Now, I'm sure that you know how to put your flute together properly...

How NOT to put a flute together

Or do you?

Did you know that you can break your flute, over time, from the way you assemble your flute?!

It might sound a bit dramatic, but it's actually a really common problem!

And the sad part is, it's really, really easy to prevent!

So check out the short mini-lesson above to learn how to keep your flute in tip-top shape for years.

Jane xx

Flute may be damaged if assembled incorrectly

You are about to learn how not to put your flute together. This is so important because if you put your flute together incorrectly, worst case scenario, you will break your flute straight away.

Best case scenario, you will over time slowly, slowly, slowly, eventually break your flute. And that's the best case scenario. So listen up because this is going to save you a trip to the flute doctor and a lot of frustration.

Faster flute progress through learning proper technique

My name is Jane and I teach flute players how to instantly improve their flute playing by learning proper playing techniques.

In this case, it's not a playing technique. In this case, I'm instantly showing you how to not break your flute. But it actually improves your playing as well because that frustration that I just mentioned when your flute ever so slightly starts to break from not putting it together properly.

Most flute players don't know if it's the flute or if it's them and they don't have any way to tell if it's them that it's not playing properly or if it's the flute that's not playing properly.

And that is frustrating.

Don't assemble flute whilst gripping the keys

When you put your flute together. If you put your hands over these keys and then you put your flute together and you twist it together over time, this back and forward movement over these keys will gradually bend these keys.

It will throw the key work out of whack. And as soon as one hole does not close properly, potentially your whole flute will not work.

Same thing for the flute joint. If you have your hand over these keys and over these keys and your joints are particularly tight and you go back and forward and put it together over time, you will bend the keys. Now I'm going to demonstrate how much of an effect one key slowly out of whack will do to your flute. Okay?

I'm going to make this key not closed properly. And here's a demonstration of what happens to your flute.

Leaky keys may occur when assembling flute incorrectly overtime

So here's before this is a normal working flute and I'm going to do work some magic on my flute to make this key not close properly. All right. It's just one second. Look the other way. Alright, it's actually the second key that I just deliberately made, not close properly.

Can you see how that's just flopping around? Can you see that? So I'm just going to leave that flopped.

Bent key work can result in a cracked open key, like this. Have a listen to this. My flute just totally not work. It is completely broken my flute. And the reason it's broken my entire flute is because it's one of the highest keys. It's the second-highest key on the flute. Highest as in closest to here.

So everything down here is not going to work. It's now I'm just going to work my little magic and I'm going to fix this kid again. So look away. All right. So you can see here, this key is no longer flopping it's closing as it should, and the flute will work.

Flute won't create lower notes as tube won't be lengthened when there are leaky keys

So you can see that that works totally fine now because these keys are closing. Now, if you've bent to these key work overtime accidentally, of course, we wouldn't do that deliberately. And let's just say that this part of the key work goes out and it's this key that's not closing.

All the notes from here down, all the keys from down here will not work because the tube is not closing properly. So overtime teensy amounts of bending from putting your flute together, gripping the keys are going to throw out even just one key and we'll throw out your whole flute. So not good.

Grip the body of the flute, not the keys when assembling

Here are the three steps of what to do instead. When you put your flute together, Number One, make sure that you hold away from the keys like this.

Now, if you have a particularly loose joint like mine, I can do that and get away with it because it's not very tight. As soon as this is tied and mine is on the edge of being too tight to do this, you got to hold it here.

And the second thing down the bottom, it's actually quite hard to hold the flute here and hold the flute here and put your flute together.

You can do it, but it takes a bit of practice. For my beginners, especially when they're younger and they don't have as good hand-eye coordination like adults do. This is fine. And the reason that that's fine is because these keys down the bottom of your flute, if one of these goes out of whack, the only thing that's not going to work is low C.

And if that's at the expense of them, not even being able to put their flute together as a little beginner, it's more important for them to have a good grip and look after the tubing here, which is the next point. 

Make sure flute tubes are aligned when putting flute together

Point two, make sure that the tubes are exactly in line like this. You don't want to ever go back and forward like this. Having a good grip on the flute joint like that helps you with this. If you rock back and forward, you will bend these bits of the tubing.

And that is no good.

Make sure it's not bent like this at all. It's exactly lined up. And Number three is twist. You want to twist back and forward because if you smack the flute together, if you just go straight on like that, if it's really let's see if I can do it like that, it shocks the key work and it can throw it out over time as well.

Instantly improve your flute tone

So there you go. They are the three points to putting your flute together correctly. Now there's a good chance that you're also probably going to want to know the tiny little tweaks to make to your embouchure to really quite instantly improve your sound.

Placement, size of the whole shape of hole, where you've got your lips, how you're blowing. All of these affects your sound more than anything else you do on the flute.

So come and join me. It's free www.flute.school/free. I'd love to see you there to instantly get your tone sounding clearer. See you there.