As the weather changes: Springtime Flute Care

There are two season changes that challenge flutes and their owners.  Spring and Autumn.

As the first day of spring approaches this week, let's review the most typical problems associated with the atmospheric changes, and how to keep your flute in great working order.

For most of us, at sometime in the next three months, we will turn off the heat in our homes, and shortly turn on the AC.

It is said that in the North Eastern US the typical relative humidity in our homes during winter, is down around 10%, which is rather like Death Valley.  That's why the floor boards shrink, static electricity is such a problem and house plants need much more water.  The pads, shims, and spacers that keep your flute regulated react by shrinking.  This is why a flute, which has been working perfectly fine in January, shows up needing repair in April.

To help your flute make the adjustment, take just a few precautions:

1.  Completely swab out the inside of the flute each time you play, and use pad cleaners at the end of the day.  We recommend Flute Flags for swabbing, as well as any of the high quality BG France products.  BG France's Universal Pad Cleaners work much better than the standard cigarette papers to keep pads dry and stable.

2.  Put the flute in its case every night, as soon as you have finished for the day.

3.  Let the flute come to room temperature before putting any hot air into it either by warming it up or by playing it.

4.  Store your swab in the exterior pocket of your case cover.  Not a good idea to put the moisture (ie spit) you've just taken out of the flute and put it on top of the flute, and then seal it in the case.

5.  Store your flute on a shelf or in a drawer.  There is a nasty pest called a Pad Bug,  a cousin of the carpet beetle, that will literally eat your pads.  They are tiny insects, but if you are putting a flute away for a while, and store it on the ground, you may have unwanted guests in your case and an unplayable flute when you take it out again.

6.  Never let a well-meaning (but inexperienced in flute repair) band director try to balance the pads or regulate the flute.  Countless examples of the problems this causes come through the shop door every Spring.

7.  Piccolos: here we have some real issues involving wood and its care.  Be extra careful in playing the piccolo only once it is at room temperature.  Swab it out frequently.  Keep it out of sunshine and fast moving cold air.  Make sure you put it in its case every night.  These little guys are so small it is tempting to leave them on your music stand or on a shelf. 

STRESS
Here is a good rule of thumb: if you are under stress, so is your flute!  Solo and Ensemble coming up?  Senior Recital? Audition for summer programs?  The big end of year orchestral concert and you are slated to play the 1st flute part in Daphnis?  Make a repair appointment at least 3 weeks in advance of the big day.  The extra practice you put in during this time of the year stresses your flute and its adjustment.  Anticipate this and avoid the nasty last minute rush to get your flute repaired.  It WILL happen if you have the mind set of Scarlett O'Hara, "Fiddle dee dee.  I'll just worry about it tomorrow."  The problem is, tomorrow is the big concert.

Do you have ways of dealing with the approach of Spring and flute repair?  Please add your thoughts to the comments...

Spring 2013: Focus on Flute FUNdamentals!

Welcome Spring!!

And with it comes thoughts of spring cleaning.

And then my thoughts turn to the flute.  And, like it or not, I have some technical work to do in advance of a concert April 28.

Time to focus.  Flute Fundamentals here we come.

First: don't miss any more swim practices.  It is much warmer in the AM these days, so can't use that excuse.  Swimming is the very best activity for breath control.

Second: don't miss any more flute practices.

Hmmm..what if I structured my flute practice the way I structure a swim practice?

Now, that's fun!

Swim Practice structure:

Warm Up
Kick Set
Pull Set
Main Set
Warm Down

My swimming warm ups don't typically involve the clock, because at 6:00 AM I need to acclimate slowly. Stretch out in the water, get my breathing in gear, let the shock of the cold wear off. With the flute I do long tones at first. (Watch for the new Flute Pro Shop Long Tones of the month feature to refresh your routine!  They will launch April 1.)  Typically 20 minutes here will get me going for the rest of the practice.  I always start in the low register, and work up slowly, focusing on tone quality, resonance, vibrato and so on.

