Tooting the Pipe

I fell in love with the flute when I was around 5 years old when I saw the daughter of one of my mother’s friends playing one. You never forget your first love.

While working one of my first jobs as a teen in the 70s I bought my first flute. A student model Gemeinhardt M2. Minimum wage was like $2.65/hr at the time, so with a part-time job, it took a while to pay off. Even though I had been a guitar player for years at that point, and would be for decades to follow, I played that silver-plated pipe as often as practical. This is still way pre-Interwebs, so opportunities for effective ad hoc learning were limited.

By the time I moved back to NM around 1990, it happened that due to a variety of circumstances, I again found myself fluteless. It wasn’t until January of this year (2019) that I decided to do something about it. That meant taking my old soprano recorder, which had been collecting dust for a lot of years, and seriously trying to learn how to play it reasonably well. It wasn’t a flute, but it was close. Sort of. After a few months I added alto and tenor recorders as well. Fun as they are (and I still practice with them every day), they just weren’t quite filling the void (or octave range). I started thinking about how I might get a playable flute. I didn’t want to resort to a $70 online offering, but swinging a couple of thou just to scratch a nostalgic itch seemed a little irresponsible for someone of the “boomer” persuasion.

Enter this past Labor Day weekend (start of Sept). From the depths of corners unseen from my move to NM appeared an unexpected gift: my first flute. It was a little worse for the almost 30 years of unintentional neglect, but it was most definitely my old partner. Like I said, you never forget your first.

I took it in for COA (cleaning, oiling, adjusting) and whatever minor repairs necessary to get it playable (head cork and one pad). I didn’t want to invest too much if it wasn’t going to rekindle my wanting to play. Turns out, I’ve been merrily practicing on it every day since.

Almost exactly two months on, I’m probably more committed to it now that I was in the past. I have more time available to practice. I better understand the necessity of fundamentals. The resources available online just for sheet music alone are worlds away from 40 years ago. Back in the day, since it wasn’t my primary instrument, I could only really count on getting notes up to G6 (on a good day). I’ve now gotten that up to A#6, with B getting almost dependable and C7 coming along. Not too shabby for two months. It seems my retained muscle memory (along with whatever crossed over from the recorders) has been a great time saver. I am not a virtuoso by any stretch of the imagination, but at this stage of my life, I don’t need to be. It’s enough that I’m enjoying the instrument I’ve always wanted to play. (Don’t expect any media from me — I’m very not good.)

What’s next? Other than more practice? It desperately needs a re-pad. I didn’t want to do it before I was sure I’d be playing, but it’s not even a question now. Of course I’d love to get a more recent step-up or intermediate-level flute with some of the fancy bells and whistles, but as was the case earlier this year, it’s hard to justify the expense. So I guess I’ll be keeping this 40+ y.o. keyed tube maintained as well as I can.

I just can’t believe I was lucky enough this year to get not just a flute but the return of my baby. After all, you never forget….well, you know.