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How to quickly fix a tight flute head joint

How to quickly fix a tight flute head joint

Aug 30, 2016

Well, that title says it all really!

Wanna know how to quickly loosen a tight headjoint?

Learn the easiest way (in history) to smoothen up a tight flute headjoint.

Without ruining your flute!

I've heard of a few different ways to do this which RUIN YOUR FLUTE! Argghhh! 

This is the proper way, using candle wax...

It'll keep your flute safe (ie unbroken!), and smooth for months.

Want more?

If you want more demonstrations of proper (awesome) flute technique, let me know and I'll be sure to send more vids to you when they're created.

"Proper flute technique, explained clearly, is like a magical quick fix!"


Hi, flute teachers and flute players. I'm going to show you in this video, how to fix a tight head joint. So when you are a student or you, if you're a student comes in and you're like, Ugh, can't get this undone. I'm gonna show you how to fix that. What you need is a candle. I'm gonna show you what to do with this.

Oh, I should introduce myself. My name is Jane Cavanagh. My business is called The Flute Teachers School. I have just written a sentence on how to beautifully describe what my business does. So I'm going to read it to you. I don't know it off by heart yet. The Flute Teachers School is an online school that shows flutists how to solve their students or their own playing issues by making difficult teaching concepts easy to understand. Providing super clear demonstrations and giving step-by-step instructions on how to successfully implement each new technique.

So I love my sentence and this video is gonna be a perfect demonstration of that.

Step one, get a cloth and clean just with the cloth, the inside of this and the outside of this.Try it again. And if it's still- this is me faking that it's tight <laugh>. If it's still tight, then here comes your wax. So take the head joint. Couple of stripes. I just did five, but it doesn't really matter down there. Hold this part of your flute by this bit.

You don't wanna hold it here because you will over time bend keys. And if the head joint is really tight, you may even break these keys. So hold it away from the keys and put flute together. It will be extremely tight. That's why you have to hold it here cause it's extremely tight, smoosh it all around and undo it.

Then you wanna remove all of the wax with your cloth. When you remove the wax, it takes the dirt with her. It's beautiful. So make sure you get all the wax off every single bit of wax, cause it's really like sticky. Chances are this will have fixed the issue. Oops, there's some wax

And you have a smooth head joint. In fact, that's made mine like too smooth. If I now hold my flute there, it's in danger of like falling out. That's how smooth it makes it. If you've got any questions, let me know.

In fact, you can let me know if you have questions on this or on anything else about teaching or playing the flute and enter it below. I will answer your question on one of these videos and you let me know by filling in this form that you could be interested in a more in-depth course about this kind of stuff.

I'd love to make a full course of these quick fixes through proper technique. But I'm wondering if people are actually interested because I'm interested. So if enough people are interested, I will go ahead and make this course on quick fixes.

But by the way, the quick fixes, I just love that little phrase because it's not really a quick fix. It's like a real fix, but it feels like a quick fix because it's such a fast, like for example, it's such a fast change to your problem.

If you're on YouTube and you can click there, which will take you to the page where you can type in your details. Enjoy having a smooth head joint. See you're in the next video.

Faster Progress Through Proper Technique ™

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Come and join Jane in The Flute Academy to transform your flute playing - one clever tweak at a time!

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