I have just started really playing the flute and wanted to get a better model. I was wondering what the difference is between a flute having keys or it being keyless. What would the advantages and disavantages? Thanks for any help!
The primary advantages of a keyed flute is that it is a fully chromatic instrument. This allows you to play in a wider variety of keys than on a keyless flute.
The major disadvantages of keys are the expense they add to the price of the flute, and the length of time they add to the waiting list for a new flute. For instace, the last I heard from Hammy Hamilton, his keyless flutes have about a 6 month wait; his keyed flutes have a 2 year wait.
That being said, many of the chromatic notes are also available by half-holing and cross-fingering, but these are harder techniques to master, especially when playing fast reels and jigs.
Since most Irish music lies in keys easily played on the keyless flute (like D and G, for instance), many players who have keyed instruments only rarely use the keys.
Either way you choose, good luck and best wishes,
–James
http://www.flutesite.com
I am wondering if keywork compromises the sound of a flute if one is to play only the open holes. A keyless instrument would have a smoother bore, right?
I suggest starting with a keyless flute, but keep in mind the possibility of adding keys to it later. A number of makers offer the option of upgrading their flutes, either by adding post-mounted keys or by replacing un-keyed body sections with new keyed sections.
A good keyless flute will offer plenty to keep you busy for the next year or two. One disadvantage of starting with a keyed flute is that if you get a minor air leak from a key pad (not uncommon), you will have a hard time figuring out if the problem is with your playing or with the flute. After playing a keyless flute for a while, you will get the feel of how it should play and sound, and will be able to detect problems a lot more easily.
Richard’s observation that a keyless flute might be expected to play better because of its smoother bore would seem to make some sense in theory. However, I have never been able to detect a difference in practice.
Dave Copley
Loveland, Ohio
[ This Message was edited by: dcopley on 2002-10-09 16:19 ]
Kinda off topic, but Dave, good to see the change in your website. The keyed flutes look great (so do the unkeyed as well).
[ This Message was edited by: theweirdscotsman on 2002-10-09 19:34 ]
One thing I personally would worry about is the weight it might add to the flute ~ or is that not much of an issue…? I am still playing around with this wrist injury…
Oh, and Dave ~ beautiful, beautiful flutes, BTW!!!
Mary
I’m in the process of getting onto the waiting list for an Olwell. I did some talking with Bill Ochs about what kind of flute to get, and he strongly advised against getting keys. Aside from the fact that they add significantly to the waiting list and the price, he said the keys actually get in the way.
When you’re playing ornamented Irish stuff at speed, avoiding the keys is very difficult. And when playing at speed, it’s very hard to do ornaments involving the keys. Bill said that a lot of players who have antique wooden flutes actually tape the keys down so that they can’t accidentally hit them.
Personally, I’m following Bill’s advice and going with a keyless, and a couple of Patrick’s bamboo flutes in different keys.
-Mark
I don’t think keys get in the way. I play piper’s fingering, and I don’t accidentally hit any of the keys on my 8-key when I try to play faster stuff. It’s all what you’re used to. I suppose they could get in the way . . . but it’s probably all about what you’re used to.
As for adding weight, they don’t really add all that much. Not a lot of silver nor much extra wood. I think you have to have a much sturdier case, though; I would be leery of putting anything remotely keyed into a Cavallaro soft case (or the like, nothing against Cavallaro cases!).
My humble opinion is thus: (a) you really don’t NEED keys; they FACILITATE playing in weird keys but are seldom necessary for Irish stuff. Even weirder stuff can be played in the harmonic modal keys on a keyless with relative ease. (b) You really can’t beat the lines of a keyless flute . . . they’re just plain slick!
Stuart
[ This Message was edited by: sturob on 2002-10-09 22:36 ]
Thanks for the feedback on the revised web site. I have to ask for a little patience, as my webmaster put up the changes before I had reviewed them all, and there are still a few errors and glitches to be corrected.
Dave Copley
Loveland, Ohio
Not too belabor the keyed vs keyless issue, but here’s my own reasoning on why I’m going with a keyless, without just basing things on what someone else told me.
