To preface this, I’m a beginner on the flute, so I apologise if this is a silly question, or a commonly asked one.
I recently started playing a keyless flute (Tipple), and I was wondering if it is possible to cleanly half-hole a note. On my MK low whistles and my Generation high D, I can half-hole a note cleanly, so that it sounds pretty much as good as a normal note. However, when I try to half-hole a note on the flute, it becomes pretty weak and breathy, not at all clean or powerful, like a normal note. Is this an embouchure problem, and will it go away with practice, or is this the reason keyed flutes are popular?
Whistles half-hole fairly well because of the thin wall and relatively large holes. But if you look at a flute, the walls are considerably thicker, so the hole is really a small cylinder. Reduce the area of that cylinder any further, and it no longer “cuts off” the bore as well as it did previously. It pretty much extinguishes the flame.
If the flute is of a large hole type, you can usually get a reasonable approximation by half-holing the 1st and 2nd holes, and the 5th hole. No need to half-hole the 5th hole, as the next hole is a semitone lower anyway. Some flutes will allow the 3rd hole to be half-holed, but none will allow the 6th hole, it’s just too small already. We can see why the baroque (or “one-key”) flute adopted the Eb/D# key hundreds of years ago!
You can explore “forked fingerings” as another way to flatten notes. EG, as xoo ooo plays B, you might get a useable Bb from something like xox xxo. Usefulness of this approach is very flute dependant.
Interestingly, a note we rely on in keyless flutes is technically a forked fingering but we don’t see it as such. ooo ooo plays c#, oxx ooo, oxx xox or oxo xxx gives us the C natural we need for the key of G. It’s an example of the “leave one hole open and then close ones below it” principle that forked fingerings rely on.
Like Terry says, if you reduce the tone-hole size (either by drilling a smaller hole, or partially covering it with tape, or partially filling it with tuning wax, or “shading” it with a finger) the tone will suffer. There’s no way around it.
Yes you could develop a more focused powerful embouchure, but wouldn’t you use that fulltime? So the differential in clarity and power between full-sized tone-holes and partially-occluded tone-holes would remain.
“Forked” notes also have less volume and clarity. On the Baroque flute, which relied on forked fingerings for the notes outside the natural D Major scale, composers would use the darker foggier tone of the forked notes for musical effect, which effect by the way is destroyed when these compositions are performed on a Boehm flute where each note has the same power and clarity.
The moral of the story being that having “shaded” and “forked” notes sound different from the other notes shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing.
Thank you Terry and Pancelticpiper for the detailed explanations (and the history lessons ). I’ll have to explore which forked fingerings (and half-holings) work the best. I haven’t even tried the forked Cnat, as I’ve always half-holed that note, and it doesn’t sound too bad on the flute. I’ll also do my best to embrace the tones I have.
Now I’m curious about self-mounted keys. After all, it can’t be that hard, if flute makers manage to do it all the time! But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe I should learn how to play semi-decently first…
For me, 40 years of Irish flute, whistle, and Uilleann pipes under my belt, there are two observations I’d point out
There’s a certain amount of shared fingering and technique between those three instruments, and the crossfingered C natural is part of it.
Perhaps because I started on the Uilleann pipes and took up flute and whistle a bit later, it’s always seemed to me that the crossfingered C natural was, shall I say, a more “natural” part of the scale than the open C# on the flute and whistle.
For one thing your grip on flute or whistle is more stable with oxx|oox than it is with ooo|oox.
For another thing I think complicated passages with arpeggios etc are more facile with crossfingered C natural than with either open C sharp or half-holed C natural.
Third, there’s more scope for ornamentation with crossfingered C natural. You can do both cuts and pats meaning you can do any sort of roll, and you can do the pipe-style vibrato, shading, and bending of the note.
For sure Uilleann pipers love to “work” crossfingered C natural. They bend it, ornament it, do finger vibrato on it, and use various fingerings including “shading” the hole to get various timbres out of it.
