Anyway, I’ve been having issues recently with switching back and forth between flute and fife. I’m a strong fifer, and when I’m on, I have a very clear tone, and my stamina is endless. However, if I take a few days off from playing the fife, and play my flute predominantly, I’ve found my embouchure gets too relaxed, and when I pick up the fife again, it’s all airy, unfocused, and I can’t play much longer than 10 minutes or so. I realized this on Sunday, and, since I had a gig last night (Tuesday), I played nothing but the fife from Sunday until then. It took that long to get my embouchure tightened up again, playing an hour or so each day.
So, I guess the question is, for those of you who play both like myself (how many of us are there?), how do you get around this issue – short of playing each for an hour a day, which I unfortunately do not have time for. I find that by the time I get warmed up enough to really sound good (about 15 minutes or so), it’s just about time to quit, since I usually play on my lunch break, or on my commute to work (please, no more admonishments about the dangers of fifing and driving).
I switched from whistles to a piccolo and then moved into fifes and finally into flutes. This was an excellent progression for me and I recommend it for others as well.
:roll:
I recently sold my piccolo because I couldn’t make the switch anymore (I could still produce sounds, but not what I would call music). I still play my fife occasionally (predominantly out doors). I can’t play the flute in natures theater when the wind is blowing very stong. But, the fife I play is a Sweetheart M-1 Fife, with an adjustable head. I turn the head down like I do on my Irish Flutes and play in the lower octives and I don’t seem to have any problems with the transition. But, when I take out one of my “traditional style fifes”, it is difficult for me to re-acclimate to the blowhole in the high noon position. This may not help you if you’re a reinactor and need to stick with a one-piece fife. But the blow angle seems to be a big part of my problem with the flip-flop. Try concentrating on sending your stream of air directly to the center of the far side of the fife blow hole.
When I was progressing through instruments and constantly switching back and forth, I didn’t have any real problems. But, I was also just learning and therefore greatful to be able to produce any music!
For a while I kept switching back to piccolo and fife, with the idea that this improved my flute playing. It did make me more attentave to my embouchure. However, I eventually gave up this “flip-flop exercise theory”, because it wasn’t truly benificial.
