LFP 028 | How To Store Your Flute In Different Seasons

Welcome to the Learn Flute Podcast. This is episode 28. I’m Rebecca Fuller, and on today’s podcast I’ll be helping you learn how to store your flute in different seasons.

Well welcome, welcome. I’m looking forward to today’s subject because I think it’s something you may not have thought about before. I live at the top of Utah in the mountains, and we definitely have four distinct seasons here. Now depending on where you live there are some different ideas we need to talk about that affect the actual condition of your instrument. So let’s get started!

Let’s start this discussion out by starting in the winter season. Where I live, winter means freezing temperatures and lots of snow. Which is really great for skiing, but it does mean something different for the instruments in my house. I may have mentioned this before, my boys all play several different instruments and we have string instruments as well as wind instruments in different rooms of the home.

Some things that you may want to consider today is that the actual space where your instrument is stored on a daily basis or even for long term really does affect whether it stays in good condition or not. 

For example, we have heater vents that blow warm air in the winter and cold air in the summer when we have the air conditioning turned on. Our climate is actually dry quite dry and arid even though we do get a lot of snow in the winter. When the heater vents turn on in the winter this warm air is circulated through the house and it actually just drive everything out. My lips, my hair, and my flute pads.

Something I have to be very careful of is to not store any of my instruments directly over or near any of those heat registers. The last thing we would want is our flute pads to dry out and crack.  I can tell you that cracked pads are ‘no bueno’ for flute playing.  And that is what causes leaks and yucky yucky tone.

It’s actually quite expensive to have your pads fixed and replaced on your flute. Many times if all of the pads are having problems, then you can assume that your flute is totaled just as the car would be after being in an accident that damaged several of its parts. If your flute is not super high quality you’ll find that a repair job like this will cost even more than you even paid for the flute in the first place. That’s kind of sad news I know, but it’s true.

It’s alright though, because you have me here to give you tips and hints on how to keep that instrument in great condition so that this never ever  happens to you. I actually own probably 14 different flutes, and I would say that all of them are always in very good playable condition because we just know how to take care of them here.

The next thing you need to know about your flutes and the winter season is that the freezing cold weather is very bad for your instrument as well. Never ever ever leave your flute in the car overnight when it gets really cold. 

Now again, I’m drawing on the experiences I have here in my own climate. It gets to about 20 below zero Fahrenheit quite often here in the winter, and if I allowed any of my instruments to stay in that frigid air, you can imagine what would happen when I tried to blow warm air into them. You can think of  a windshield cracking. I think that should do it for imagery today. Haha

Let’s move on to the next season here which is Spring. We do get a lot of rain here, but not nearly as much as they do out on the west coast which is only about a 10 hour drive. Rainy weather causes its own issues with instruments as well. 

Particularly the flute and those ever important pads I’ve been talking about. Flutes that haven’t been properly cleaned daily after playing them will hold that moisture inside the case all day and night and you know until it’s opened and play it again. After time you can imagine what happens? Yes, it’s mold.

I have actually worked with several students on their green, or blueish or pinkish flutes. It’s definitely gross, and moldy flute do not play well either as you can imagine.

Some climates are super humid all year round. if you live in one of these just remember how important it is to clean the inside and polish the outside of your flute daily. it’s just something that goes along with learning how to play the instrument, so get used to it now if you’re not already.

The next season is summer. Now here where I live, summer is really hot. Well it’s hot for me anyway because I enjoy cool temperatures even more. We get temperatures even over 100 degrees usually only  in July and August. This makes for a lot of fun recreational activities and boating on the lakes, but again it’s another challenge for being a flute owner. 

This heat is very damaging again to the pads on the flute. Our heat is very dry here in this climate, and I don’t need to really do anything about the humidity levels for the pads, but I do have to really watch out when I’m traveling with my instrument in the car. 

I think you are probably all aware of how hot a vehicle can get on the inside when the doors and windows are closed and the sunshine is streaming through. Imagine taking a quick trip to the grocery store on my way to a flute practice somewhere else. If I didn’t take my flute in to the store with me inside  by the time I came back out the inside of my car would be somewhere around 140 degrees.

The reason this is so damaging to a flute is because those pads are actually glued on to the underneath of the keys. When the heat gets up to these types of temperatures it just melts. Melted glue on the underneath of your pads will cause them to slip and occasionally they could fall out! 

This would be one of the very worst things I can’t even imagine. So, the tip here is that a quick trip to the grocery store would be even better for your flute if you take it in with you. Haha you can put it in the baby basket with a seat belt if you want to.

The seasons  to talk about here there is only one more and that is Fall or Autumn. I really don’t have any complaints about autumn at all. The weather is incredible here, and the beauty cannot be outdone or rivaled by anywhere in the world I am pretty sure. The only thing I have to think about with my instrument during the fall temperatures here is that we like to take our instruments outside with us and go hiking or to the mountains or whatever. 

My reminder to my students and my other instrumental friends is that placing their flutes on the ground or even in the grass is a complete ‘no-no’. It seems common sense to me, but I’m always surprised when I see the marching bands out for practice and the flute section has their instruments placed on the ground while they practice different lines. I have wanted to get out and rush over there to save them!

Well, that about does it for today. I hope you find this podcast valuable. In fact, if you do it would be really great if you could leave a comment and a rating on this podcast so that the directories will know its value and recommend it to others as well.

You flute friends are my favorite! I hope to see you again very soon for a lesson inside the members area over at LearnFluteOnline.com which is the perfect sequence to learning how to play the flute beautifully and fast.

My lessons are all online, and I take painstaking detail in making sure that the lessons are in a step-by-step manner so that you can succeed always!
We will see you next time!