Originally, I was a classical clarinetist. I’ve played clarinet for almost 25 years now. Flute is very new to me - I got a Dixon polymer about 6 weeks ago. So I’m working largely from my experience as a clarinetist.
Like most clarinetists, I play a Bb boehm clarinet. It’s a fully keyed, chromatic instrument. So in theory, you can play it in any key.
The practice is rather different. You can play in any key; but there is a very small range of keys that’s actually reasonably easy to play in. For a Bb clarinet, it’s very easy and comfortable to play in concert Eb, Bb, and F. It’s not too tough to add one key on either side, and play in concert Ab and C. Concert G starts getting frustrating; concert D is very difficult to play with any speed, and because so many keys are involved, it doesn’t sound very good.
So you get some mileage out of the keys. But for playing something like Irish dance music at speed, the only key signatures that are not incredibly difficult are Eb, Bb, and F. (Which makes it a not terribly useful instrument for the Irish stuff.)
The range of keys that the clarinet is really good for is sufficiently well agreed upon that orchestral players don’t play Bb clarinets - they play A clarinets, which are primarily good in D, A, and E - which are the preferred keys for the fiddle!
What I learned from all of this is that it is the nature of a woodwind instrument that there is a small range of keys that the instrument is really good for. There’s a primary set of holes that determine the main scale of the instrument, and the more you deviate from that scale, the harder it gets to play.
So moving over to the flute: a keyless flute is nearly perfect in three keys: D, G, and A.
(There’s a great cross-fingering for the C-natural, and and easy half-hole for the G#.) Beyond that, it starts getting hairy. What happens if you have a keyed flute? You can play in other keys - but it gets difficult.
So you get some extra versatility from the keys. But not all that much, and if you’re playing Irish music, there are very few tunes in keys that will use the keys on the flute without being very difficult to play.
In exchange for that fairly small range of extra flexibility, you increase the cost of the instrument: it usually costs at least double to get the keys, and it can increase the wait time by an even longer factor. (Pat Olwell takes a year for a keyless, or 4-5 for a keyed!)
So given my understanding of the kind of flexibility keys give you, I don’t think it’s worth the added price and added waiting time for the keys.
Originally, I was a classical clarinetist. > I’ve played clarinet for almost 25 years
now. Flute is very new to me - I got a
Dixon polymer about 6 weeks ago. So I’m
working largely from my experience as a
clarinetist.
Here’s another perspective from someone who used to be a pretty fair clarinet player as a youth and who has now been playing Irish flute for 10 years, the first five with a keyless flute, and noe with a six-key flute.
Like most clarinetists, I play a Bb boehm > clarinet. It’s a fully keyed, chromatic
instrument. So in theory, you can play it
in any key.
The practice is rather different. You
can play in any key; but there is a very > small range of keys that’s actually
reasonably easy to play in.
This is true of the simple-system keyed flute as well, as I’m sure you know.
So moving over to the flute: a keyless
flute is nearly perfect in three keys: D, > G, and A.
Beyond that, it starts getting hairy. What > happens if you have a keyed flute?
You can play in other keys - but it gets > difficult.
This is all true. You can play a large percentage of the Irish tune repertoire without keys. When I had a keyless flute, I got to where I could half-hole a G# pretty well, even at moderate speed. But I never was able to do a half-hole F natural at all. I think it may have been because of the shape and size of my hand and fingers; some friends of mine with keyless flutes could half-hole the F nat fine, but had trouble with the G#.
So you get some extra versatility from
the keys. But not all that much, and if
you’re playing Irish music, there are
very few tunes in keys that will use the > keys on the flute without being very
difficult to play.
Well, actually there are quite a few very nice tunes that are filled with F naturals that you may well find yourself wanting to play after you’ve been at the Irish flute for a while. Here are a just few that come to my mind at the moment: The Flogging Reel, The Tempest, The Yellow Tinker, The Broken Pledge. If you play with fiddlers at all, these tunes are bound to show up. And I wouldn’t say that they are very difficult to play, I’d just say that they take a bit more work than the G major/E minor tunes that are simply made for the flute. I call some of these tunes with F naturals “Peking Duck” tunes, meaning that if you want to hear me play them well at a session I’m gonna need 24 hours notice rather than having them sprung on me at the last minute. (But I have some “Peking Duck” tunes that don’t require keys too.) What I’ve found is that the more you use the keys, the easier it becomes - although of course those tunes are never going to fall under your fingers as easily as the G major “flute paradise tunes” do.
