Try a second tuner or check the one you have with a good piano or keyboard.

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There many tuners on line, you can find one in this same site. (for guitar, but you can use the higher notes with the flute, such as "E")

My guess is that this has a lot less to do with the flute than with you. You mentioned that it's a new flute, and you probably have not figured out its pitch tendencies yet. Work with a tuner when you practice, and odds are you'll figure out how to play this flute in tune with itself pretty fast. It's possible to bend some pitches as much as a 1/2 step in either direction, so even if your flute was out by a but, you should be able to play it in tune. And as has been noted, if you're simply going off of what your teacher was hearing, rather than what a tuner has told you, or a well-tuned piano shows, odds are there's not much to worry about....It could have been something as small as a bad day, illness, a room that makes hearing difficult, etc.

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Also, the OP mentioned that they have not been playing long, and as we all know, accurate pitch can take a long time to develop, since the flute has such a large range of pitch possibilities with even a single fingering. As far as tuning goes, if your flute sounds flat, pushing the headjoint in is not the way to fix that...It will indeed bring pitch up, but unevenly throughout the range, so that you end up working harder to play some notes in tune than others. You should set the head in the correct position for the octave length to be accurate (using harmonics), and then make most pitch adjustments with your air (raise the air to raise pitch, lower the airstream to lower pitch). Most modern flutes are built pretty well so that they're naturally very close to in tune with themselves (i.e. they're built on a good scale), and moving the head about too much only serves to invalidate that technology. If you push the head in, the distance between the embouchure hole, and the C# tonehole (sealed by the key operated by LH1) changes by a much greater percentage than does the distance between the EH and the E tonehole (sealed by the key operated by RH3). Thus, the notes venting through holes near the EH will rise in pitch much more than those venting through holes near the footjoint.

Flutist06 (et al experts):
Well, now you've got me pondering on something you said regarding the placement of the head joint affecting the flutes pitch adversely.

So.....what/where is the BEST placement of the head joint? Not totally in, not way out, of course. But, on average, how much "pulled out" would be the BEST placement?

Yes, everyone is different etc. etc.; but....

That does indeed depend on the individual flute and player, but the best way to set the headjoint is to match the pitch of various harmonics. For instance, if you play a Low C, and then lift your thumb, you get the C above it (or you can simply overblow the Low C fingering to C2)...Match the pitch of the two notes without bending them with your air, and the head's about where it should be. Basically you're setting the octave length of the flute by doing this, so that each subdivision of an octave (each tonehole) is an appropriate distance from the embouchure hole. Of course, all of this assumes that the headjoint cork is in the correct position, and that you're working with a modern scale....Some of the older "traditional" scales need further adjustment, such as pulling the footjoint out. This is a very general overview of the process, and depending on the flute you're playing, it may not be entirely useful, but there is really only one position for the headjoint if the scale of the flute is to perform at its best.

Here's the routine Kippsix

http://www.langemusic.com/Articles/flutetune.htm

Joe B

Hi Guys,

I would contend that generally a flute is 'designed' to be played with the head joint pulled out a certain amount at a certain ambient temperature. I think that this amount is something on the order of about a tad less than a 1/4" or maybe about 7MM and at a general room temperature of ~72F. This is just a guess by someone who has no first-hand knowledge of what is going through the designer's brain on each individual flute design but has read something on the subject.

Assumung that the cork is located properly, the dimensional length of the tube (in this case of the head joint length) is the deciding factor in relative pitch.

Now when you need to modify the pitch because of the tuning of the ensemble or because of the temperature of the room, you may need to make a compromise by moving the head joint location. This compromise will alter the general scale of the flute in a way similar to that which the cork does. (IE: Not equally through the whole range.) or moving the bridge of a stringed instrument.

So, pulling out the head will make the flute generally flatter BUT it may make some notes more flatter and some notes less flatter. This is because when you pull out the head joint, it lengthens the distance from the Emb. hole to the first open key BUT it does not lengthen the distance from that key to any other keys on the body. The only way to make a flute do this more accurately would be to make the entire thing elastic, like a Gumby Toy but then you'd have the issue of closing the holes properly with the pads.

I believe that this is generally true of you eliminate the possible variables of individual breath support and blowing angles.

Your's is a good description Joe.

http://www.langemusic.com/Articles/flutetune.htm

"But if you do remove a couple mm from the tenon end, you can still pull it out to it's usual amount, and still have more than you will ever need to pull out as well."

and

"That part of the head is not tapered so there is no subsequent affect in that specific regard."

Very true also.
Much depends too on how much tube one would want to cut off.

wow i never thought there would be so many knowelegable replys, and thanks you to u all, today i went back to the shop where i brought the flute, the flute played flat, both myself and the gentleman in the shop (he is experienced flute player of 25 yrs) played the flute, we used 3 different tuners in 2 different rooms each time it played flat on various notes, so i agreed to let him adjust the cork, which he did, and now it plays in perfect tune, ive brought myself a decent tuner for future reference so i can keep my eye on things, lets hope everything is good from now on... once again thanks u all for ur help

Assumung that the cork is located properly, the dimensional length of the tube (in this case of the head joint length) is the deciding factor in relative pitch.

Even though lubylou's problem is solved, this is still worthy of comment.

The deciding factor in relative pitch is the octave length for A= whatever pre-determined pitch. While the length of headjoint draw will affect overall pitch, it is not by an even amount for the whole instrument. To put your description another way, the octave length itself determines the headjoint draw within the variance a player exerts on the instrument.

