I know, from following the posts, that alot of you have more than one flute… and wondered if you would mind sharing how you keep them all adequately exercised and fit?
How does it work - do you play them in rotation, one flute today, the other tomorrow? Or half of the practice on one and…?
And is it hard to move from one flute to another, or does that get easier if you’re doing it regularly?
thanks a bundle,
pamela 
I’m a novice, so I pretty much have to stick to one primary practice flute. I have three others (and one on the way). I keep those humidified and take them out maybe once a week just to fill them with breath for a few minutes. I have no idea if this is the right approach or not; I’m also curious to see the responses.
Heh, if you don’t have the time to play them, send one to me 
Sonja
I too am just a novice though I dont much care wether what I do with my flutes is right or wrong. Since the day I was able to get good tone and could actually play a tune or two I have been in pure heaven playing everyone of of my flutes. My primary flute gets played everyday. I try to do a disaplined practice session usually lasting 2 hours or so. Then its a free for all with my other flutes. I found at first it took quite a while to adapt my embouchure to different flutes but it has gotten easier as time goes by. It is true that each requires something a little different from me but the fun of discovering the voice of each one is so compeling that I cant help myself. Now this may all change in a couple of months when my real primary flute arrives but that remains to be seen. I still would love to get my hands on some old german flute but it seems there are many with the same desire as the prices on ebay sore into the no way catagory. But maybe some day there will be some old beat up and cracked turn of the century flute that no one wants and it will just come to me. Its just that I can`t get enough of this instrument. It is such a road of discovery. Well anyway thats what I do with my flutes. None of them get lonely-)
Tom
My Seery is indestructible; I play the Sweetheart maple
D a great deal. The blackwood flute is humidified and I
make sure to play it at least three hours a week, partly
because I’m told this is helpful in keeping it from
cracking. It’s a bit more of a ‘special occasion flute’
for performing, as it sounds best.
These flutes compliment each other; getting good on
one helps me play another, thought this isn’t always
the case with flutes. One problem I had with my
dixon three piece was that adjusting to its embouchure
made the Copley harder to play, and vice versa; at least
for me. Best
Yes good question, as I pondered this myself. In the past a have owned several flutes at one time. But over time I tended to favor certain ones and lost interest in others and it was at that point I would sell the less interesting ones. I guess I went thru a process of elimination until I discovered what appeals to me in a flute and consequently what doesn’t appeal to me.
Now, I own a few, all very similiar but with a few subtle differences. Ideally, I rotate them on a daily basis. I try to play every day but not always and sometimes I play one more than the others particuliarly when I’m really groovin’ on it. I discovered that there is one that I do favor as a home instrument (or that I play for my own satisfaction), and there is another one that I use for session playing, and finally there is one that I like for performance or when I play into a mic.
If a flute isn’t played in a while (months or years) be careful to not suddenly and mindlessly start playing it alot. Pay attention to the joints and give it a ‘break in period’ so the wood can get adjusted and the joints don’t tighten and crack in the event that the wood is prone to swelling. I know this from first hand experience. It happened on a flute that was 10 years old and I thought the wood to be fairly stable but it didn’t survive all the playing after months of inactivity. The barrel cracked and the heartjoint cracked. Ouch! But litte dab of beeswax and we’re up and running again.
Hope this helps,
rama
Thanks for the replies so far - one of my concerns was cracking, as Rama mentioned. When my 6-keyed flute arrived, I followed Rod Cameron’s breaking in guidelines (even though it’s not a Rod Cameron flute), and very gradually built up the playing time over 2 weeks. That’s why I wondered, if I end up with 2 flutes, whether it would be hard to keep both of them fully played in!
But the impact on embouchure is interesting as well. Before I sold my R&R style M&E keyless, I occasionally took it out - and didn’t notice any difference in embouchure requirements. But it drove me nuts playing a keyless flute again, and I’d find myself reaching for keys that weren’t there.
Do you think that differing embouchure requirements are dependent on the type of flute - ie Rudall and Rose style versus Pratten? Or just on the maker’s embouchure shape and size?
thanks,
Pamela
If you have more than one flute, chances are you’ll favor one or two over the rest at least some of the time, for any number of reasons. It’s probably a good idea to keep your favorites in good broken in playing condition, so you can swing easily from one flute to the other for any duration of time. Wood flutes should be always be kept humidified and oiled, but if you aren’t playing it regularly, when you do, treat it like a new flute during break-in. In other words, don’t take it out to a session after 6 months of not playing and play it for two or three hours (or more) straight. If you like them all, rotate them in some sequence of weekly practice, so that at any given time all of them are session-worthy.
In reverse, if there’s one you really don’t like playing as often, but don’t want to sell, don’t play it too much on a given occasion.
Polymers, obviously, don’t get unbroken-in, so they can be set aside indefinitely until you feel like playing them.
As for embouchure familiarity, IMO, it sort of depending on where you’re at in your playing. The more developed your playing, the less it’s necessary to constantly work on one flute at a time – getting re-used to it should be a matter of minutes, not months. This is particularly true if your multi-flutes aren’t too far-flung. If you spend most of your time on a fife, or a small-holed Rudall, or a baroque one-key, you might need a little time to get re-used to a big embouchured Pratten, but if you are switching between a Grinter, and an Olwell, you might not. Of course, if you are lucky enough to be switching between these two, I can’t imagine either sitting in a drawer for long, anyway.
Gordon
I have a lovely blackwood Hamilton which I play for “serious” practice and for sessions.
