Any Case Against "Easy Playing" Flutes?

[Jim_B1]

OK, My turn to give an opinion As a beginner who's just starting out, I think that a lot of this easy vs harder stuff is subjective. It's like the "who's the best maker" stuff sort of. I'm pretty happy if I can make a recognizable tune at this point. However if I were on my own with no lessions or people to ask about stuff, I would probably get discouraged if I couldn't make a nice sound in the first week with a flute. Many people do and never pick it up again. Isn't this why everyone says don't buy the flutes on ebay or the Moore flutes that are floating around? Because they are bad for beginners and most of the time don't even sound good for experts? So how could starting with a hard instrument, even if by a good maker, be a good thing for any but the most dedicated masochists (we know who you are)? I mean I can see the point if the person is dedicated enough to keep with it even though he sounds terrible for months but most of us would probably decide long before then that it was a bad choice and go get a cheap keyboard or something to make music with instead.
Obviously there are tradeoffs in a flute that is easier to fill or can handle a looser embouchure or has narrrower fingering or whatever, so what. As long as you know the basics well, I think translation to a different flute is still comparitivly easy and it may well be that the easier flute is all you will ever want or need.
Look at it this way, You don't get your 17 year old a Porche for his first car, you get him a civic or something. The Civic is a perfectly acceptable mode of transportation and in many ways is better than the Porche (costs less, cheaper insurance, easier repairs, more available parts, etc) After a few years on the road, he may decide to get a Porche, or maybe stick with the Civic or maybe get a new Model Civic or something else. None of which are bad options. Not everyone wants the same thing in a car or a flute. That's why there are many makers and models available. Carrying it one step further, if I was driving the porche and a professional racer was driving the Civic, I would get beaten in a race. Just as Matt Malloy playing a piece of garden hose would kill me even if I were playing an Olwell or a Hamilton
So, to try and get my rambling to make sense, let's recap:
1- Different people like differernt flutes
2- Easy is a subjective term
3- Nothing is bad about an easy playing flute so long as you enjoy playing it.
4- Nothing is bad about a harder playing flute so long as you enjoy playing it.
5- I will lose in a flute contest with all professional and almost all amateur players even if I have the easiest, hardest, loudest, softest, most expensive or least expensive flute on the market

To steal a line from Lee (the sincerest form of flattery),

It doesn't matter if a flute is easier or harder as long as you ....
ENJOY YOUR MUSIC

[CraigMc]

Well,

I thought I might chime in and share my small amount of experience.

I thought Eldarion's point was correct and though there is some disagreement I don't feel anyone here is wrong. Harry and others made some good points about how some makers cut embouchures to be easier to play and in doing so may sacrifice other aspects of playability.

I'm with Eldarion about - taking the harder road or the road less travelled in hopes it pays off more than the easy road in the end. As stated earlier if I wanted to play something easy I would play the whistle. The flute has been fun for me because of the challenge.

That said I want to add that even with an instructor for a while I could not get the embouchure on the Olwell Bamboo I started with. I then picked up the Dixon 3-piece and I started to improve. I wanted to get a woodenflute and I chose a Copley. The Copley being know to be easy to play was not a selling point for me but for all the other reason's especially it's range of expression. I have heard that the
Dixon 3 piece requires a tight embouchure but I find I use an even tighter embouchure on the Copley. I have also found that my tone has continued to improve with the Copley and I have yet to find any limitations. I like the playing styles of John Wynne, and Colm O'Donnell and I find it very expressive and it fits my needs for the sound I'm going after.

Now that I have been playing the Copley for a while I went and dug up my Olwell Bamboo and was surprised I could play it so well and clear especially for a flute I'm playing backwards (embouchure cut for left handed player but I'm playing it right handed). So my point is that even though a Copley is known to be an easy player It's helped me train my embouchure to a point that playing a previously unplayable flute (by me) has now become possible and even easy. My embouchure continues to develope and my tone continues to improve. So in this case anyway I have yet to find this so called "easy playing flute" a hinderance to my progression and the forseeable future. But my advice to others who are committed to learning the flute would be not too seek a flute on how easy it is too play but be very aware that getting a good tone and decent embouchure requires a lot of patience and practice. That's why for beginners I think it's a waste of time to go and try out different flutes. I think meeting the makers and seeing the operation would be fine as well as to see the quality of the instrument but I put more value in seeking the opinions of experienced players when I first started. It seems like every flute takes some time, sometimes weeks, to get to where you can rightly judge whether or not it's a keeper. It seems like each flute and player require a break in period and I can't see walking into a music store and playing different flutes being as useful to a beginner as say trying different whistles would be.

All IMHO of course

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: CraigMc on 2003-01-06 12:59 ]</font>

[brownja]

This is not intended to be a definitive response, just food for thought....

Consider other areas of life...

Michael Schumacher's Ferrari vs. a Honda Accord. Or even stick shift. vs automatic.

Ski's. Tennis raquets. etc. etc.