If we are talking about relative pitch, we must ask in relation to what? With out that clarification, any description of flatness or sharpness is meaningless. The starting point for making a relative determination must include all the variable being within tolerance first.

If you don't start there, it's the same as having a blind man playing golf..

Joe B

Hi Joe,

To keep the quotes into perspective....My statement...

"Assumung that the cork is located properly, the dimensional length of the tube (in this case of the head joint length) is the deciding factor in relative pitch."

Yours:
"If we are talking about relative pitch, we must ask in relation to what? With out that clarification, any description of flatness or sharpness is meaningless. The starting point for making a relative determination must include all the variable being within tolerance first."

Wiki:
The term relative pitch may denote:

* the distance of a musical note from a set point of reference, e.g. "three octaves above middle C"

You are correct Joe B.
Perhaps if I just remove the term "Relative" and write that...
The pitch of the note is determined by the length of the tube. and also the statement that generally we can adjust this length by changing the draw of the head joint tenon in the socket.

This reference is part of a previous statement that inluded other statements as well that in essence said that if you move the position of the head joint to adjust your tuning, you will not alter all of your flute's pitches equally up or down.

The point of this part of the discussion should go something like this. The concept of playing in tune is a variable or flexible issue since no flute can be designed to have each note perfectly in tune nor do we always have the luxury of having an accurate pitch of A=440 (even with a piano) but if you modify your cork or head joint positions, the room's temperature or the ensemble's relative pitch (there I go again) then you may be compromising the instrument's overall intonation throughout the range of the flute causing it to be increasingly difficult to be played in tune properly the farther that you deviate from the norms.

For young players who have not developed a general fine sense of good realtive pitch, they may often fall into the trap of blowing and not paying very much attention to their tuning. For people who are older, their ears can get accustomed to hearing the notes wrong. one example of this is that if we play the same flute for a few years it's as if the flute eventually tunes our ears to accept it's pitches. Either one of these can be detrimental to intonation. If you combine the idea that most young kids only learn this: 1)sharp-pull out & flat-push in with the idea that 2)now that my tuning note is simply 'perfect' I'm going to play the concert in tune, it's not going to go so well.

It is true that generally we use a reference pitch of A=440 but we must also remember that this is only one note in the complete spectrum of our range. In a perfect world, when we tune we should be defining what each and every pitch's frequency is and we should stick to those frequencies but for a number of reasons, this usually can't be done and we generally settle on the A=440 or Bb=466.16 or whatever. FOr this reason, we should teach ear training and sight singing along with our long tones.

Joe and everyone else;

Great replies, and thanks Joe for the excellent reference reading. I personally have always set my flute in the way you described.


I asked the question because I do not think many young players get this information from their instructors, rather they're told to "pull out/push in". They therefore tend to think they are "in tune", and they may be, for that particular note, and then commence to play with obvious pitch problems throughout a piece. There is ignorance of the various things you described in your article.

Every week, I must match pitch with a piano, albeit a very gorgeous Bosendorfer grand piano, but still, it gets a lot of use and we know it has changes in pitch as time extends between tunings. However, even with that, I do not feel that pulling in/out on the head is the way to deal with matching the piano.

Playing in this environment has taught me so much about relying on my skills to maintain the correct pitch.

Well, I myself am a flute player and as you probably know you can push in or you can roll your mouthpiece inward. Do you have an open holed flute? I have one and sometimes the holes can mess with it. Also your air flow and your warmth of your air can factor into that too. Sometimes your tone goes flat when you have a slow air flow. There is a sort of median with oyur air flow that you have to center yourself in. It is between going flat and blasting. Just remember that you will never always be in tune.

Unfortunately, Flanien, I have to disagree with most of your points.

Well, I myself am a flute player and as you probably know you can push in or you can roll your mouthpiece inward.

As was discussed above, moving the headjoint is not the best way to tune. Once the head cork is in the right place, and you've set the octave length, you shouldn't have to move it...All of the adjustment should be done with your air. Also, rolling in and out should NEVER be the default way of adjusting pitch. If you need to make a big adjustment for some reason, and your air control won't allow you to get QUITE there, you can roll in or out very slightly to get that last bit you need to play in tune. Rolling is too unwieldy to be useful in most circumstances, but it also affects tone negatively if you roll too much....Roll in too much, and your sound will be too covered and roll out too much, and you'll have a tone that's difficult to control, and probably quite fuzzy.

Do you have an open holed flute? I have one and sometimes the holes can mess with it.

If you're sealing the holes properly, this shouldn't be a big issue. Leak one of the holes, and quite aside from pitch adjustment, you'll probably affect your ability to play the note you want. In any case, leaking those holes will move pitch UP, and the OP has a "flat flute."

Also your air flow and your warmth of your air can factor into that too.

Airflow (specifically the pressure, speed and direction) should be THE factor in determining pitch. Temperature of the air doesn't matter in and of itself, though some people use "cold" air to descrive a focused airstream, and "warm" air to describe a more diffused airstream.

Just remember that you will never always be in tune

This is inaccurate, and just a bad bit of advice. "In tune" is very relative, as a single pitch can play multiple roles within a piece, and thus need to be played at slightly different frequencies to sound right, but good players can indeed be in tune throughout a performance. To accept anything less is to accept mediocrity. If you can't play in tune all the time, I would suggest working with a tuner to get an idea of where the box says it should be (though you'll probably never get to play "by the tuner"), and doing some ear training exercises to improve your ability to hear and adjust pitches before you even play.

Well said, Chris. I have to agree with all every point Chris has said and also have to disagree with you Flanien. Please be careful about what kind of advice you are giving out until your really know your facts.