Sometimes, though, I don’t have time to break it down and dry it out, so I have my Seery and my M&E polymer flutes already put together on my computer desk, ready to go. When I only have time for a tune or three, I grab one of these because they require no drying and no particular care.
Also when playing outside if it is in any way inclimate, I will use a polymer instead of the blackwood flute.
Finally, I have an antique 8-key which has a lovely, archaic sound, but is a fussy old beast. I play it when I wish a level of authenticity which cannot be provided by any new flute.
And then I still play classical and other stuff on the Gemeinhardt…
I don’t have any difficulty switching from flute to flute; rather, I find that each flute I learn to play increases my abilities on all my instruments. Every flute has its own “sweet spot,” and having several flutes teaches you to find that dependably and predictably, even on a flute you’ve never played before.
–James
The best thing is to play the hell out of a particulair flute so you know the intonation patterns and the air pressure required. Let it soak into your subconcious so that an ‘impression’ forms. This takes some time especially if you are new, as the embouchure muscles need to develop anyway. You can always go onto another flute so long as the impression hasn’t faded and can be recalled. I think that’s the critical thing otherwise I would imagine it’s going to have to be re-‘impressed’ again (is the right word ‘repressed’?).
Playing more than one flute reminds me of dating. Can you date more than one (girlfriend/boyfriend/lover) at a time? and still get their names straight? umm…lets’ see
:roll:
Why would you have to get their names straight? 
They have names?
Yeah, I’d agree with that. I also think there’s a difference between being able to swing between flutes and being really comfortable in performance mode. I’ve never had trouble with a new or unfamiliar flute in terms of getting tone and all, but I wouldn’t want to be out on stage with a flute just handed to me. A very familiar flute becomes an extension of what you’re thinking and feeling, and so the performance is not awkward, and I think you’re right that it is a matter of muscle memory in both your hands and lips.
Repression, of course, is why we drink at the same time as we play, and why we rarely remember names afterwards, tunes or otherwise…
Gordon
For me personally I’d hesitate to concentrate on just one flute to the exclusion of others, for two reasons.
One is that I have become quite good at changing from flute to flute on the fly, which I think is a valuable skill, as different flutes have differenct sounds and strengths which can be used to good advantage on different tunes and in different settings. Of course it is true that a good flutist can get a wide range of tone colors out of any flute, but there is also a difference in the “native sound” from flute to flute, and in what each flute can be made to do and does best.
Another is my fear that, after devoting years to effort to “marry” my playing style to one and only one flute, that instrument would either break or be stolen and I would have to start the process over with an entirely different instrument, to the detriment of my playing.
So for me the right path is multiple flutes. For others, a single flute may make more sense…I think such things are best decided by each flutist based on what is available to them and on how they best can utilize it.
–James
James wrote:
"Another is my fear that, after devoting years to effort to “marry” my playing style to one and only one flute, that instrument would either break or be stolen and I would have to start the process over with an entirely different instrument, to the detriment of my playing…!
I agree with that - I feel rather insecure having only one flute, especially with good flutes so hard to find, and new ones on such long waiting lists.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve been thinking of having another flute, hence this thread.
So do you blokes also feel insecure with only one girlfriend - or does the comparison fail at this point?!? 
pamela
The only thing I’d caution you on is that I think you’re discounting how much time and how much effort it takes to learn a flute. An individual flute. Once I stopped flitting among several D flutes and settled down to one I liked, and sold off the others, I realized how many nuances there were to be had from the one I kept.
As I’ve progressed in my playing over the years, I’ve realized that I think it’s easy for an experienced player to play just about any instrument and to have a relatively quick impression of the flute as a player. Switching between instruments isn’t all that difficult if you just want to play them. If you want to make them play, though, it takes some getting to know one another.
This is just my own humble opinion. Seriously, on my concert D flute, it is more or less an extension of my self, if you will. I can get it to do a lot of things without thinking. I played a new flute for the first time yesterday, and while I felt right off the bat that it was easy to play from the bottom to the top, after a while I realized that I felt my embouchure doing things to play that instrument that I wasn’t used to it doing . . . for example. By no means do I “know” this new instrument, but I think I’ll get to know it.
Does that make any sense? I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think it keeps anything limber or up if you switch between three or four different flutes constantly. If anything, it might prevent you from getting to know your instruments, or at least postpone it.
Stuart
Edited to make the penultimate paragraph make a little more sense. I probably haven’t made it clear enough because I’m not willing to take the Ritalin.
What about different flutes with different pitch?
Then you have to have different flutes. For nearly all of us, the other pitches are more or less novelties. Yeah, you need to play your other flutes . . . all depends on what you’ll be doing.
Stuart
I agree with Stuart here very much, and the part that he only subtly alludes to is right as well; once a decent embouchure is gained, and the time is invested in one favorite flute, you can switch more rapidly and well from one flute to another even better, as the time spent really getting to know an individual flute allows you to really hear and feel what it is you are looking for when you play any other flute down the pike, because you have really worked hard at pulling flavors and tones from one flute. To “flit” as he referred to it, aptly, from one flute to another will not hurt your playing, necessarily, but it will impede a certain depth you may not even notice yourself until you do otherwise.
Gordon
Apologies if I seem off topic here,
but after an hour searching I gave
up looking.
Thinking about making some more
Flutes out of plastic pipe I was
wondering about the effect of the
hole sizes on the air needed to play on them.
So far I can chose up to 1/2
inch for the embouchure hole and
close to that for some of the stops
but would it be easier to fill
if the hole sizes are kept lower -
eg 3/8th inch?
Thanks