Kick Set in swimming as an adult involves fins: you smoothly glide through the water. For the flute: Scales!  Woot!  For these I use the metronome, and concentrate on lining things up perfectly, honing subdivisions, keeping things smooth, controlled, well matched and even.  I do chromatic, all diatonic, Taffanel-Gaubert No. 1 double tongued, and depending on the time available, additional Taffanel- Gaubert Exercises.

The pull set: paddles and buoys, oh boy!  These are longer distances, and often I layer in  "hypoxic" training, or limited breathing patterns.  With freestyle, I breathe every 3-5-7-5-3 each 50 yards of a 200 yard distance, and the rest for about 15 seconds and go on.  For flute practice, this section will involve going over all the "spots" in the music for the concert.  You know-those little places that need extra attention.  I enjoy playing games: can I do this 5 times in a row perfectly?  10?  Or I reverse the articulation, change octaves, play in smaller and smaller sections, and more. (Maybe I should write a blog on drill patterns?)

The Main Set:  this is the heavy workout segment in swim practice.  Often involving short intervals, negative splitting, and other tortures..ah..fun activities.  Flutewise: I play the pieces all the way through, making notes of sections that will need attention in the pull set tomorrow.

My personal favorite section is, you guessed it, the warm down!  The hard work is done, you have that lovely post-practice feeling of having accomplished something, and can just stretch out in the water, glide, maybe do dolphins up and down the pool, bob, whatever strikes your fancy.  Flute warm down is often a long tone exercise from a piece on the program.

And so now you know how I spend my free time.  Wet or dry, I never lack for stuff to do!  Time to work with my Labradors-food for another blog.

Happy Spring!!

Why I love Fed Ex

It was a cold and blustery early March afternoon.  The call came in from the hotel: our customer's flute had arrived.  It was 3:00 PM.

Many of our customers here at Flute Pro Shop are like family to us, and this is one of those with whom we feel particularly close.   She is a doctoral candidate in a prestigious program in the North East.  She had called the day before with a flute emergency: she had a concert on Sunday, and her Eb key on her flute was bent.

The problem?  Dave and I were on the road, on our semi-annual trip to Winchester and Charlottesville, VA.  Thinking quickly, or as quickly as I could, I suggested that she send the flute to my hotel in Charlottesville.  Dave could do the work there, and we could overnight it for Saturday delivery in time for the Sunday concert.

The round trip to pick up the flute, took 30 minutes, going from the Ashcroft Club house in Charlottesville, VA, to the hotel on Route 29, and back.  Dave finished up the repair for a customer who was waiting there for her flute, and we opened the delivered flute.

The bent Eb key repair was a quick and easy process for Dave.  The more difficult problem was that the flute needed extensive work: three split pads, and was overdue for an overhaul.  It was now 4:00.  The last pick up at Fed Ex, I thought, was 6:00 PM.

All was going well, but Dave was not happy with how the flute was coming together.  I could hear him saying, "It just doesn't feel right..."  The clock ticked on.  At 5:30 he was satisfied that the flute was playing well.  We boxed it up and I took off for the closest Fed Ex store, which I had found on Google.

It wasn't there. 

Stunned, I drove around the parking lot.  "What do you mean it isn't here???"

Getting back on Route 250, I called the Fed Ex 800 number, and a very helpful operator answered.  She asked what zip code I was calling from.  Luckily I remembered it-from when I gave the hotel address to our customer-and rattled off 22092.

Route 250, at 5:45 PM on a Friday is  very well traveled road.  Very well.  And, there is no shoulder.  So I had to memorize the address until I could pull over, enter it into the GPS, and take off.  It was now 5:55.

And there was the Fed Ex logo, bright blue and beckoning.  5:58!

I ran into the store.  I am sure I looked just as frazzled as I felt.  I asked the worker there to please hold the truck so this express package could be taken then.  "No problem."  And then the words that set me free: "The Express shipment doesn't go out till 6:30."  Ahhhh.

At 6:16, the worker took the package.  14 minutes to spare.  As I left the store, look what pulled up:

We have since heard from our customer that the flute arrived, and worked well for the concert.

Whew.

And that is why I love Fed Ex.