lately I am suffering a sore right hand pinkie, maybe because I am pushing it straight against the flute as an anchor point.
I have tried turning the lower end of the flute towards me and shift my pinkie position but seems I keep having this sore pinkie.
any suggestions…maybe I overlook something obvious???
berti
In the standard grip, which it looks like you’re using, you’re not really supposed to
use your pinky at all, as I understand it. (I may, of course, not understand it.)
Of course, on a keyless flute this seems sort of silly, except that I had the same
problem with pinky strain, so, I’ve been very carefully practicing
not using my pinkies at all. The trick to it is to be slightly pushing outward on the flute
with the RH thumb, and also using the RH thumb to keep the flute up (‘holding’ up,
not pushing up.) It’s more about precision of the RH thumb than anything else, I think.
Taking the pinkies up destabilized enough to cut my speed way down, but it’s coming
back up. When I go ahead and use a light touch of the pinky for stability anyway (when
you don’t ‘need’ the pinky for a key, it’s almost irresistable, after all…) it’s more to
prevent rolling than anything else, and uses nearly no pressure.
I have a split body flute (Copley) and roll the bottom half of the body -out- from me,
so that my thumb is at something more like 4 o’clock (with the holes in line, my thumb
tends to fall at 6 o’clock, or my fingers cramp awkwardly.) This does mean that my
right arm elbow has to come up and my right arm gets tired sooner.
Anyway, I position the flute so that I can hold it firmly with just RH thumb, LH base-of-index
finger, and against the chin. Sometimes I practice scales there. Then I bring the LH thumb up
lightly to for stability. The LH thumb is just keeping it from rolling and from slipping
downward when i take a breath.
For whatever reason, if I start applying real pressure with the LH thumb, I start dropping one
or both pinkies back onto the flute as well. Maybe that’s just me.
I use the RH thumb as the primary control for rolling the flute as a whole in or out as needed.
I may, of course, be going about it very strangely, and it does seem more difficult in terms
of precision required to balance the flute this way. Still, I don’t get strained-pinky problems
anymore.
No, you aren’t overlooking anything obvious.
I confess that, after two and one half years,
I’m still struggling with figuring out how to
hold the flute–the position described in the post
above seems to work for some people, but
I find that the flute needs to be counterbalanced
by a downward pressure when I use it. The flute
is top heavy.
This downward pressure comes either from my pinky, which means
I can’t use the Eb key, or my rt ring finger,
in which case playing jigs in Eminor becomes
very difficult. Lots of complicated dancing about.
One solution, other than a body transplant,
is to switch to piper’s grip. As the left thumb is
way further to the left, the flute is balanced
much better (I find, personally), and this, combined
with the rt hand thumb position in PG, frees the
rt hand entirely.
The downside is that my left hand is less precise,
more flopping about–though I hope this will
improve with practice.
Jim, if you mean the foot end of the flute tries to rise (the head end of the flute is
heavy), this is resolved for me by tilting your head slightly to the right and playing the flute
angled downward. This was a difficult problem at first for me, because of the fully lined
head. I think unlined heads are less of a problem this way, I’m not certain.
Piper’s grip is, of course, an option, and probably not anymore dramatic of a shift, really,
than learning to play without pinkies touching the flute, but I don’t have any real experience
with it. (Of course I’ve ‘tried’ it in the couple-of-tunes sense, but that’s not really giving it
a chance. It seems awkward, but then, every change in grip does at first!)
–Chris
Chris and Jim, thanks. These descriptions help some.
Bertie, I’m doing the same thing. I have Grey Larsen’s book, and have coached myself through using his description. But my RH pinky doesn’t seem to like the role assigned to it. I’m finding it slightly more comfortable to use the RH thumb in the support position.
Maybe because my ring fingers and pinkies are double-jointed, wanting to lock straight if I put much pressure on them or try to extend them too far. With the left hand it doesn’t come up as a problem. But it’s helpful to know that there are people who’ve been playing longer than I have and are still figuring it out.
Lately I’ve been treating my hands much more carefully. I’ve been taking them for granted, and since I started to play lots more, they’re making their ideosyncracies known. I’m trying to be nice to them.
Jennie
On a keyed flute the right pinkie has things to do… It should not be a primary flute holding point. It is a helper when the right ring finger is up…
Denny
Hey Berti,
I’ve had this problem before. What helped me was actually using my left thumb (top hand) more for balance (I used to play with it totally off of the flute) and also putting my right thumb more against the side of the flute instead of underneath. This helped me to get my right pinky more on top of the flute, so it wasn’t pressing against it like what you describe. Hope this makes sense.
I’m sure someone has already mentioned this somewhere.
My blackwood McGee is highly polished and slick–constantly threatening to do itself in by leaping off into space and crashing onto the floor. The more it slipped about, the harder I gripped, and the more my hands ached. As well, my thumb just doesn’t feel that it reaches all the way to the flute.
I have a Casey Burns ergonomic small-handed boxwood which isn’t as slick and has offset holes, so I had never noticed a problem with it.
I thought that I needed to roughen up the blackwood and offset the L3 hole on the McGee. I was, in fact, thinking about where to get a bit of neoprene when I happened upon a coworker and his birthday balloons, one of which had just popped, making me think of Eeyore and his balloon. I was thinking of tying the bit of balloon rag around the flute, but he instead carefully cut off the knot to deflate an intact one, and I cut about a 2 to 3-cm section out of the neck of the balloon.
