This is something that’s been bugging me recently. Most of my errors come from miss fingering, something that’s more or less under control on the whistle but the flute is another matter. So I’m consulting the collective wisdom on how to improve this area.
I’ve started to do scales and arpeggios etc, it just seems the flute is much more sensitive to slight inaccuracies than whistles are.
Don’t panic, it’s not you, trees, nor your fingers. It’s that Wilkes of yours, made on a Friday afternoon y’know.
Tell you what, I’ve got a very nice McChud that has no trouble at all with miss-fingering. I’ll do you a fave and swap it for that naff W of yours.
I told you Gary…in the end you’ll find yourself running out of all your McChuds and will only be able to play those W, O, M, McG, G. and the like
Think twice before too late.
You’re right, Sylvester old chap. Paddy McChud is as unreliable as ever and the demand is huge. I should probably hang on to what I have.
Maybe the FluteBeard™ Corporation can come up with some form of FingerGuide™, possibly involving the use of hose-clamps between the tone-holes to assist in accurate fingering?
Or some kind of rod-and-key mechanism? No, that wouldn’t catch on…
I have noticed this more lately myself.
I think it’s because the whistle diameter is smaller.
I have begun to notice that when I play some of my slimmer flutes, or those with slightly smaller tone holes, my fingers “dance” more easily. And the difference in the diameter of the flutes doesn’t seem all that noticeable, but my fingers can tell…
M
I have trouble with my right ring finger. The left ring isn’t too bad bacause it gets involved in more ornaments, and isn’t stretching as far. I haven’t come up with a good training regimine for the right. I’ve started using those steel chinese balls with the bells in them. Hopefully that will help.
Hi there,
I have a similar problem, when doing some rolls (the A and E in particular) - to try and fix this, I’ve taken to playing the tune more slowly and making sure that I hit the holes properly, before bringing it back up to speed again.
Seems to be working for me!
Hi there,
I have a similar problem, when doing some rolls (the A and E in particular) - to try and fix this, I’ve taken to playing the tune more slowly and making sure that I hit the holes properly, before bringing it back up to speed again.
Seems to be working for me!
If you follow mcdevith’s advice and some of your own (!) from above, I cant see why you shouldnt improve the problem, its just one of those things that has to be practised in my opinion. No mystery, just hard work. 
Sigh, more of that hard work. It’s what I was expecting really, but you live in hope that somebody had a panacea type fix! The hole size is the difference as has been said, just not as much room for error.
The McChud would of course solve the problem instantly as it has no holes at all even down the middle.
Some might say that pretending to play with your hands under water helps strengthening your finger muscles. (I must add that is a real shame that some people actually don’t do it with a concret block on their feet though)
But apparently it works for this guy:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=C1bffYZdRm0&mode=related&search=carlos%20nuñez
P.S. For God’s sake, someone give a chair to the bodhran guy!
Play in front of a mirror.
Play scales and arpeggios ‘slow/fast’: slow tempo, but snap between the notes.
Take all your tempos down for a few days.
Get a trusted player to watch you, looking for creeping hand and arm position or tension - these trickle down into loose fingering.
These are things that have worked for me in the past, and I often use the mirror.
Ah Carlos Nunez I’d not heard of him, I shall know now to avoid him for the rest of my life!
The Badhranist needs a block of concrete attatched to his ankles and a suitable stretch of deep water.
Ahem, where was I. Yes playing in front of the mirror, I used to do that a fair bit, I’ll give it another go to see if I can spot badly trained digits.
Quite lively both of them, eh!
For those who find their right hand is less reliable than the left, give the 19th century English holding system (sometimes called the Rockstro grip) a go. I find it frees up the right hand fingers considerably. Bit of a shock at first, but you can sneak up on it. Essentially, you move the right thumb up the side of the flute instead of being underneath it. The thumb points into the flute. Use the left arm muscles, not the hand or finger muscles, to oppose the right thumb’s pressure, the left hand and fingers remaining relaxed. If you have a Rudall style flute, rotate the RH section a bit so that the fingers still oppose the thumb. The RH fingers will be less bunched up. Use lower pressure to seal the holes. If you have trouble relaxing, squeeze real hard, then relax. Run on minimum pressure, maximum location. Feel free.
