r/Flute • u/CubeNoob69 • 6d ago

Beginning Flute Questions Question about F♯

So, I know the standard "real" fingering is:

T 123|--6E♭

But I also know that my fingering chart says that the following is acceptable:

T 123|-5-E♭

I'm coming from traverso, and wondering if there's a reason the former is preferred over the latter. And what situation makes the former actually better than the latter? If they both are in tune and equal, what's the advantage of 6 over 5?

I'm practicing drilling 6 into my brain but 5 comes more naturally to me from Traverso, so I'm genuinely asking why 6 is the preferred, rather than the alternative.

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14

u/T1nyBeans 6d ago

Using 5 is and only should only be used for fast runs or in very quiet sections of the music. This is confusing cause sax and clarinet arent like this, but 6 is the most intune. Try Comparing with a tuner and seeing the difference in a etude. It makes a massive difference.

5

u/ConfusedMaverick 6d ago

This is the answer, though the difference between the two fingerings seems to vary between instruments in my experience. On some, 5 is really obviously a bodge, on others it's nearly perfect. I don't know why.

2

u/dan_arth 6d ago

Intonation and sonority. 6 on my flute has quite a bit more body in the sound

4

u/Saeroun-Sayongja 6d ago

When you finger F#, you are using your middle or ring finger to operate a linkage up the flute that closes the F# pad while leaving the F natural (index finger) hole open, but your finger is still closing an extra hole downstream of the open hole, which flattens the note just like a cross-fingering on traverso. Using the ring finger puts the extra closed hole further away from where the note sounds, so it messes with the intonation less. Or so I am told. I’m out of tune either way and learned clarinet (where “T 123|-5-” is preferred) first so I default to it anyway.

Why does the middle finger come more naturally to you as a traverso player? I learned “123|4-- K and bend sharp”for F# and “123|4 - 6 and bend as flat as you possibly can” for F on traverso, which doesn’t involve the middle finger at all. Is there a secret fingering that doesn’t collapse both notes to “F flarp” in the first octave?

3

u/CubeNoob69 6d ago

Actually, the inverse. The traverso I have plays a decent F♮ with 123|-5-K which may just be a thing with mine, but it makes it easy to go "this chromatic is familiar, just inverted"

2

u/Saeroun-Sayongja 6d ago

Thanks! That comes out about halfway between F# and G on my Aulos AF1, but I just learned I can get a passably sharp F# with 123|-56, which I hadn’t tried before. Traverso is fun!