In exchange for that fairly small range of > extra flexibility, you increase the cost
of the instrument: it usually costs at
least double to get the keys, and it can
increase the wait time by an even longer
factor. (Pat Olwell takes a year for a
keyless, or 4-5 for a keyed!)
So given my understanding of the kind of
flexibility keys give you, I don’t think
it’s worth the added price and added
waiting time for the keys.
My suggestion would be to do what I did: get a good keyless flute as soon as you can, and simultaneously get on the waiting list for a keyed flute. Some makers will let you trade back your keyless flute as part of the price of the keyed flute (that’s what Patrick Olwell did with me), but even if they don’t you should always be able to sell a good keyless flute for just as much as you paid for it, if not more. Although there are indeed some very good flute players who play keyless flutes or who block off the keys and don’t use them (Catherine McEvoy is a good example of the latter), I’ve never yet heard of a flute player who’s gone from keyless to keyed and then back to keyless. Must be some advantage to having the keys, I’d say…
John Kerr
Just another quick comment on the comparison of a keyed wooden flute to a clarinet. Initially when I started playing Irish flute, the black wood and the reedy sound of the flute brought back memories for me of the clarinet. But I had sold my clarinet almost 20 years before I got a keyed flute, so those clarinet memories were pretty selective - as I found out a few years ago when a friend gave me an old clarinet that had turned up in an attic somewhere. I was amazed at all the keys that there are on a clarinet in comparison with a simple-system flute, and at the recollection of all the different fingerings needed to play a clarinet (which overblows by a twelfth rather than the octave by which the simple system flute does). The clarinet is really more like a Boehm flute than it is like a simple-system flute. (No surprise there, since Boehm devised the clarinet’s key mechanism as well as the flute’s.) And which Irish flute player was it that I heard refer to the Boehm flute as a “typewriter”?
John Kerr
Hey guys!!
I was just going to post and let you know that I have played clarinet for about 5 years. I also have experience as a classical flute player. I know how to play both relatively well. I just didnt know that clarinetists in orchestra’s played A clarinets. Thats crazy! Anyway, thank you for all the posts!
On 2002-10-12 12:16, Tradgirl wrote:
Hey guys!!
I was just going to post and let you know that I have played clarinet for about 5 years. I also have experience as a classical flute player. I know how to play both relatively well. I just didnt know that clarinetists in orchestra’s played A clarinets. Thats crazy! Anyway, thank you for all the posts!
It’s amusing how many of us are ex-clarinetists. 
Actually, the A clarinet for orchestra isn’t crazy at all, if you think about the keys orchestral music is in.
I used to play in community orchestras using my Bb clarinet, and sight-transposing. (It sounds horribly hard, but it isn’t. It’s just a mental trick: you learn to read, say, a C, and finger the C as a C#. It’s a lot like switching from a D whistle to an F whistle: you read the music the same, but finger it differently. Once you start doing it, it becomes downright natural after about 10-15 minutes, and you have a hard time stopping when you look at music that doesn’t need to be transposed.)
Anyway… If you think about the keys… Orchestral music is mostly written to be comfortable for the string section. So you see an awful lot of music in concert G, D, A, and E. If you’re playing a Bb clarinet, you have to play those as A, E, B, and F#! Those are tough keys for the clarinet. On an A clarinet, you play those as Bb, F, C, and G - and those are all the really easy keys on the clarinet!
On 2002-10-10 13:40, johnkerr wrote:
Just another quick comment on the comparison of a keyed wooden flute to a clarinet. Initially when I started playing Irish flute, the black wood and the reedy sound of the flute brought back memories for me of the clarinet.
That’s quite different for me. I’ve never stopped playing the clarinet, so it’s very fresh to me.
