I’ve been playing around 1.5 years, overall embouchure is decent and improving I’d say.
I have 2 flutes, a Burns olive wood flute and a Sweet polymer flute, both in D. I can play the Sweet right off but it seems like the Burns takes about ten minutes to warm up? Is this natural for a wooden flute? Is the the nature of olive wood? The flute is stored in an open box in a climate controlled room. Should I be storing in some kind of humidifier?
TIA!
Could it be that you are simply more comfortable/familiar with the Sweet? There’s nothing special about olivewood AFAIK, except for the fact that it can be a little bit less stable than blackwood, mopane, etc. Some makers seal the bore with epoxy for that reason.
One of the things that happens during the warming up period is that moisture from the breath condenses as droplets on the cool inside of the flute. The location and size of the condensation droplets make a lot of difference to the sound and will be different for different flutes. You can remove some of this condensation if you cover all the tone holes then completely seal the blowhole with your mouth and blow hard into the flute. This usually improves the tone temporarily until more condensation forms. Once the flute is fully warmed up there should not be condensation droplets but more of a moist layer which seems to make for better sound though if you are playing in a cold place you still may need to repeat the blowing out procedure periodically.
For me, it isn’t the flute that warms up. The difficulty is in getting my embouchure to warm up.
At 2 years of experience, I was still very inconsistent.
At 4 years, I was mostly consistent.
The second issue is adapting from one flute to another.
At 2 years, this would take me several months.
At 4 years, several weeks.
At 6 years… it still takes some time.
Thanks for the replies. This is great advice, thank you.