New Flutes: Testing Before Buying
What to look for..
What to listen for..
Video Transcription:
Well hello and welcome back here. I’m Rebecca Fuller and let’s keep moving on learning more about choosing a flute. Sometimes you don’t really get to choose- the choosing is done for you if maybe Aunt M. has a flute and she’s willing to lend it to you, or if you find one at a store or whatever. There’s lots of reasons why you may not be able to choose but there’s something in this video I wanted to talk to you about that will help you in your choice.
Especially if you’re not really a flute player to start with. If you don’t even know how to play, how are you supposed to test drive the flute that you are looking at to choose? Well, obviously you can’t, right?
Until you know how. If you don’t know anybody who already plays, and if the place you are purchasing it from, nobody knows how to play it and hopefully all of the information inside of this video series will help you figure this out and do a bunch of tests for your own.
In this video we are going to be talking about the head joint and something that you may not know about it. Inside the top part of this head joint is a cork. Lets see if I can get a picture of a cork here for you. It’s actually made out of cork, like that grows on the cork trees in Portugal. I went there, and that’s how I learned that.
Anyway, and then there’s a metal plate on the end of it and a rod on the top with threads. On the top of your flute is the cap, it’s called the end cap and it’s actually more important than you think.
Number one rule, don’t play with the end cap. Every time you turn it, it actually changes the position of the cork inside your flute and messes up your tuning. More about that in the lessons. I will show you all sorts of stuff in there.
Just as an overview let’s just make sure that your cork is not shriveled up and leaking air out of the top of the flute. The whole point of having that cork there in the top of the head joint is that it stops the air completely from moving out of that area and so that it puts all of the air this direction into the rest of your flute. I hope that makes sense to you.
You can test a little bit by kind of closing everything off, (I can stick my finger on the little hole here) and I can blow on the end there. So remember, I’ve covered this all the way and I’m going to blow, seal it all the way off. I can’t feel any air leaking anywhere, if I could and my air was actually able to move through the flute, then I would know that the cork is bad. Thumbs down on the cork. It needs a new cork, it needs to see a technician. Something again for you.
Alright, well that’s really all I wanted to talk to you about in this video. If you don’t have any way to figure it out then there’s a few things you can test. In the last video we talked about checking for dents and scratches and gummed up mechanism. In this video we just learned how to check the cork.
Okay, we’ll see you in the next video where we’re going to learn even more. If you’re already ready to come into the membership area, I welcome you and we are excited to have you join us and learn all about how to play the flute really, really well. I’m here for you, I’m rooting for you, and I will teach you, you will learn. We’ll see you in the next video.
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