better than the mega-expensivo flute they mortgaged the house to buy, but morbid curiosity is a powerful beastie...
e. People who can't afford a Mc.X brand flute will want to go "snerk, my home-made C-crap# copper pipe flute sounds better than that Mc.X, and it didn't cost me diddly!"
f. All of the above.
So, don't be afraid of soundclips. Just Never, Ever, post a soundclip, unless you are Kevin Crawford.
5. Intonation
Never say a flute is 'in tune'. This suggests that it will play accurately in the diatonic scales and modes for which it was made, and that it will fit in with other musicians playing in the same key. If you say a flute is 'in tune', you're really going out on a limb. Remember that the flute is an embouchure instrument, so *you* affect the tuning, and although it might *seem* to be in tune for you, someone else who has one might always play 70 cents flat with the tuning slide pushed all the way in!
Also, if you say a flute is 'in tune' you're putting unfair pressure on flute makers to produce instruments that actually are 'in tune'. Since everyone is aware that the flute is an embouchure instrument, they're also aware that most of the time a flute's "out-of-tuneness" is their own fault; this is something the makers will tell you if you ask them nicely, so...
It's always best to say "The flute is perfectly in tune with itself". This is the preferred expression where tuning is concerned, and you'll see it in whistle reviews too. You likely won't see it in reviews of other types of musical instrument though, so don't think you can pinch it and use it when reviewing, say, your new Casio sampling portable electronic keyboard or a fiddle. Or a concertina.
Oddly enough, even though most educated people genuinely seem to expect a flute to be "in tune with itself" when they buy a flute costing more than ten clams, it's still a great comfort to readers to know that *your* flute plays a decent scale as far as *your* ears are concerned. It's also a polite nod to the maker, who might otherwise be left hanging there chewing his nails wondering whether or not he drilled all the holes in the right places before he sent you the flute he made.
You could also compliment the maker in your review by saying something like "the tone-holes are round, and in line" or "well-centred." This is also a respectful nod to the maker, who might otherwise suffer sleepless nights wondering whether he actually does know how to make a flute.
By all means talk about tuning-slides if one is fitted to your new flute. If you have a good writing style, folks will temporarily forget about the flute being an embouchure instrument when you say "The flute plays about 30 cents sharp with the slide pushed all the way in." It's a good line to use, makes you look like you know what you're talking about, and makes readers who own electronic chromatic tuners raise their eyebrows and go "Oh, that's not bad!" Session players will also appreciate it, since they spend ages fiddling with the tuning-slide and chromatic tuner to get their flute spot on A=440 so they'll stand out from all the other musicians.
Always say "the flute's octaves are well balanced" and remember that although most folk musicians only ever play the thousands of traditional tunes contained in a compass of 14 notes from low D up to b in the second octave, there may be classical flautists or baroque flautists reading your review. To make sure they don't feel left out, ensure you remark along the lines that "the flute plays well up through the third octave, and easily into the 4th with cross-fingered harmonics." Of course, those classical and baroque types have probably already spent thousands on their specialist Boehm and Baroque instruments (Traversos), but it's always nice for them to know that if they ever felt the need to play classical or baroque music on a flute made specifically for Irish traditional music, they can buy one like yours for a fraction of the cost of a Boehm or a Traverso.
You'd need to have cojones the size of Colchester to claim it'll play in the fifth octave, but since no-one's ever going to try this you might get away with it. Risky, but it's up to you. There aren't many folks around who play the fife or piccolo who'll be offended by fluters playing up in their wavelength, since they're mostly deaf to high pitch by now anyway.
Remember, although "the hard D" is a peculiarity of the UPs (which believe it or not have two low Ds, one 'soft, and one 'hard'), your new flute also has a Hard Low D, whether it's a Hall Crystal Flute or a toilet-roll Shakuhachi bought off eBay, it definitely has one. Describe it using one or two of the adjectives from the Animal Kingdom collection above, adding one of the more abstract adjectives from the Abstract list. eg: "A wonderful honking Hard Low D" "A powerful growling Hard Low D." You could also combine more adjectives from the Abstract list, viz: "A robust, reedy-edged barking Hard Low D." Everyone will know exactly what you mean.
6. Never post a review of a Boehm flute.
For one thing, they don't have Hard Ds, and for another, they all look the same, bloody silly bits of metal with buttons and hole-covers and screws and things. They all play up through the third and fourth octaves, and they all sound the same no matter who's playing them. Bloody tooty crap, like some chuddy compact Nissan Micra or Hyundai Pony, with no growling buzzing balls-to-the-wall reedy-edged dark powerful big fat wide tone and superfast nimble response like an Indy 500 Formula One. (Except for the one Joanie Madden plays, and that bird from Flook, wossername. But those flutes were obviously specially made for them and not just anyone can buy one).
7. Finally
Always end your review with an exclamation mark, preferrably after a short and pithy sentence such as "I'm impressed!" "I love it!" or "It's fantastic!" and "Thank you <insert name of flute maker here>!"
A last word of warning: You should never describe your flute as "the best flute in the world". Someone might remember you said that if you ever decide to sell your flute on the board in order to raise the money to buy a better one.
Plenty of reviews appear here on the board, and now that you have the guidelines above you'll be able to spot the really good ones and sort the wheat from the chaff. Don't forget when you're writing a review, chances are there may be a newbie or two out there relying on *you* to inform their purchasing decisions, so always use as many light- or food- or animal kingdom-related adjectives as possible!
If you yourself are new to flute, then I strongly suggest you begin with the Automatic Flute Review Generator, available here: http://www.gjk2.com/stuff/fluterev3.htm (You'll need to temporarily turn off any "pop-up blockers" you might have, 'cos the review is generated in a window that pops up, and the Firefox browser may have problems with it). Just fill in the form, click the button, then copy and paste the review onto the board. You'll be able to provide a much more "in depth" review later on of course, and by then your playing will have advanced to the stage where you can expand the list of adjectives to include such things as "Campbell's condensed cream of tomato soup" or "gritty truckstop buttery ham-and-eggs" in the descriptions of your flute's tone!
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner
