playing wooden simple system flute 'irish style'

[jb]

hi all ,
does anyone here play Irish flute too?
I picked one up and find to get the Irish tone, which is a lot 'harder' or 'heavier' I have to change my embouchure somewhat and roll in a bit.
And then when I go back to play classical pieces it takes a while to get my old sound back!
Has anyone else had this problem or am I goin about it the wrong way?
thanks for any advice.

[wood&silver]

Hi JB,

I play mainly Irish flute with a simple wood flute made by Casey Burns. I come from a classical Boehm background and have just recently returned to playing silver flute. So i'm in the same boat, playing both wood and silver. I'd say it is a bit challenging, particularly coming from the Boehm to the simple. In Boehm playing, I was trained to direct my air higher as the octaves go up. This technique does not work well for simple flutes. To play in the second octave, and keep it from going way sharp, I find that instead of directing the airflow higher, it's better to tighten the embouchure, make the hole smaller thus speeding up the airflow and in a sense "overblowing" to get the second octave. I find actually that I can go from wood to silver without much difficulty now because I have fundamentally changed my approach to flute sound production. I find I play a lot better in tune on my silver flute than I ever did by tightening, closing the embouchure hole and redirecting the airflow as little as possible. At least, that's what I think I'm doing...

So in answer to your question, yes you may be going about it the wrong way.

Also, I find that I need to pull the cork out more than would be set by the flute maker in a wood flute in order to play it with the full tone I like and play it more in tune, say 23-27mm out. Most makers say 19-23mm from the center of the embouchure hole is OK. Experiment.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Jason

[wood&silver]

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