A precious gift from Sydney

In the early part of June this year, I have finally mastered the skill of flute repadding, and successfully revived my flute which I made a mistaken decision and did a stupid DIY repadding of it and completely silenced my flute for nearly three years since 2011. The details of the story about how I silenced it can be accessed by clicking here.

Driven by some factors, I decided to buy another pack of flute pads in May, and had it a go for the last time. Having experienced innumerable times of failure in the precedent years, my skills in adjusting the shims to make the contact air-tightness of the tone hole and the pad must have progressed that I finally get all the 16 notes sound though the sound quality is not very good, it produces sound and I can play flute again. If any of the readers is interested in knowing more about how I revived the function of my flute, please click here.

Every night after I have made the flute sound again, I play it for 15 minutes routinely during the peak time of my medication round and before going to bed. One night when I landed on one page of the sheet music titled "To A Wild Rose", a memory about a chat with my teacher during the lesson time one evening in 2000 on how Asians looked at rose, and my talk on rose before our flute lesson started amused my teacher. This bit of memory urged me to practice this piece. I am still able to play it without much mistake because it is not long, and more importantly, it is a slow beat tune which suits me. So I decided to record it into a video for my teacher.

I only know my teacher's first name, however I know where she and her family were from. As she is a prominent flutist, I am pretty sure Google can find out her where about. It was as I had anticipated, a few strokes on the keyboard, There were a list of snippets relating to the name I was after displayed on the monitor. I sent her an e-mail, and in less than 5 minutes, I got her reply saying how surprised she was when she received mine.

Having not been in touch for 9 years, as her student I knew she must be curious to know if I am still playing flute, if not, why? The stories related to my Yamaha flute I have possessed for nearly 21 years have been posted in my blog site, so I sent her the links. This saved me a lot of time for me to do the story telling.

Teacher was saddened by the story about how I mistakenly DIYed the repadding of my own flute in 2011 resulted a total dis-functioning of my flute. From a video clip of my play on To A Wild Rose I recorded right after I had finally revived my flute 3 years later, she told me that the sound of all the notes under G were still not right although they sounded like they were. In another e-mail she sent to me she mentioned about sending a flute which she had not used for long time. I thought that was the flute she used in the lessons for me during the two year period when I was learning from her. That one looked quite old as its silver plating was almost faded. I thought perhaps she intended to give me one with some faults in it for me to repair. So I replied to her, yes I loved to have that flute if she really wanted to give away.

About a week later, I received a parcel sent from Sydney and I knew immediately it was a flute from my teacher. I could not wait to drop the thing in my hand and hurriedly proceed to unpack it.

As I took the first layer of the packaging off the parcel, the elaborated protecting packaging began to tell me it could not be an unwanted old flute worthwhile to be packed so nicely. But why my teacher sent me something else? When I finally unzipped the case and opened it, a glitteringly silver plated flute was exposed to me, it was a brand new flute. My hand shook. Shook violently. Why did my teacher gave me such a valued gift?

I assembled the flute joints and tested a couple of the low end notes. "oh! my goodness", the sound was solid, compact and crystal to me as a beginner flute player. I had never experienced flute sound of this high quality.

I rushed to my computer and sent my teacher an e-mail to acknowledge the receipt of the parcel and more importantly to tell her how I felt upon unpacking and discovering the very surprising and unexpected gift. I told her that all I had felt was only concluded in "Thank you very much".

Since my receipt of the new flute, I have been practicing flute daily, and recorded some of them for my teacher as a way of telling her "your former student Kuei-sen is saying thank you through playing with this precious gift you have generously presented."

--the end--

Repairing my flute

Since the day in September 2011 when I messed up the functionality of my flute due to an ignorant expectation of attaining a perfect sound quality should I replaced the pads of the entire flute, I was driven by a regret and anxious mood and started my 3 year long repairing journey for my dear Yamaha flute as shown in this picture.

The quest began with a thorough search on the web. There, I read a lot of posts relating to the technique, tool, experience, etc. In addition to learning from others experience in repairing a flute, I developed my insight into the techniques. However, the progression was very slow and frustrating, as when I applied the knowledge and technique I learned from scratch, the lowest note I could make a sound out of it was still the B after I re-padded  the whole lot. The only thing I learned from this phase of my attempt to fix, was only working on one key at a time, and only moved on to the next key after the last one satisfied me with its solid and clear sound.

The progress was standing still for a long time. I gradually lost my patience, and stopped working on it all together. Then the second attempt arose after months of waiting for it to emerge. When I set out to the second round of repairing I only noticed the set of pads was worn out due to the repeated pulling and inserting of the pads out and into the pad cups. So I logged in my eBay account and ordered another set of pads. This time I ordered one of dearer price thinking and hoping the second set would do a magic result for me.

The second set of pads did not bring me any luck. I
only progressed one or two more notes down, And I DIYed a feeler for testing the tightness round the pad circumferential contact with the note hole. I also made an illuminating tool like the picture shows, for detecting the air leaking spots of each re-padded note hole.

With this basic tools, I ran my second round of repairing, it was 2012 and 2013. I reviewed the questions asked and answered in the flutists forums. Whenever I got new idea out of reading the posts on the web, I took my repairing kit and my flute out to go through a round. The best condition I could achieve was down to the G. The rest of the lower notes were giving no sound for me, even those did sound sounded dumb and not solid and compact at all. I realized every one of the pads that sounded was not up to a standard of airtight.

At this stage, I came across a post mentioned about using silicone to solve the air leaking issue. Some of the comments laid to that author said that the silicone idea really worked for them. I adopted that idea, bought a tube of silicone, applied the jelly on the pads and press them to be in contact with the sound hole and secured them with a good tension by tying them with a rubber band. Left it to harden overnight, and removed the rubber band the next day.

Out of my expectation, I could get the sound all the way from high C+ down to low D with a lot more solid sound quality. However, this condition could only remain good for less than 5 minutes. After that time limit, the sound began to worsen and disappearing. I guessed the condensed water on the inner wall of the flute  caused this problem.

This silicone stage lasted for nearly two years and used two packs of pads. Each time I restored a couple of notes, but at the same time I found a couple of other notes lost. It was not the real savior to me. I realized why I was charged $80 for the fix of a leaking problem of my flute on G+ note by an instrument shop on the North Shore 15 years ago. The flute re-padding is a high level technique; it is an art; it requires great deal of patience; it is a sacred task. It is impossible to get the good job done by someone without these qualities of personality.

In early 2014, I bought another pack of pads of the medium price about $6.50 from eBay and set out to re-pad my flute for the final attempt. I had more experience in adjusting the shims to make the contact tightness around the rim of the sound holes by now. I surprisingly saw I had somewhat mastered this re-padding skill, that this time I got every note sounds solid and crispy, though it is my standard and might not be acceptable to a professional technician. But it sounds ok to me. (The video inserted here is how its sound is like after it was revived in May 2014.)

To me, my flute is revived this time. I use of the time when my medication is at its peak to play my flute again, though the slow pieces only, I have given my flute its new life.