Terry
Truly well explained. Would you use fingertips to cover the holes or semi piper grip style?
Another thing you might try, as a supplement to playing arpeggios and scales, is pentatonic scales. There’s plenty of Irish tunes that center around the pentatonic, and it’s a good way to familiarize yourself with what are probably the most-used notes of any given key.
Both the Nicholson and Rockstro tracts you put up on your site were a huge help to me, as you say the thumb pushing against the pivot of the base of the left hand frees up all yer fingers for keys and holes rather than supporting. I’m just an old dog learning new tricks so progress can sometimes be slow!
what notes in particular are you noticing inaccuracies on? is it particular notes, or particular intervals, or both? let me know the particulars, and then i can give an example of some exercises you can do, in addition to the ones everyone else has given. also, do you read abc, or dots, or neither?
The A and the E are the usual suspects the bigger the hole the more often the partial miss the E in particular if it’s even slightly leaking then a weak D Weaker Csharp and no bottom C at all !
for your basic, overall grip, try out the grip that terry recommends, with a little twist in the set up (i just learned this last week from my uncle). put your right hand down at your side, and let it hang naturally. then put your hand up to the flute, and your fingers on top of the barrell, without changing the relaxed position of your fingers. then try to see if you can set up your hand to be like terry describes, or how others have taught you before, while keeping as much the same relaxed position as when you are not playing as possible.
(i will do examples in abc, let me know if you want dots. “>” means that the previous note is longer, i.e. dotted; “<” means that the following note is longer/dotted).
the first obvious thing to do for the A and the E is go between those two notes. do it in two variations: A>EA>EA>EA2 and E>AE>AE>AE2.
i’m assuming you have a keyed flute (because you mention low C# and C natural)?. for this next one, however, i’m going to ask you to go to the middle c. if you use the c key, then practice the cross finger (0XX-000 basically) at first. if you normally use the cross finger, then dont bother with the c key unless you want some extra challenge. i know you didnt say you had a c problem, but c, A and E are often very hard to get in sync. it also is better to have more than 2 notes for these sorts of exercises.
E>A c>a E>A c>a E2
E<A c<A E<A c < A EA2 (note that all of the A’s are long, instead of short)
E>c A>c E>c A>c E2
once you get this one down, then opt for c# instead of c natural. if you’re ambitious, try out (000-000) as well as (000-XXX), but if not, just do the one you normally do for c#.
this next variation is the one i was taught by a classical teacher for any five note sequence, and is what i based the previous exercises on. before i show you this next set, i’ll explain it. you can skip this explanation and just practice the exercise if you dont care what the structure is. usually this is done the 4 notes you are practicing (1, 2, 3, 4), and then the first note of the next phrase or beat (5), so you can “land” somewhere. it starts: “1long 2short 3long 4short 5long 4short 3long 2short 1long-and-hold.” when you’ve got that down, you switch the longs and the shorts: “1short 2long 3short 4long 5short 4long 3short 2long 1short 2long-and-hold.” after that, you change the groupings to be four notes: “1long 2short 3short 4short 5long 4short 3short 2short 1long-and-hold.” you then go through the same thing, switching the place of the one long on each beat (i.e. 2long/4long, 3long/1long). once you have that down, you should be able to hit the hole sequence without stopping smoother than before.
i would usually repeat the repeated bit at least 2ce all the way through before “landing.”
|: c>A B>E G>E B>A :|c2
|: c<A B<E G<E B<A :|cA2 (note again that the second notes on the groups are long)
|: c2ABE G2EBA 
c2
|: cA2BE GE2BA c2
|: cAB2E GEB2A c2
|: cABE2 GEBA2 (no need to use a landing note, keep the A)
|: cABE GEBA c2
you can repeat the same exercise, switching the c naturals with the c# as before.
edited: i put an extra space in the second set of exercises to fix a bug in the code. without it, the forum wouldnt display some of my text and underlined the rest of my post when you hovered over it. i dont know why it didnt like my abc…