The Great Fnatural Deathmatch
- Wormdiet
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The Great Fnatural Deathmatch
If you had to choose between short and long F, and could only get one, which would it be and why?
OOOXXO
Doing it backwards since 2005.
Doing it backwards since 2005.
- Jayhawk
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I prefer short F - less chance to damage the key compared to a long one and I've found I can do pretty much anything I want with the short F (you can roll your finger with practice for some of the more difficult passages where folks normally use the long F).
My guess is most folks will say long, but didn't Nicholson prefer the short F...which would put me in pretty good company.
Eric
My guess is most folks will say long, but didn't Nicholson prefer the short F...which would put me in pretty good company.
Eric
- NicoMoreno
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My vote's for the long F; it's really the only one I use. I guess I just haven't ran into an instance where the short key would be easier to use than the long one.
Jonathan Milton
jonathanzmilton.com/music
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- The Sporting Pitchfork
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- Jon C.
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they are there to make the flute look cool.Peggy wrote:Oooh! I have BOTH!
Clueless about what to do with either of them . . .
"I love the flute because it's the one instrument in the world where you can feel your own breath. I can feel my breath with my fingers. It's as if I'm speaking from my soul..."
Michael Flatley
Jon
Michael Flatley
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- Whistlin'Dixie
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- Matt_Paris
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Now I am used to them, I definitely need both. If I would have to sacrifice one key, it would be the Cnat: I have a vintage flute with the Cnat broken and the hole plugged, and I discovered I didn't really need it. But all my friends with keyed flutes tell me it's their favorite key.
Hard to tell what is best for you...
And it's true the long F looks cool.
Hard to tell what is best for you...
And it's true the long F looks cool.
- bradhurley
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I use the short F most of the time, but as someone pointed out above, there's no way to go cleanly from D to F or F to D without the long F natural key. That's primarily what it's there for, but some people prefer to use it for every instance of F.
If you only could have one, the long F is the one to get -- if you get a short F only, you'll have trouble everytime you try to go from F to D or vice versa.
If you only could have one, the long F is the one to get -- if you get a short F only, you'll have trouble everytime you try to go from F to D or vice versa.
Last edited by bradhurley on Mon May 16, 2005 5:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
- peeplj
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For Irish music, I actually think the long F is more useful. My reasoning is with a short F you can easily do most intervals except F-nat to D, which is found with some frequency in tunes like Julia Delaney's and the Sunset.
The long F can do the F-nat to D easily.
The interval the long F can't do is F-nat to A-flat--you have to have a short F for that.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any dance tunes that include that interval. There probably are some; I just don't think I play any.
All of that said, I find I use the short F quite a bit more than the long F. About the only time I use the long F is if there is one of those F-nat to D passages.
--James
P.S. Brad, I didn't mean to step on your post--we must have been typing our answers at the same time. --James
The long F can do the F-nat to D easily.
The interval the long F can't do is F-nat to A-flat--you have to have a short F for that.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any dance tunes that include that interval. There probably are some; I just don't think I play any.
All of that said, I find I use the short F quite a bit more than the long F. About the only time I use the long F is if there is one of those F-nat to D passages.
--James
P.S. Brad, I didn't mean to step on your post--we must have been typing our answers at the same time. --James
- peeplj
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I can do the slide off of the key on any of my flutes pretty well.Jayhawk wrote:Fnat to D with a short F isn't that hard if you think of it as a slide off the Fnat key. D to Fnat is a slide onto the key.
Eric
The slide onto the key, though--that I can't quite make work on any of them. Then again, my flutes have long-F keys, so I've not spent a lot of time trying.
If you really wanna impress me, play this figure from Eileen Curran at speed with only the short F:
K: Gmin
AFcFdFcF
That rocking pedal is hard enough to do *with* the long F!
--James