I am planing on purchasing a Seery flute quite soon, I’ve played them and like them and they’re in my price range, but I’ve got one question I wanted to get some opinions on. How important is it if you play left handed (and have no intention of changing from your cithog state) to get a left handed flute? I’ve been learning for the past year on a standard one piece Dixon polymer, and can get a decent tone out of it, but want to know whether I should try to get Seery to make me a leftie or just get a regular. One comment I’ll make is that when I was playing a friend’s Seery at the session last week the bottom octave was perfectly in tune but the 2nd octave was way sharp. Now this is probably mostly that I was playing a flute I was unaccustomed to, but could my playing it backwards contribute to the intonation problems I was having? The flute I believe is not the problem, for the others don’t have the same problem with it.
As another lefty player, I’d be very surpised if the intonation problem you describe had anything to do with direction of play… having had/played a # of left and right embouchure cut flutes, in most cases I’ve seen very little if any difference in their ability to produce equal sound quality/volume from either side, especially true of polymer flutes. I’d be very interested to hear from any makers how much they perceive the final difference in actual playability left vs right to be based on the way they’ve focused the embouchure… Tod
Well actually, I expect the sharpness was probably mostly from being used to the Dixon one piece which is decidedly flat in the second octave, so after playing that for a whole year I’m probably just in the habit of over blowing up there.
I too, have never had trouble playing righty flutes (another lefty here). Tone seemed to be as good as any righty. I ordered a lefty flute for my first, nice blackwood instrument and it’s awesome - flexible, powerful and nuanced. I play my friend’s flutes whenever I have the chance (and he mine), and niether of us has a problem getting any of them to sing aside from a short warm-up period to get used to the different embouchures (I mean more squarish vs. oval here, not right or left undercutting)
So bottom-line, I don’t notice a huge difference but I’m a rank beginner and maybe haven’t developed the ear for such subtley. However, having a custom-made instrument is a treat either way, and my flute is very responsive
