Before playing your New Flute do this

Hi dear flutelovers,

Before you start playing your new musical instrument for the first time, it is important that you know this.

All wind instruments become moist when played due to saliva and the condensation of hot air that comes out of our lungs, so the fibers of our flute expand with humidity and then contract when they dry.

For this reason, if our Quena is new or has not been played for a long time, it will first need to be gradually acclimatized to adapt to the humidity and its new musical life.

The “Temperature of our wind instrument” is also important, considering that it has always been in contact with the hands from the time the Luthier holds it while he is making it and it is being tuned to the person who is playing it, so we must give it the same temperature conditions in which it was tuned by the Luthier before playing it.

*How to Tempering my New Quena

~ Warm it with your hands for a few minutes to temper it on the outside.

If the weather is very cold, wrap your body inside your jacket for a few minutes.

-Then blow like when you yawn into your Flute to introduce hot air and let cold air out.

~ Start playing it for about 15 minutes on the first day, on the second day we will play it for about 30 minutes and on the third day we will play it for longer times.

*Warm up your Flute before and get the Best sound

Just as our body needs to warm up before exercising, our Quenas always need to warm up for about 15 minutes before being performed. The air we blow is at a higher temperature than that of our flute and it will heat up as we blow it.

~ We will start by warming it with our hands for a few minutes so that it begins to warm up. Then start playing it for short periods of time for about 15 minutes.You will notice that it sounds different after warming up.

Many musicians temper their flutes a few minutes before starting an event to have them ready and so that everyone is on the same page when performing them.

Keep your instrument healthy and with good sound by always lubricating your flute every one or two months, see how to do it on this link of this post  ➡ Maintaining Your Bamboo Quena Flute  or watch the video on our YouTube channel ➡ How to clean my Flute

Hope that these tips are very useful to you and that this post answers some questions or clarifies some doubts, for example... did you notice that your flute always sounds better after playing it for 15 minutes?

Blessings from my Beautiful Perú !