On a one Baroque Flute any note is possible so if you could play chromatically on a one Key Flute with no half holes why by a fully keyed instrument? Is this true or am I misinformed? I am considering this to save money instead of buying a 4 key Flute.
The baroque one-key and the 19th century 4- or 8-key are entirely different instruments. The chromaticity of the 1-key is obtained using a narrow bore, small tone holes, and a tiny embouchure hole. Once you open up the bore and make the embouchure oval, you make the flute a lot easier to play (IMO) and give it a bigger sound, but you lose most of the cross-fingerings. A small-holed Rudall-style flute will give decent cross-fingered C, G#, maybe a Bflat, but you’ll never get an F.
I really want to learn the baroque flute, but want to become reasonably competent on the keyless first.
(BTW, If you want a flute that can be chromatic through a combination of cross-fingering and (mostly) half-holing that’s less expensive than a 4- or 8-key, you might try an Olwell bamboo.)
A true answer but I think it was more than just wanting more volume and an easier to play flute, especially at first.
The Baroque flute has a unique sound in each key due to the use of cross-fingerings for the chromatics. Some of these sound quite “shaded”–in particular, low G-sharp and low F-natural come to mind.
As you move into Classical music, composers began to modulate more often and more drastically into different keys. For Baroque music, the individuality of each key signature on the Baroque traverso was a strength (for the most part, anyway), but it soon came to be viewed as a weakness to the musician in the Classical era.
I think the first keys were added to try to make the tone of the chromatic notes less shaded and more in character with the diatonic notes of the flute. This gave the flute “longer legs” when it came to playing in different key signatures. And, on the first keyed flutes, the bore and tone holes weren’t altered all that much, so that the original cross-fingerings were still available if the flutist wanted to use them.
I believe it was later when they began trying to increase the volume and projection of the flute–indeed, of all the instruments, as music moved away from more intimate settings and into the great concert halls of public entertainment.
–James
Half holing is what I don’t want to do guess I will just have to get the 4 Key.
This is one of those things that does come up from time to time, but allow me to rehash with my own slant. Heh. The nice thing about not sending you to do a search is that I can indoctrinate you with my own dogma.
You really can play an Irish flute nearly chromatically with no keys. Half-holing can be done, and if you’re good at it, you can make the timbre of the half-holed notes sound very good. It’s nearly impossible to half-hole Eb.
That said, it’s arguably much easier to play accidentals with keywork. The notes sound true-er, and have a much more open quality with keys than with cross-fingerings.
That said, confound the whole thing with the fact that the vast majority of the traditional Irish repertoire won’t need the accidentals. Sure, some really cool tunes do, but you don’t absolutely have to have them.
That begs the question, at least in my mind, of the role of the less-than-six-key flutes. I think that choice of the amount of keywork is then a personal preference and economic question, with economics unfortunately often the stronger factor.
The baroque flute worked as a one-key chromatic instrument. Our simple-system flute was arguably designed around using keywork for accidentals. By and large, the keyless simple-system instrument is a modern phenomenon, from what I’ve seen and read. I don’t have a significant sample, but from the way people discuss their collections, it’d be really weird to find a Boosey Pratten with no keys. We took them off because they’re expensive, they can leak, and they’re not generally necessary for the repertoire.
So, I guess the best thing is to decide if you want keys or not. Even if you don’t want keys, or you only want or can afford a couple, many makers will block out a body for the full complement of keys. Or, they’ll offer to make a new keyed body in trade for a keyless one. So you really can put off the decision.
Stuart
I know I want Keys, 4 is the minimum and since it would take me years to save a lot of money 4 is all I can afford.
I say get rid of all the damn holes and lets just have, say…3 different keys for each note. That ought to keep us from getting bored quickly.
Loren
lol!
Well, they did used to have 2 keys, one for E-flat and the other for D-sharp, I believe that was a Quantz thing (going by memory, may be wrong).
–James
I’ve found half holing to be inexpensive… In many cases the learning takes less time than the saving.
…and it works on keyed and non keyed flutes!
Denny
Personally, I like keys, but I don’t like too many which add weight and get in the way of where my ever changing grip wants to reside.
4 keys will get you nicely chromatic on a larger holed flute. But, if you’re only planning on playing ITM, they simply are not necessary.
ERic
Avery, another possibility is getting an antique on ebay. It’s a crapshoot, but at $200 apiece or so, you can get quite a few, and have those worked on, for what even a decent keyless costs. I bought three, two of which are wonderful flutes. Unfortunately, I decided to try to teach myself how to repad keys and recork tenons on the six-key. I’ll be sending it to a professional whenever I get around to it. I had the four-key revoiced, and it’s awesome. Total investment will have been less than $800 altogether.
Chas,
Who revoiced your antique? I have a Kohlert that is in great condition except it’s LP and the long F key has been repaired. I have around 200usd in it and am thinking of having it worked on.
Sorry if this is considered a thread-jack.
Byron
I don’t mind a thread jack I do it all the time myself. i would rather know that I will be getting a great Flute instead of buying three and seeing which one I like most now i know I have done that lots of times and it is a bad habit why should buy multiple Flutes to see which one is good. I would prefer getting a nice Flute made by a repected maker. To each his own.