flute full of dribble and no sound coming out!

humananimalmother · Post by **humananimalmother** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:50 am

Hello

Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do if, in the middle of a piece, your flute becomes full of dribble and you play but no sound comes out? Is there a quick way to get rid of the dribble and keep playing? I'm playing in a concert soon and can't stop in the middle of a piece to get rid of dribble!

zummerzet_lou · Post by **zummerzet_lou** » Sun Jun 28, 2009 10:18 pm

The only way I know of, is to cover all the keys and give a quick blast to shift the dribble .. nice!!

MissyHPhoenix · Post by **MissyHPhoenix** » Mon Jun 29, 2009 9:31 am

At the risk of being gross, when I play I produce a lot of spit! Because of that, I would find myself quite often having certain keys stuck because of the accumulated spit. Since it was usually on the keys closest to the headjoint, I'd have to take the flute apart and swab it out. Aggravating to say the least. My solution was to get one of the flute flags, the long one that connects together so you can swab out your flute while it is still assembled. Now when I play and/or practice, I keep it next to me and very often simply swab out the flute, like in between pieces of music while I am at practice. This took care of the problem for me!

Good luck.

humananimalmother · Post by **humananimalmother** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 10:16 am

Thank you for replies.

I do find it is slightly better if I continuously drink water between playing (which you would think would produce more dribble wouldn't you!)

fluteguy18 · Post by **fluteguy18** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:23 am

You know... I never have this problem, and often times I will be playing so much that I will have dribble dripping out the end of my flute. I remember back when I started playing I had this problem a couple of times. The solution I found was to use faster airspeed.