What brand of flute I play
Sep 17, 2018If you're wondering what brand of flute I play, here's a guided tour of my flute!
In the 4 minute video, I cover:
- The brand of my flute and the headjoint (yes, they're actually different brands!)
- Whether my flute is solid silver or just silver plated.
- Why I really don't want the $450,000 flute that I once played!
If you're wondering what brand of flute I play, here's a guided tour of my flute!
A few people have emailed me asking what type of flute I play. So in this video, I'm going to explain just that. My flute is a Muramatsu EX model.EX is the bottom level Muramatsu. It's the cheapest Muramatsu you can buy, which is not cheap, but it's the cheapest one that they make. The head joint of my flute, however, is a Williams headjoint. When I bought my Muramatsu, I liked the sound that I could get out of this Williams headjoint better. It really suited me. It suited the way I played. It suited the type of sound that I liked. So the headjoints are quite personal. Now in case you're wondering more about those brands. Muramatsu is Japanese and Williams is American more specifically in Boston. There are heaps of good brands of flutes and of head joints. These are not the best ones. These are the best ones for me. I love Muramatsu and I love Williams headjoints.
A friend of mine has a Williams flute, which is really, really expensive, like kind of four or five times the cost of this whole outfit here. Not, not this outfit. This set up here. Speaking of Muramatsu, when I was in Austria doing some flute study in maybe 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I played the top-level Muramatsu. So the best, the most expensive Muramatsu that has ever been made. It's like the top of the range. It was worth $450,000. And I noticed two things about it. It was very heavy, cuz there was a lot of gold in it. And the second thing I noticed was that it sounded marginally better than my own flute, but not like the cost of a house better. I would rather have my flute in a house or if you live in Sydney, half a house, actually half an apartment.
So in my opinion, it's you need a flute that's in really, really good working order. That has a great sound. But then beyond that, it's kind of like if you've got the money spent it, but if you don't, it's really like not the end of the world if you can't afford this flute, that's tens and tens of thousands of dollars. It's just really, I mean, it's great if you're a professional player and it's for your job, absolutely. By all means, it's part of your job. Like for me, this is part of my job. You don't need to spend that much on a flute. To get a great sound out of it is the bottom line.
Okay. If you are wondering what materials are in my flute, the Muramatsu EX model is a solid silver head joint and then a silver-plated body. So it's just nickel and a whole bunch of other things. It's called nickel silver, but it's not silver - plated in silver. And then the head joint is solid silver. This head joint that I've got is also solid silver and there is some gold in this bit. And the thing that makes this sound good, this head joint is two things. The way it's played and the way it's made more than what it's made from. So the gold bit, there's actually platinum in it as well, which I kind of just ignore. Cause it's just really, really, it kind of just seems like, well, not exactly a gimmick, but it's like, I don't need that stuff. I just need it to be well made and then to learn to play it well, they're the two most important things.
If you're wondering if I play with a sea or a B foot, I play with a C foot and I love it. There is another video that I'm just about to record. That's going to go through why I love a C foot over a B foot. I'm going to talk about why I recommend a split E mechanism. It's gonna talk more about this material. I was talking about, the gold, the silver with the platinum. I'll go through open holes versus closed holes. So that is all about my flute right now. And I'll see you in the next video for a description of all the things that are on my flute and why I chose them.