But I had sold my clarinet almost 20 years before I got a keyed flute, so those clarinet memories were pretty selective - as I found out a few years ago when a friend gave me an old clarinet that had turned up in an attic somewhere. I was amazed at all the keys that there are on a clarinet in comparison with a simple-system flute, and at the recollection of all the different fingerings needed to play a clarinet (which overblows by a twelfth rather than the octave by which the simple system flute does). The clarinet is really more like a Boehm flute than it is like a simple-system flute. (No surprise there, since Boehm devised the clarinet’s key mechanism as well as the flute’s.) And which Irish flute player was it that I heard refer to the Boehm flute as a “typewriter”?
John Kerr
You’ve nailed exactly one of the things that makes me enjoy the flute so much more than my trusty clarinet. The clarinet is so complicated. There are so many holes, so much mechanism that you’re constantly interacting with.
When you play a simple flute, it’s a very intimate instrument. You’re handling the wood directly. You can feel the wind under your fingers. There’s no machinery in the way.
Now, when I play my clarinet, I miss the feeling of the wind under my fingers. But even with the seven uncapped fingerholes on the clarinet, you just don’t get that tactile sensation, because the holes are so small, and you’re always both covering a hole and pressing on a ring which pushes a lever which lowers a pad over another hole or two somewhere else.
It makes the playing the flute so different, and so wonderful.
-Mark
On 2002-10-16 19:20, MarkCC wrote:
When you play a simple flute, it’s a very intimate instrument. You’re handling the wood directly. You can feel the wind under your fingers. There’s no machinery in the way.
Now, when I play my clarinet, I miss the feeling of the wind under my fingers. But even with the seven uncapped fingerholes on the clarinet, you just don’t get that tactile sensation, because the holes are so small, and you’re always both covering a hole and pressing on a ring which pushes a lever which lowers a pad over another hole or two somewhere else.
It makes the playing the flute so different, and so wonderful.
-Mark
But I’m sure we’re agreed that both clarinet and flute have their own distinct and very enjoyable differences 
Mary ( another former Clarinetist )
Sorry to drag on this post but here’s my sixpence worth.
I started on a keyless flute it was fine and I got pretty nippy with the fingering . I found though that when I got to a certain level it wasn’t possible to get away without keys any longer. Some of the more difficult tunes have all kinds of occasional sharps and flats in them and fiddle players and accordian players seem to love them . Maybe it was just the session I was in. I found that half holing just didn’t cut it in those tunes.. So I think a keyless flute is fine for the first decade or so and then it’s time for a keyed flute.. it just allows you to play at a higher level of technical difficulty. They are heavier though and take some getting used to, but I never found that the keys got in the way.
Oreganem,
Just curious, I don’t have a flute, indeed I am just learning the Whistle, but I am curious, if one does need keys, how many keys do you think are needed? I mean is a 4 or 6 key flute enough or should one go all out and get one of the 8 key flutes?
Liam, if you decide that you MUST have keys, the 6-key would be my recommendation. It is especially helpful to have both long and short F keys to aid transitions. The addition of low C#/C keys in an 8-key adds great cost without adding much benefit (these notes are often weak). Also, I would advise you to avoid doing what I did. I started day one playing keyed antiques. I do have some nice ones, but leaks, pitch and intonation problems initially discouraged me.
I know you asked Organem but I’ll chime in.
After saying you don’t need keys, I have noticed that I don’t know that I agree with myself. It’s all about what you like and how facile you are with switching to keys. I notice that I use the keys (like Fnat) without thinking on a keyed flute, and half-hole on a keyless. It’s a different style. You’re not going to slide easily between keyed notes, that’s for sure. Eh, it’s all what you know.
As for how many keys, I guess I’d say that I don’t see any reason (other than monetary, which is very legitimate) to go for less than 6. Six gives you “chromatic” up both the really-useable octaves. Eight really only gives you the bottom end C/C#, and some folks find the grasshopper-style arrangement kind of cumbersome. If you want to go down to C# or C, you do need an 8-key, but you don’t need them for the higher C and C#.
Unfortunately, you probably wouldn’t know without trying both for a long time. When I first got keys I thought they were the cat’s pajamas, and that I couldn’t live without them. Then I got to realizing the virtues of the keyless instrument and realized that I COULD live without them. So now I don’t know. I’ve come full-circle.
Stuart