Hi. I am currently a keyless flute player (started on Casey Burns’ folk flute, now also have CB large holed flute, and a Copley delrin) and contemplating moving on to a keyed flute. I love the idea and sound of keyless, but I regularly play with a group of fiddlers who play tunes in G minor, B minor, and other such not-so-common keys, and want to get better F’s, and flats B & E.
Have any of you bought a 4-key but later switchted to 6? If so, what was the 4-key lacking that caused you to make the switch?
Have any of you bought a 4-key and been perfectly content?
I’m assuming you’d consider these four keys: Bb, G#, short F, Eb, which would give you a chromatic flute.
I’d miss the C-nat and long F keys–having six keys, I can’t imagine which keys I’d get rid of to have a four key. Some players skip the long F, but I find the long F key much more fluid for certain passages.
If you can afford it, I think six (or eight!) is the way to go for maximum flexibility.
The thing I never understood is why keys are added to flutes down past D to B or as low as G, yet none of the band flutes in F, Bb or piccolos in D and Eb ever seem to go below their bell note. I think most all of these are 6 key instruments.
Glurgh. C#/Cnat’s plenty enough. Someone here posted a story about some bloke who had a flute with a G foot (those flutes had their own special name starting with a “P” - “parawhatthehellisthatissimo” or something, as I recall), and during a concert he actually got the low G to sound. He stopped, went and propped the flute up in a corner, and saluted it.
But you ask why. Well, I could blame the fiddles and squeezeboxes and the gamut envy they induce. Who can say. But what I can say is that once you get a C foot, at least, you probably won’t ask why any more.
now when has a fiddle player gone below open on the lowest string?
there’s a time and a place for violas
Low B on the Boehm isn’t bad but it does start to wreck havoc on the 3rd octave. The conical doesn’t do so well given ya can only make a hole so small…
Next you’ll be telling me if I try an 11 hole fife I won’t ask why.
But that is me, not the original post.
Does the C nat foot give more options for a C nat passage other than the other key? can you use it instead of the other key or OXXOOO, etc? or does it just allow a lower pitch?
If six keys are good enough for Brendan Mulholland, Matt Molloy, Eamonn Cotter (and five good enough for June Ni Chormaic) then that’s good enough for me. I also play a four-key flute but I prefer the six-key.
All the above, of course. But for Irish trad, like Julia sez, you don’t really need those keys. But, since I do have them, I do use them. They’re nice to have for Dminor, the rare Fnat passage, tunes in C and stuff, but not ultimately essential; and a valid question is also whether the cost/frequency-of-use ratio justifies getting them. In my case, probably not. It’s just more stuff to keep a gearhead happy, is all. But I’m not exactly kicking myself for having gotten them, either, FWIW.
Or you can go for five keys and save a few bucks on the sixth - just get the G#, Eb, Bb, and the two F nats, long and short. The two F choices are important, I think, but if you’re already comfortable on a keyless, then you’re probably comfortable on any number of C nats. I know many swear by the C key, but it’s less necessary (IMO) than those notes you’d otherwise need to half-hole.
OTOH, if you’re going for five, I suppose the whole 6 wouldn’t hurt. FWIW, I wouldn’t turn down an eight key (my German has 11 or something) either, but I’m with those that don’t think going down below the D is all that important, if you’re playing ITM.
But then, I’m still not convinced keys in general are all that important for ITM. But that’s just me.
Maybe I should learn the Confidence Reel… Then again, maybe I already know it, but am unsure…
Another thing to consider if you are planning on a flute with block-mounted keys is to have the blocks built in for any additional keys (up to eight keys total). Then you can start out with four keys on the flute and have the others added later if you find that you need them.
I would agree that going down below the D isn’t important, and for the most part I’d say that most run-of-the-mill old session standards don’t require keys either. However, these days, many fiddlers and box players regularly start tunes that call for keys, so I’d say they are useful if you think you might want to play the expanded repertoire. Patrick Olwell told me recently that nobodyever uses the low C’s, they always just rotate them out of the way.
Being brand new to playing on keys, I can say that the first four became useful almost immediately. The long F and C natural are winning me over slowly. Below low D, not so much yet, but never say never.
I’ll hate myself in the morning, but I’m very seriously considering a six-key body for my Copley. That’s what I’d recommend, at a minimum.
When did we start letting those buggers run things?
As for expanded repertoire, I’ve been at this just shy of 15 years, have forgotten more tunes than I remember, and I’m not even close to running out of learning new tunes that don’t use keys…
Still, that all said, given a choice (or 2 grand, whichever came first…) I’d recommend a six key (or maybe the aforementioned 5) - need to keep the fiddlers on their toes, I suppose. Anyway, I like to see the look on their faces when playing a tune when they finally thought they’d gotten rid of me…