SLR cameras.

You get the idea.

Cheers,
jb

[Blackbeer]

Ya know one thing this thread has done for me is to help me realise that I have fallen into a trap I once set for other people. Many years ago I used to build my own sea kayaks. Now I was kayaking out on the ocean long before it was the fad it is now. And there were very few good designs around. So I built my own. As the years passed my kayaks changed to reflect my needs and the conditions of mother nature. When it became popular I had people come up to me and ask if I could build one of my boats for them.
They loved the exotic wood, the shape, the litness all that sort of thing. When I factored in a modest labor cost (10 dollars an hour) the price worked out to about 3000 dollars. Well needless to say there were no takers. And now I find myself doing the same thing. I love and respect good craftmanship I`m just to poor to afford it. I just can`t bring myself to take a chance on buying and instrument for six or eight hundred dollars when I now nothing about what it takes to make a fine or even a good flute. I pretty much rely on what is said in this forum to help me make a decision. This thread is very enlightening.

Tom

[peeplj]

On 2003-01-06 11:46, Conal O Grada wrote:

Having gone through the early learning process myself I would much rather have begun on a decent instrument rather than the 2b2 that I started out on.

Conal, I'm probably gonna regret asking this...but curiosity overcomes good sense some times...

What's a "2b2"?

Best,

--James
http://www.flutesite.com

[Gordon]

On 2003-01-06 13:20, brownja wrote:
This is not intended to be a definitive response, just food for thought....

Consider other areas of life...

Michael Schumacher's Ferrari vs. a Honda Accord. Or even stick shift. vs automatic.

Ski's. Tennis raquets. etc. etc.

SLR cameras.

You get the idea.

Cheers,
jb

Jb, I ignored this analogy when it was first brought up, but, well -- it just doesn't apply.
Cars, for the most part, are utilitarian vehicles that most of us use to get around. If we must use this analogy, then think of musicians as race drivers. There's a skill necessary to control the vehicle. No good race driver would discuss a standard automatic family car, any more than a good fluter wants to discuss an average flute. While race drivers may learn to drive,originally, on the family car, in order to truly learn to drive in a race, they need to develop the skill to hug the curve, use the clutch, etc.. An automatic, comfortable car will not make a great race car, or driver, though it might produce a smooth ride and a responsible driver.
I don't want to push this point much farther, as you probably get the drift.
Great flute players have learned on awful flutes -- the thread here isn't that you must have the highest quality, most expensive flute, nor is there a sure make or type that you must have. Rather, the discussion is over whether ease of play is desireable if it is a hard embouchure and focused airstream that you are working towards.
A good flute is a playable flute, so the real discrepancy in what we are discussing is whether the flutes being labelled hard really are (I'd say they're not), and whether flutes made to be more forgiving on beginners is actually a good thing. Playing flute is not, initially, easy. Those that give up learning because their flute is badly made have given up for the wrong reason. If they've given up because it's too hard, well, there's always the triangle.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Gordon on 2003-01-06 16:49 ]</font>

[Blayloch]

Heres a thought...

If a "Harder to play" instrument can still be played well while drunk off your rocker, alchohol being a muscle relaxant, doesnt it say something about how precise the air needs to be in general?

I play Quena flutes as well, and I can move the flute a good 10 degrees and still hit any of the 3 octaves.

I have found it to be similar with irish flutes. I've sampled alot of them from various makes and various stages. Now I'm a rank newbie when it comes to Irish flute, but, barring the cheap Pakistani model that I have, I can play the first two octaves on any of the Irish flutes that I've tried without any difficulty. I've found there to be a tremendous amount of flexability in embouchre. These flutes cover a wide range of makers.. Casey Burnes, Steve Noi, Olwell, Benton and others. I do get quite a bit of tonal variance (at least a half step) when I experiment with different embouchres, but the flute in general seems to have a wider range than what is being discussed here.

It would be really cool to get a flute into one of those colored air wind tunnel aerodynamic labs and see exactly what happens with the air...

Anyway, just my thoughts.

(you can throw the vegetables now)
-Aaron

[MacEachain]

Hi Folks,
this has turned out to be an interesting thread, which in my case, (given my initial opinion that there was NO case against easy playing flutes, an opinion which I've had to rethink) has created more question's than answers. How do you distinguish between a flute which require's a beginner to focus on good tecnique and a flute which is too difficult for a beginner? Is it possible to learn on any well known make? and if so why are beginner's who ask what flute to get not made aware of the shortcoming's of getting an easy player?