Thank you all for the replies. After playing around some more, I can get a decent tone on a Bb and a G#, either through half-holing or cross-fingering. Not as clean as I like, personally, but I’m telling myself that it’s good enough and that I don’t need to spend money to upgrade to a keyed model immediately…
I’m sure as I practise more, I’ll get more used to the tones overall. Maybe I should practise more and complain less. I’m glad I asked, though, because I learned more about flute design and cross-fingering.
C unnatural, I like that. Point taken, I’ll try to remember it.
I tend to play more with just one or two others, and I do some amateur recording, so I still want to play those strong, in-tune Cnats, rather than use that as an excuse for sloppy playing, though. I’m less hard on myself in a session setting. I have my flute next to me, and sure enough, the cross-fingered C natural sounds somewhat better to my ears. As for Eb, I usually skip this note when it comes up, or I switch to a whistle if I know I need to play it.
Many things are easy, once you have acquired the proper tools, knowledge, and skills, however it’s the acquisition of those things that isn’t quite so easy……or quick. You’ll find it far less expensive, and much quicker, to buy a proper keyed flute.
It was more the passing thought of a curious mind rather than a serious undertaking, but yes, I completely agree that it would be, in all aspects, easier just to buy from a professional. I saw that there’s a used six-keyed Galeon flute for sale from the Irish Flute Store that looked as though it already has the posts for mounting a C and C# key, and that’s what prompted the curiosity.
To further amplify what panceltic piper said about cross fingering: because of all the factors involved in the design compromises in making the C and C# and the f and f# speak
clearly and give good chromaticism, as well as avoiding a too strongly veiled e, you may have to use 0XX X0X for C natural, using 000 000 for c#. Each maker will make his own design choices and you will find a variety of flute designs around these notes. As a musician, you will then have to choose your own path.
I am playing some baroque flute, and I find that the cross fingerings transfer pretty well to an unkeyed orchestral flute of the sort we here often play. Also I can half-hole F nat and also A sharp. The frog at the bottom of the beer mug is Eb. I can actually get Eb half-holed reliably at speed, but it works less well when the note must be sustained. How I wish that more makers included the Eb key as a matter of course–would make a lot more music accessible to these flutes. Any how the antidote to the OP’s issues is to practice. Things get easier. The chief virtue in improving is patience.
I think that’s why Ralph Sweet (bless his soul) offered as the initial stepup from keyless “Irish flutes” a one-key flute with Eb/D#.
Sure enough he made Baroque flutes too! (One such was my first Baroque flute at Uni.) And it could be said that he’s mistakenly transferring Baroque flute bits onto the Irish flute.
But the truth remains that E is a dodgy note on some Irish flutes and Low Whistles, and shading it makes a weak note weaker.
Actually with Ralph Sweet “Irish flutes” Low E was their Achilles Heel. The tradeoff was a Bottom D more powerful than flutes four times their price. Sweetheart D flutes, especially in Maple, were real Bottom D honkers.
I already use the 0XX X0X on certain whistles when I cross-finger. That’s actually the reason I first started half-holing, because I have a whistle that was too sharp using 0XX 000, and I didn’t feel like playing 0XX X0X every time. FWIW, 0XX 000 is reasonably in tune on my flute.
I’m already fairly decent at half-holing, having practised a lot on the low whistle. Most half-holing sounds fine on the flute, just not as strong as I’m used to. The second octave Eb actually sounds fine, even sustained. On the low end though, it’s just too weak to hear, so I typically skip it there, or switch to my low D whistle if I really feel the need to play it. And, as Jim Stone said, I’m sure I’ll get more comfortable with practice!
). I’ll have to explore which forked fingerings (and half-holings) work the best. I haven’t even tried the forked Cnat, as I’ve always half-holed that note, and it doesn’t sound too bad on the flute. I’ll also do my best to embrace the tones I have. 
