Ok so… I recently acquired a 1-key rosewood flute in F and am currently working on a few cracks to, in the near future, fix it and resell. My question is that this baby’s in the key of F and plays quite well however I’m unable to find out whether or not anyone ANYWHERE is currently playing on flutes in F. It’s stamped with ‘IMPROVED LONDON F’ and I’m kind of thinking that it’d be of use to folks in the UK. Hopefully someone can help with this as I’ve never (fortunately-- I think!) come across a flute in F and so far hope not to again! I’m trying to attach a picture but I’m not quite sure how to… crosses fingers that it works Thanks!
They are so responsive and easy on the fingers, they are just a lark to play. I don’t know why, but they also just seem to sound really good. But unfortunately, if you are looking for a session playing in the key of F, you will be looking a long long long…time.
Enjoy your flute for what it is and don’t worry about conforming!
I can’t see you finding any use for them in a session setting. The F flute would be nice for solo playing are if you’re performing with an accompanist playing in F or Bb. And their minors, of course.
They are frequently great little flutes - easy and fun to play - really good for marches etc., but also for polkas. They were regularly made for flute bands. Harry Bradley has some tracks on his albums on F flutes. I’ve got one on mine - it is on my myspace site if you are interested in how they sound in full flow. You can’t really use them in a session, but they are sometimes useful for backing songs and such. Even the named ones tend to sell for reasonable prices - hence if you didn’t pay much for it and don’t need the money, I’d keep it and fix it and play it myself, if I were you.
About a year ago, I impulse-ordered a Sweetheart blackwood F flute, and it has become a real favorite ---- definitely a keeper. It only gets played at home, but it gets played a whole lot. Super-nice
I agree with most of the above. F flutes are particularly sweet. No use in regular ITM sessions, but I have a few Welsh tunes in F/C related keys/modes that I play on mine at WTM sessions. Jean-Michel Veillon uses one a lot, chiefly now for its sound, I think, but it is obviously helpful when playing with Bb bombardes! The main use for them is indeed in marching bands, though more in specifically flute bands than in “brass” bands, along with Bb (“fife”) band flutes. The majority that crop up are High Pitch, but some that play at 440 do show up from time to time. The latter seem to be in greater demand and thus command higher prices these days than they used to - have moved out of the junk-shop price range! (I just sold a fairly nice 4-key imported German made-for-the-English-market one, privately without needing to advertise it, to a lady with hand problems who can’t comfortably span and play a concert flute, and who is loving it!) If it plays at 440 and has decent intonation, you should get a good price for it if you’re going to sell it on when you’ve fixed it.
Just had an application for F flute last Sunday but we didn’t have any such animal. My brother-in-law is our church music director and arranges in the keys he likes to play on guitar. By the time he asked my daughter to play, the soloists had already learned the tune in F. It could have been done in G without too much stretching on their part but making them change seemed like a prima donna thing to do. Heather played the flute part on Boehm flute but it would have been really cool on wooden flute or a low F whistle.
F Flutes are essential if you are serious about song accompaniment Listen to Tom McElvogues track on the Wooden Flute Obsession II then tell me you can live without one.
What these F band flutes sound like having been mentioned put me in mind of a clip I did (and posted on the Clips Sticky) late last year on my own one. Here are a couple of pics of my F flute, and some sound clips to go with them: The first, Harvest Home & The Boys of Bluehill is an uninspiring choice of tunes, I’m afraid, and yes, I think there are some intonation issues apparent! I was also a bit fluffy and unfocussed embouchure-wise - it was 1st thing in the morning and I wasn’t much warmed up. (I think you may also be able to hear a neighbour’s power tool of some kind in the background.) It does serve, however, to show how nice these can sound, even if I’m not getting the best from it in this clip. The other clips are much better sound-wise though there are some mistakes - they’re from a gig context: Y Dyn Meddw & Yr Anner Gorniog (The Drunkard & The Horny Heifer -1st trad. Welsh, 2nd by myself in a Welsh vein - I posted this one on the clips sticky too back in August) and Mwynen Môn/Arfon/Eifionydd (The Beauties of Anglesey/Arfon/Eifionydd - the last two are names of districts [cantrefi] in N. Wales, in this case used as titles of hymn tunes, here reclaimed from a Baptist hymnal! - not posted before.)
At the moment I’ve loaned the flute to my pupil Tom Scott who is preparing to make substantial use of it in his first “proper” gig in July - at Ty Siamas in Dolgellau (same venue as my 2nd & 3rd clips above) as part of the Sesiwn Fawr Dolgellau festival.
The flute is an English mid C19th 6-key (block mounted) F Band Flute that plays nicely at A=440 for me at about the slide extension in the pictures. (The “action” picture is from the same occasion as the gig clips.) It came to me as a family heirloom, maker’s stamps deliberately erased as it was probably illicitly “demobbed” from the Army! Family tradition has it that it went to the Boer War.
Another thought from a whistle player’s perspective. An F is whistle is an extraordinarily nice key for solo playing, as demonstrated in recordings by Brian Finnegan, John McCusker and others. It’s a popular choice of low whistle when you’re not constrained by session keys. F whistle and F flute can be lovely together. And it’s backup-friendly for guitar and zouk players, with an easy 3rd fret capo. So why not keep it for yourself, find yourself an F whistler to play with, and have some fun.
Unfortunately, from a flute-player’s point of view, a treble (alto) recorder is more like in G (6-finger note) and much treble recorder music is actually rather awkward on F flute. I know - I’ve tried, though admittedly it was many years ago when I was less proficient on flute than now. I acquired my F flute quite early in my musical development, when I was mostly mucking around with late Renaissance music like Susato and Praetorius - and on receiving it I had just the same thought. Unfortunately, when I tried it I soon decided it was easier to stick to playing that repertory on recorder or Boehm flute. (It’s not so bad on an 8-key concert flute either, but I didn’t know that then.) Vivaldi treble recorder concerti that I’ve tried don’t lend themselves to F flute either, despite the tessitura being the same, even if you have a fully keyed F flute. Besides, you’d need to either learn to read the dots with different note-name/fingering correlations (sight transpose), or transpose it all down a minor third to preserve the normal reading.
