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Dr. Cate's Flute Tips

~ Flute pedagogy for school music directors

Dr. Cate's Flute Tips

Category Archives: piccolo

All about the Headjoint Cork

27 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by Dr. Cate Hummel in accessories, flute maintenance, instruments, intonation, piccolo, tuning

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flute intonation, flute maintenance, flute pedagogy

Recently, one of my private students reported that their band director had told all the flutes in band that you could adjust the cork placement for tuning purposes, rather like a tuning slide on a brass instrument. I would like to know where this idea originated in music education literature and pedagogy. It can be said with certainty that flute makers and professional flute teachers kindly wish that the cork assembly be put in the proper position and then left alone. Tell the kiddies to keep their hands off the crown. If the crown is loose, it should be gently snugged down and left alone. Why? Because the flute will play in tune at the pitch it was designed for, i.e. A=440 or A=442 (most flutes today at every price point are designed to play at A=442).

Piccolo and flute cleaning rods with cork measurement lines
  • What is the ideal placement of the cork assembly in the headjoint? 17 mm (I have a cleaning rod that says 17.3 mm, but I honestly don’t know how you could place it with that kind of precision without a special caliper) and for piccolo, it’s 8 mm. Basically, the line on the cleaning rod should be dead center of the blow hole.
  • What happens if you move it away from the ideal 17mm placement? If the cork assembly is too close to the crown, the high notes will be more flat and the low notes will be more sharp. The more you move it, the more out of tune the scale becomes. Conversely, if the cork assembly is too close to the blow hole, the high notes will be more sharp and the low notes will be more flat. (This was precisely the problem with the pre-Cooper/Bennett scale flutes. The headjoint was too short for the body, which was tuned to A=435. The intonation was horrendous). See Tuning Tendencies of the Flute
  • The flute already has a “tuning slide”, otherwise known as a headjoint tenon or receiver (in flutemaker parlance). The flute is designed to play at it’s manufactured scale with the headjoint pulled out 5-6 mm or ~1/4 inch. If the student is having to pull out much more than that to play in tune, or can’t push in far enough to get up to pitch, the issue is with how the flute is resting on the lip and the angle of blowing. See Troubleshooting Tone and Pitch Issues

Now, about the cork itself. Cork is the bark of a special kind of oak tree that grows in Portugal. It has been used to seal small openings, like wine bottles and other stoppers for centuries. When compressed, it expands to create a tight seal, hence it’s use in flute headjoints and for wind instrument tenons. It is often additionally sealed into place with paraffin wax. As a cork ages in a flute, it can shrink because it loses it’s natural moisture or develop mold if the flute headjoint isn’t swabbed out sufficiently. If the cork shrinks, it can start moving up toward the crown. The student progressively tightens the crown (because it is loose) and moves the cork up to the top of the flute (which compresses the cork further and negatively impacts the intonation as described above). At this point, or if the cork is moldy, it should be replaced. Some repair people recommend replacing a cork every couple of years as a matter of course. They are cheap and take only few minutes to replace.

Finally, it can be well worth it to experiment with replacements for cork stoppers. Personally, I stopped using cork in my headjoint 5-6 years ago now. I use the Celestine Rexonator in most of my instruments, including piccolo and alto flute. It’s made of solid brass and fits over the stem assembly. It seals in with a small plumbing gasket. It’s very easy to install. It adds a world of resonance and response to the flute, improves the quality of articulation and also changes the balance of the flute in one’s hands slightly because it weighs an extra ounce or so. There are a couple other companies out there that are now offering similar devices. Also, there are stoppers made of Delrin plastic or that just leave the cavity above the assembly plate open. They all make sense in that cork is an acoustic dampener. Taking out the cork and using a more resonant material has a measurable effect on the sonic signature of the flute.

As always, if you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here. Dr. Cate’s Flute Tips will be available soon in book form. Manuscript is done and editing is underway. Stay tuned for updates about pre-ordering through Amazon in 2021.

Taming the Beast

12 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by Dr. Cate Hummel in embouchure, intonation, piccolo, tuning

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embouchure, flute pedagogy, piccolo

Intonation on Piccolo

Over the last few weeks, students have been asking me for help with piccolo. For such a diminutive instrument, pitch awareness and placement is a huge issue. It might even be the biggest issue because so much of what we know about playing the flute translates directly to piccolo. Here are a few tips to help your students play better in tune on piccolo:

  • Make sure the piccolo the student is playing is in good repair. In my experience, school piccolos are notorious for being in the worst condition of any instruments in the storage locker. They have shredded pads, bent keys, plating flaking off the keys…you name it. They rarely see the inside of a repair shop and often are unplayable.img_3254
  • Check the headjoint cork placement. This is probably the #1 problem with student flute players playing piccolo out of tune. Make sure to use a piccolo cleaning rod for the correct measurement. The line should be in the middle of the blow hole.
  • Have the cork replaced if it moves easily. A leaking cork will cause a lot of pitch problems.
  • Be sure that your piccolo players have the most stable and developed embouchure in your ensemble. They need to know how to correct pitch and use their air properly on flute to know how to begin to explore piccolo without causing more problems than they solve.
  • You need to put the piccolo a little higher on your lip than the flute. Because of the small size, issues of placement are magnified. In other words, smaller adjustments will mean larger changes in pitch and tone quality
  • Playing octaves will teach the student what in tune means on the piccolo. The pitch tendencies are a bit different than flute. This is especially noticeable in the notes just above the staff like Bb, B, C, C# and D. This can also be the case with long notes on the staff like D, Eb and E. Another way to practice pitch is by using a tone generator and playing intervals like perfect 4ths and 5ths against the drone.
  • Make sure to make adjustments by moving your lips independently. Rolling your bottom lip out will raise the pitch, using your top lip to angle the air down will lower the pitch just as on flute. The movements are more subtle and require you listen carefully.
  • If rolling the instrument to adjust pitch is a bad idea on flute, it is an even worse idea on piccolo. Remember, everything, both good and bad, is magnified on the piccolo. You could even say, “less is more”. A smaller change makes a bigger difference.

As always, if you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here.

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