Cheers, Mac

[Gordon]

Mac, I don't think that any flute (by a decent maker) is too hard for a beginner. It just may take a bit longer to get it to sound right, to develop your embouchure, but when you have it, it's there. There are well-made flutes that you will sound faster, but the argument is that this short-cut does you no real favor, long-term. Then, of course, after all that, there are degrees between all flutes and most hand-made flutes take a bit of time to become "yours", even for advanced players. Different flutes respond a tiny bit differently, so, while that first day you'll know it's a good flute, it may still take a few days, a month or a year before you and that flute lock into one another.
A beginner doesn't have that scope of experience, so judging which flute is better for their style, etc., is jumping the gun. Best advice, then, would be thinking what sort of sound you're after (large session sound, more refined, whatever) and get a well-endorsed flute and practice on it. Down the road, you might change direction a bit (Malloy went from Prattens to Rudalls, as his tastes refined, others go in reverse), but getting a good embouchure and all is a matter of practice and time, and there really are no shortcuts.

[ErikT]

On 2003-01-06 17:26, Blayloch wrote:

but the flute in general seems to have a wider range than what is being discussed here.

I'm with Aaron on this one. My experience has shown that it has much more to do with the embouchure and the individual player than the cut of the flute. I've seen Boehm's honk and Trad flutes sing. In fact, I've seen a Grinter sing.

Case in point regarding the different understandings of instruments. Craig mentioned his difficulty with his Olwell bamboo at the beginning. I would have placed it into the easy blow category. Easy to fill, easy to sound, easy to play. But boy can you get plenty of different sound characteristics out of it.

I don't find classification of easy/hard blowing as a precurser to ultimate sound fulfillment. My experience just has not born this out.

So to address the main topic, I'd say that following is VERY false:
Easy player - limited playability.
Hard player - supreme flexibility and playability.

Erik

[Loren]

Gordon, your comments show that you either don't remember what it was like to be a beginner or, as a beginner, you didn't try a variety of different flutes: There are in fact "Shortcuts" by way of flutes that one can get a good sound out of much quicker than others. This is not to say that one won't have to practice, but the fact is, putting a Copley or a similar flute in a beginner's hands, with or without lessons, versus some big bored, big holed Pratten, or finnicky Rudall even.....the student with the easier playing flute will be able to play tunes sooner and therefor get on to finger technique, phrasing, rhythm, and simply making music in general, much more quickly than someone who is trying to simply pucker enough and huff enough to get a sound out of the Pratten. Say what you want, the flute is merely a tool with which to make music, so why the hell would one want to pick the most difficult too for the job to start with? Just to be macho? If you want to be a race car driver, there's no way you're going to start in a Formula One or Indy Car. Why? Because you'd spend all your time trying to learn how to simply control the power and the brakes, you'd learn nothing about DRIVING, which is what racing is all about: Balance and power transfer, How to pick a line, where to brake, where to accelerate, when and how to draft and pass, trail braking, left foot braking, heel/toe shifting......Then, once you've mastered those things, you move up to more and more powerful and responsive cars.

Why should instruments be any different?
A beginner should have an instrument that is easy enough to play so that he/she can concentrate on the fundamentals of MUSIC, rather than the dealing with the issues of of the tool itself then, as the student progeresses, by all means move on to the more demanding instrument, because by then you'll simply have to concentrate on improving your embouchure and breathing while playing the music you already know, rather than struggling with EVERYTHING at once.

The above comments are based on 20+ years of teaching people physical skills, and I can't ever recall a situation where giving a student a more difficult tool actually sped up the learning process, it generally only causes frustration and slows things down. You know, there's a reason why training aircraft are designed to be easy to fly and very forgiving, even the U.S. military starts it's student pilots in easy to fly and hard to wreck aircraft, and we turn out the best pilots in the world, as quickly as anyone.....Don't you think if we could turn out better pilots by starting them on more difficult aircraft we would? Learning to play music is essentially the same thing.

I think this whole thread is becoming a bit too acedemic though, just pick up a frickin' flute and hit the woodshed.



Loren

[Loren]

P.S. Gordon, are you saying Molloy plays Rudalls now?

Loren

[Loren]

Erik,

Most Olwells Bamboos I've owned were very easy to play, but a few were real bears, not the one I sold you, but two others in particular were not easy, at least to me. So, I think there's variation there, as with many flutes.

Loren

[ChrisLaughlin]

Hmmm... well, I'm not quite sure what I think about all this, so I'm not going to say anything. I think Eld and I have talked about this in the past though.

Completely unrelated to what I think about this debate, I must point out that Matt Molloy, unless his son Peter was lying, plays an Olwell (or Olwells) nowadays, as does Peter and his sister.

Best,
Chris

[ErikT]

On 2003-01-06 21:05, Loren wrote:
Erik,

Most Olwells Bamboos I've owned were very easy to play, but a few were real bears, not the one I sold you, but two others in particular were not easy, at least to me. So, I think there's variation there, as with many flutes.

Loren

Exactly! That is exactly my point. So I don't see that categorization is helpful. I think it DOES take woodshed work, not a particular flute. Do I deny that there are such things as Easy Playing Flutes? No. But I do deny that the line is so crisp as to say that x easy player has no potential in the hands of a professional. So I say that there is not a case, based upon a proponderance of evidence, against easy players... this grand jury is adjourned.

Erik