It is a totaly beautiful day outside. Sunshine, blue sky maybe 65 degrees gentle breeze, in other words a perfect fall day for a horse ride or for cranking up the old Victor and taken on the mountain curves. But, of course that is not what I am doing. No, I am sitting here, guilt ridden, with a flute in my hands. Not, mind you, my brand new Lehart. No the Lehart is sitting in my humidor with the Dixon. The flute in my hands is this old antique 8 key Eb wounder. Nano uttered a discription that fits me to a tee.
I too am a “flute hore”. This old Eb is just the most amazing thing to play. I unstuck the tuning slide, repaired the crack in the barrel, put a rubber band around the one key that was a little weak and I can not put it down. It is so easy to play. You can change its voice so easily. It can go from silky to raspy and everything inbetween. The low Eb is strong and loud if you want it to be, yet you can play at a wisper well up into the secound octive. I have stopped trying to find out where it is from or who made it. I just dont care anymore. She has stolen my heart. Yesterday I was playing one of my favorite bamboo flutes. I have had it for about 27 years. It was on all my sailing adventures and followed me everwhere I went. I never played it. I couldnt play it. Now I can an what do think happened. Right in my hands, after about 45 minutes of playing, it cracked. All the way from the blow hole to the top finger hole.
27 years of abuse and when I finaly treat it like an instrument it cracks. Whatyagonado.
I spent the last couple of days on Terry McGees site. What a wealth of information. No finger chart for an 8 key Eb though. So now I am paranoid as hell about cracks. Not that I would be afraid to repair one but just the thought of a crack in my Lehart gives me a sick feeling.
The Olwell bamboo flute in F is another one I play everyday. Is there nothing this thing wont do. In fact I have a number of flutes I must play every day. A bamboo D by Sunreed sits on my shelf. Beautiful sounding flute. There just is not enough hours in a day for anymore.
I will now force myself to put the Eb away and put the Lehart together for and evening of pure pleasure. And so it goes…
Well. If you feel that your flutes occupy too much of your time, I could relive you. Send me any of them and it will get a nice home. No, no, you won’t have to pay me, I’ll do it as an act of friendship.
I kinda agree with you Cranberry. There seems to be so much more you can do with a flute then a whistle. I still love the whistle though.
Its funny, a while back there was an interesting discussion about flutes and begginers. Whether one should buy a top of the line flute or start with something, shall we say less then grand. I for one didnt think a begginer needed to dump a ton of money on a first flute. My first was an Almount followed by the Dixon rosewood. After a week of playing the Lehart all my flutes became more alive then ever. The Dixon became an unlined lion. I mean it just cranks. The embochure changes I made for the Lehart was a true education. Now that doesnt mean I have changed my mind about beginner flutes. I dont know if I could have played the Lehart when I first started. As it was, the first 5 months sucked in the extreme. I was just about ready to chuck the hole idea of playing the flute. But there were times when the Dixon sang so sweatly and there were times when I managed a hole tune on the Almount and those times kept me hanging in there. I still think that a total beginner, say a whistle player that wants to try the flute is better off with one of Alans flutes to cut his lips on. But heck I just dont know anymore. Well back to humidifying the Lehart.
I only have two flutes, a bamboo G-ish and a boehm. I can make the flutes louder or quieter, and can’t do that with any of my whistles. I have only heard good things about Alan’s PVC flutes. I will try one one day.
