Pulling Footjoint Out for Comfort

[beelady]

Hello all,

Has anyone ever tried this?

I've been practicing a lot. And I've always had a problem at times with certain passages/notes where my R4 finger does not completely close the hole slightly on the right side because my fingers are quite narrow. When I work at making sure the hole is closed by adjusting my finger/hand it feels uncomfortable and not a natural position. I analyzed what was going on and it is that my pinky is too close to my fourth finger RH. I tried pulling out the footjoint about a 1/4 of an inch and Oh MY! What a difference in comfort (no problem with having all of my R4 finger completely over the hole) and the sound was much deeper. Just more comfortable overall.

I would love to always play the flute like this, but is this bad for the flute? I have an expensive flute and I don't want a bent tenon or my foot joint to fall off because of what I'm doing.

Has anyone played with their footjoint out a bit?

Thanks in advance for you comments!

Melissa

[pied_piper]

It won't hurt the flute, but it will likely cause the lowest D, C#, C, and B (if you have a B foot) to be flat unless you are very good at adjusting the pitch with your lips and airstream. How flat it is will be proportional to how much the foot joint is pulled out.

[lianeandflute]

it might damage the joiny bit (ah, flute jargon! i'm so knowledgable). also could make it easier for the foot joint to fall off. maybe a flute technician could help you out to reposition the key or something. … ?

[pied_piper]

it might damage the joiny bit (ah, flute jargon! i'm so knowledgable). also could make it easier for the foot joint to fall off. maybe a flute technician could help you out to reposition the key or something. … ?

The "joint bit" on the flute body is called the tenon. The footjoint has the socket for the tenon. Pulling out out the footjoint a little bit will not hurt anything on the flute as long as the footjoint connection is tight enough to stay on when pulled out. We all do exactly the same thing with the headjoint when we tune. The only difference is that the headjoint tenon is much longer. And yes, some technicians can customize keys, but it is quite expensive and could also hurt the resale value of the flute.

[lianeandflute]

i confused the words tenon and rod in my mind.
yeah the head joint tenon is a lot longer which makes it okay for pulling out but we wouldn't pull it out more than like half an inch normally, it's not designed to be pulled out much further then that. the foot joint tenon is not designed to be pulled out at all, it's designed to be pushed all the way it so it could be really loose. it's just a risk, depends on the flute etc. probably worth asking a good flute technician anyway to see if they can help and make sure there isn't going to be any damage to your particular flute.

[JButky]

Pulling the footjoint out a bit is in many cases actually desirable! Many flute scales purposely are designed with the footjoint slightly sharp. Most notably, this is evident by the horrendous number of even world class players performing with middle D being quite sharp as a result. Pulling the footjoint out corrects the scale in this area a bit as well.

The 1st register lowest notes are hardly affected by this change. The length as a proportion of frequency is almost negligible.

Just make sure your footjoint has the proper fit.

If you need instruction on how to check your flute's scale and see if you have a slightly shortened footjoint, just ask. I can post how you can check for this.

[lianeandflute]

http://www.jennifercluff.com/footturn.pdf

just found this link. may be interesting for you or for anyone else having issues with or questions about footjoint alignment.