How many flute players smoke?

theotherleadingbrand · Sat Apr 26, 2003 1:08 am

It is just a point of curiousity for me. I am an ex-smoker and don't know how I would be able to handle playing a woodwind instrument like a flute if I was smoking. If you do smoke, what do you smoke, and do you ever smoke while playing the flute just to give the bore a protective tar coating and watch the smoke come out of the holes? Just admit it, I won't judge you. Freak.

MacEachain · Post by **MacEachain** » Sat Apr 26, 2003 3:29 am

Hi,
I smoke but I think my playing reflects a lack of talent, rather than the fact that I smoke

Cheers, Mac

(feel free to be judgemental)

psychih · Post by **psychih** » Sat Apr 26, 2003 9:36 am

I never actually thought of blowing smoke through the flute. Maybe I'll try that someday to annoy my flat mates. I've been on and off smoking. Right now it's off and I hope it stays that way. My playing sucks naturally....if only I'd practice more.....

Post by **Nanohedron** » Sat Apr 26, 2003 10:32 am

People ask how I can smoke and play flute. No problem. It forces me to be efficient.

I know quite a percentage of smoky fluters...odd, isn't it. We even make jokes about it being a requirement of the club, etc.

As for the question of what I smoke, well DUH! I smoke theotherleadingbrand. Freak yourself.

griff · Post by **griff** » Sat Apr 26, 2003 12:41 pm

Once every three or four months, I will light up a pipe in the evening. Does that make me a smoker? For insurance purposes I always say no, but for this poll I answered yes. I know that will goof up the percentages, but it is more honest. The insurance people seem to only ask it as a yes or no question too, but I don't think that I should be grouped with the three pack per day smokers. I don't think of myself as a smoker; I'm more of a non-smoker who smokes a pipe on rare occasions. By the way, pipe smokers normally don't inhale into their lungs, so I wouldn't expect that it would affect flute playing...until they develop lip cancer.

Griff

Walden · Post by **Walden** » Sat Apr 26, 2003 2:32 pm

I don't smoke, but I play the flute as if I were a smoker.

_______________
Poststructural Flautist
Walden

Blackbeer · Post by **Blackbeer** » Sun Apr 27, 2003 12:24 pm

Mother of Pearle Walden, is there an instrument that you don`t play. By the way I think my Bouzouki is on the way for 3 dollars more then you paid for yours. Not bad.
This is an interesting question you have brought up freak. I started smoking in boot camp. Marine corps boot camp in 1967 was a very nasty place to be and after 4 weeks the first "privalage" we were given was to light up. I was a jock all my life to that point but I wasn`t about to not partake in the first instance of independent choice I was given, so I bumbed a smoke and promtly threw up. Undaunted by my initial failur I persavered and became a first class smoker. At the age of 49 I qualified for the Tae Kwon Do nationals (full contact) still a class A smoker. At that time I also felt the first simtums of this weird desease that is taking my legs away. In fact now at age 55 just about all of the activities that I loved and in fact built my life around are beyound my capabilities.

When I started playing the whistle back in Dec. I didn`t think that smoking affectied my abilitiy to play but in the last month and a half or so after taking up the flute I have to wounder. Last week I declared war between my lips and my flute. Three hours a day practice, everyday with short breaks . I think it may be time to quit these things. Now I have to face just how addicted I am. I never smoked brand name smokes. Always bought the finest tobacco and rolled my own. At this stage in my flute playing I don`t think I am being affected by my smoking but I think that it my limit where I go from here. I find the flute to be THE
instrument that will allow me the expression of the emotions I otherwise keep botteled up. In fact I still can`t believe how incredible this thing is when I get my lips right. Damn near brings tears to my eyes. Of course so does the thought of quiting a habit that has been so comforting to my being. What a quandry.

Tom

RudallRose · Post by **RudallRose** » Sun Apr 27, 2003 1:20 pm

I quit smoking cigarettes 16 months ago and my flute playing is just now coming around to clear lungs again, longer passages and no urges to walk away from the session to light up. (I still chew my Nicorette gum).
I'm so hypersensitive to smoke while I play (god, did I really suck in that crap for 26 years??) that I've even asked people to put it out, but only while I'm on stage. Actually, it was a cigar smoker I said that to.
Anyway, nothing like a doctor telling you that yoiu have the early stages of emphasyma to get you to wake up to it. I'm good now, but geeze.
Anyway, people too always asked, how in the world can I smoke and play the flute, too?
My reply: "That's easy. I smoke with one lung and play with the other."
That always left them with a very baffled look.

Walden · Post by **Walden** » Sun Apr 27, 2003 1:26 pm

Blackbeer wrote:Mother of Pearle Walden, is there an instrument that you don`t play.

I don't play the guitar.

Post by **Nanohedron** » Sun Apr 27, 2003 1:33 pm

Smoke with one lung and play with the other? That's a good one, Dave!

Oddly enough, 2nd-hand smoke really bothers me when I'm playing, too. You'd think I'd be more or less immune, but it gets me every time.

gcollins · Post by **gcollins** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 12:26 am

The reason I play the flute is to clear my lungs out every day, so smoking doesn't kill me as fast.

Doirlinn · Post by **Doirlinn** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 3:47 am

I always figure fluters are some of the worst second-hand smokers. We suck in air more vigorously and deeper into our lungs than our neighboring banjo player (are all of them mellow by nature?) and we breathe when we need to instead of being able to wait for that next big cloud to pass by...

Of course we can always just drip on our neighboring smoker and if they complain? "If I get your smoke, you can have my condensation... prob'ly won't make you sick!"

Ok, so the logical followup question is what will happen with the smoking ban in Ireland? Will the sessions just take an official break every two sets, or will enforcement wander off into oblivion?

olehan · Post by **olehan** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 9:35 am

I, too, smoke a pipe. Almost daily. And like Al Gore (pardon the yank political refererence) I "never inhaled."

Second-hand smoke bothers me greatly when playing. My dad smoked Camel unfiltered cigs most of his life. Used to make me ill, too. Who ironic is it that the gentleman who started me playing whistle some 26 years ago also runs a pipe (tobacconist's) shop?

So for me, perhaps its a matter of dedication: lay off the pipe, and improve phrasing and breath control (not to mention health) or find another level of dedication to playing.

Blarney Pilgrim · Post by **Blarney Pilgrim** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 11:22 am

I agree with the pipe smokers. I'll light up a cigar once every week or so, so I don't consider myself in the same category with the heavy cigarette smokers. Like the pipe smokers I don't inhale. Since cigars take a while to smoke, I smoke very, very few in the winter. I haven't noticed any difference in my playing.

Steve

Post by **Nanohedron** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 11:27 am

Doirlinn, flog me for ignorance, but is there truly a smoking ban in Ireland now? If so, Hell has finally frozen over.

Chiff and Fipple Forums

How many flute players smoke?

Do you smoke

How many flute players smoke?

Smoking a Flute