bad idea to branch out to silver flute?

[bradster]

Hi all , i have been tinkering with a silver flute after a friend impressed me with some jazz flute.
I am thinking of getting some lessons but am worried that it may cause some problems with my Irish flute playing ( which isnt so crash hot after a few years of playing anyway! )
Would it destroy or improve my Irish flute playing, for example embouchure / tone?
Any tips from anyone who has gone down this road?
thanks.

[jemtheflute]

The opposite conversion is rather more common, but I can't see it doing any fundamental harm. Whilst there will be differences of technique (especially if you have some classical lessons), there is no good reason why you cannot maintain two different styles of playing and both may benefit from aspects of each other. You may get short-term problems with switching embouchure formations, but if you practice both regularly you'll soon get to be able to switch at will. Much the same applies to fingering differences. Keep an open mind, though depending on who your teacher is and how open their mind is, be prepared for them telling you there's loads "wrong" with your ITM/wooden flute technique. Of course, there may be, or the teacher may simply not be equipped to know what they're talking about in that regard (not their fault if they've no exposure/awareness). I'd say to take on board what they teach you for the Bohm flute and apply it there, then see what parts of it are helpful applied to ITM/wooden flute.

[Doc Jones]

I play both badly. Playing one badly doesn't seem to interfere with me playing the other badly.

Doc

[Denny]

yeah! what Doc said!

no problem at all!!!

[mcurtiss]

Hi all , i have been tinkering with a silver flute after a friend impressed me with some jazz flute.
I am thinking of getting some lessons but am worried that it may cause some problems with my Irish flute playing ( which isnt so crash hot after a few years of playing anyway! )
Would it destroy or improve my Irish flute playing, for example embouchure / tone?
Any tips from anyone who has gone down this road?
thanks.

well, it worked for Ron Burgundy

[Cork]

It's not a bad idea to branch out to a silver flute. It's perfectly OK.

Whatever flute you play, just pick the right one for the job at hand.

[Doc Jones]

Joannie plays a mean Boehm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeqWduZOkDw

Doc

[talasiga]

I never did statistics but I know there as a big difference between "mean" and "average".

[ChrisCracknell]

Play both by all means, but think of them as two different instruments requiring different technique and used to play different repertoire and you'll have no problem.

Try to apply technique and style of one genre to another, regardless of instrument, will probably result in sounding awful (with a few honourable exceptions...). And some wooden flute, traditional things really are wrong on the Böhm flute and vice-versa. Don't be too proud to accept that, but don't necessarily adopt the new technique for the previous instrument either - at least not without thinking about it hard first.

Böhm is wonderful once you move outside the realm of keys that sit easily on the simple system flute, especially getting into other interesting traditions, e.g. Klezmer, Eastern European Gipsy, classic, jazz, etc. Makes playing Julia Delaney fast a doddle, but in that case, it is probably a good idea to learn to do it on the wooden flute properly...

[bradster]

thanks for all answers folks.
I was thinking to keep each for its own so jazz on the silver , irish on the wooden.
though i may swap to the standard grip as opposed to pipers on the wooden in case i ever get keys on it.

[In The Woods]

If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it badly!

With best regards,

Steve Mack

[mutepointe]

Do it. Get this, I taught myself to play the pennywhistle left-handed and I play the pennywhistle and my crystal flute left-handed. It took me a lot longer to learn how to hold a boehm flute right-handed but I learned to play that too. I play folk music with the folk group at my church. I switch and flip between these and other instruments during Mass. I thought I would have problems with the right/left-handed fingering business but this was quickly learned and overcome. I tried very hard without success to relearn how to play the whistle right-handed. I was so focused on the fingering, I didn't even know I had to focus on embouchure.

[Azathoth]

As already said, the cross is often in the other direction, although that's usually because there aren't a ton of Irish flutes sitting in most music rooms when kids learn (Ireland being an obvious exception!).

Speaking only from personal experience, I went from Böhm to simple and then "back" - i.e. I found a lot of stuff works nicely on the Böhm flute and have adopted what works. It helps if you have an open hole flute (also known as French keys). They're different enough to be instruments in their own right, but similar enough to benefit from shared experience playing both. And, taken together, they mean you can play anything written in the entire trad canon - including far-out Eastern stuff, as Chris mentioned.

I have found personally that playing both improved tone and embouchure in both directions at once. Irish flute improved embouchure, Böhm tone (and also sound production in general, since it can take so much more power).

Then again, if you really want to learn jazz playing, then be prepared to learn an entirely different style of music - in some ways (improvisation vs. memorisation) it's even the "opposite" of trad playing.

I'm happy myself in the classical and trad worlds, but jazz was too "far out" (I even gave sax a go at one point). I did learn one thing, though: if you're serious about jazz, you might want to consider a Böhm-keyed flute in A, i.e. an alto flute.

Take a leaf out of this chap's book:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZoSZ66O ... re=related

Best thing to do would be to borrow a Böhm flute, get 10 lessons or so and see what you think.

[Akiba]

I started on Boehm, thought I was totally converted to wood conoid, but now I am back into to Boehm as well. I think they are somewhat complementary. Hey, the more time playing flute, the better IMHO. Each has its strengths and its venues.

A recommendation: the Yamaha Advantage series 200AD is a totally amazing flute for the money. Mine was $500 brand new and is just a great flute; better than other flutes 2-3 times the cost, and I tried a lot of flutes in the $400-1500 range.

Cheers,

Jason

[Jason Pfeiffer]

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie to the C&F forum thing and this is my first post, so...howdy!

Thanks to all who have posted on this thread. Its been very interesting reading.

Chiming in on this topic, I've also recently begun to explore Boehm flute, largely to branch back into the jazz world (I played jazz trumpet for 16 years) and partly as a way of making some of the music I'm encountering these days more accessible.

My question to those who are or who have done the cross would be: have you found any detrimental issues to your ITM flute tone as a result of switching between the embouchre formations?

Cheers,
Jason