Rolled it up, popped it over the tenon nearest the R1 hole, and unfurled it between the tenon and the hole–right under my L thumb and first joint. It’s a perfect fit. Not too tight, because the balloon was blown up for a few days.
On the right hand, I effectively offset the L3 hole by shortening the distance between the flute did this by rolling up a nice ball of sticky tack and shoving it against the side of the flute right where my thumb is supposed to go.
Not only does this provide an “offset angle” for my L3 finger which didn’t quite reach over the hole before, but it is traction-y, so that my thumb isn’t sliding about. It stays where I put it, and so do the rest of my fingers.
The flute is no longer flying about and my hands are covering the holes better and are less strained.
A happy side-effect is that the skin of my thumb is no longer cracking where it was pressed against the flute.
Looks like this: (X’s are balloon and {{}} is the sticky tac)
XXXXX__O___O___O_______o____O_____o_______
XXXXX
XXXXX________________{{}}__________________
I am currently using a lovely orange balloon, but after I oil my flute tomorrow, I think I’ll change to purple.
If you didn’t have balloons, I think you could use other balloon-like latex, um, things. Don’t those come in cheery colors, too? I thought about rubber gloves, but they seemed too tight.
hi berti my friend, try putting a dab of beeswax (or maybe even chewing gum or something like that) on the flute - about where the pinkie comes to rest. it will provide a bit of a plate for the pinkie to rest on , custom made for your precious little one. it shortens the distance the pinkie has to go in order to come to rest on the flute. does that make any sense to you? i used to have a ball of beeswax, about the size of the tip of my pinkie, stuck on my keyless flute fitted and molded to my pinkie - perfect fit.
i find the eflat key is way comfortable for the pinkie. i prefer to have that key on a flute primarily for that reason.
What I have been trying to do, and it’s not entirely successful yet, is don’t use my right pinkie at all, but when I need a finger on top to stabalize the flute, put my right ring finger on its hole.
I’m sure if you think about it, you’ll agree that you don’t really need that right finger until you’re down to two or fewer fingers of your left hand. If this is not the case, you should probably look at how your left hand is supporting the flute.
I take Bohm flute lessons, and hold both flutes in a very similar way. It’s held between the last joint of my left thumb and the first joint of my left index finger. I think that’s pretty standard.
I spent a year working hard to free my right pinkie - very successfully - it spent a lot of time waggling about doing absolutely nothing.
Then, at Niall Keegan’s Border Gaitherin workshop a few weeks ago, he really emphasized the importance of venting the e flat key with the right pinkie (on keyed flutes) - and I’ve adopted this (just occasionally I still forget to let it go and play e flats instead of D but that’s getting better!).
The right pinkie is a bit like the left thumb - it has to be independent and able to move as needed. Partly it will depend on how well balanced your flute is - but particularly on a light unkeyed flute, it really doesn’t benefit your playing if it’s clamped in one position.
I’ve had this pinkie thing on and off myself since last St. Pat’s when I had
a particularly grueling weekend of fluting. I even made a pinkie ring-
splint to prevent the pinkie from collapsing. But it did not prevent the
rubber-pinkie syndrome. Here’s my take on it:
I think hand tension comes from deterioration of tone. One time I
experimented with soundless playing and discovered zero hand tension
when not having to blow the sound out. Whatever the cause, as soon as
you feel the tone slipping, some people use their hands to compensate
for the lip muscles. If you happen to use your pinkie to balance the flute,
you’re going to find yourself using it to get the flute down off the seesaw -
the seesaw which is caused by your other hand pushing the flute harder
into your lip, weighing down the mouth side. Changing hand positions can
alleviate the pinkie, but working on tone can alleviate the underlying
tension itself.
In my case it was ramping up to dancer’s speed which set my pinkie off. I
recall playing with deteriorating tone at a faintly uncomfortable (for me)
tempo, followed by the next day’s gig, at a similar tempo and tone
trouble, for several hours. But in the weeks that followed, I found that
every so often at a session, even where the speeds weren’t prohibitive, if
I couldn’t hear myself well my pinkie started to suffer again. Eventually
it dawned on me that whatever I was doing to maintain tone was causing
the tension.
What I’m working on to solve this is to simply rest the flute as lightly as
possible against the bottom lip, and in practicing every so often just
notice how lightly I can keep it and keep my tone. This is resulting in
much less tension overall, even in situations where I used to clench the
flute for dear life. I think focusing in on what happens just before the
tension sets in, is the key to solving it. Hope this is useful information for
someone at least! - Lesl
hi all
thanks for the wonderful suggestions you all did…I am currently working on resolving the pinky problems and so far it has become a bit better, less hurting at the base pinky joint (where the problems were).
what did I do? I shifted my hand positions a bit of both hands…see how that’s going to work out.
If playing for longer than an hour, it starts hurting a bit again but not as much as it used to.
Right hand shift: I try not to bend pinky outwards to the right at a 45 degree corner anymore and then push it against the side of the flute.
Left hand shift: did move my left elbow somewhat forward instead of keeping it vertically down and cocked the side of my hand out a little bit, gave me more control over my fingers.
Back to practicing now.
berti