I’m curious to know how many of you have encountered this problem:
I hold my flute with a mix between piper and standard fingering. My left hand (closest to the headjoint) operates with a standard grip (i.e. the wrist bent slightly backward) and my right hand something of a piper grip, my fingers covering the finger holes with the second finger joints. Now, this past weekend I was trying to play an old 10 key Ruddall and Rose and found that the fingers on my right hand couldn’t seal the holes properly because the tips were bumping against the keywork. The same thing happened a few months back when I tried to play one of Sam Murray’s keyed flutes. Short of the obvious “Change your grip” solution, are there any pearls of wisdom floating around out there on how to deal with this…
All the best,
Wes
Some flutesmiths will fit the keys to your grip, e.g.
Dave Copley does.
Usually this problem is more your fingers hitting the two blocks that support the long F key, rather than any keys themselves. I have this problem myself with some flutes because I have very long fingers (several people have told me that my hands look just like those of Seamus Ennis).
If you’re going to have a keyed flute made for you, just ask the maker to effectively “rotate” the blocks for the long F key so your fingers don’t hit them. Pretty much any maker should be able to accommodate that request, and it doesn’t make it any harder to hit the F key when you need it.
Alternatively you can ask for your flute to be made without a long F key, but I wouldn’t recommend it – that key comes in mighty handy whenever you need to go from F to D or D to F.