this is a video on flute maintenance
we're going to be going through cleaning
the inside of the flute the outside of
the flute
and general maintenance
needed to keep your flute in working
condition
so we're going to start with cleaning
the inside you never ever want to
immerse your flute
in water it's going to ruin the pads in
the inside of the flute
you always want to clean it with a dry
cotton cloth
using the
cleaning rod
that comes in
comes with your flute
you want to take the cloth
thread it through the needle of the the
um cleaning rod like this
and then fold the cloth over the top of
the rod
and then you want to take it
and just push it
through
the base of the flute
one way pull it out
and then push it through the other way
this should clean the entire instrument
well the entire
body joint
it the same thing goes for
for cleaning the foot joint you just
want to fold it over
and then push it through
each way
the head joint is a little bit harder to
clean since it's harder to get it all
the way
up the head joint
so you want to push it as far as you can
through you should be able to see the
cloth through the mouthpiece
and then you want to take it out
and just take the cloth off and then
with your finger
you want to try and get as much of this
condensation out of the inside of the
mouthpiece as possible
if you leave too much condensation in
there it's gonna build up and then erode
the metal on the inside
um
so to clean the outside of the
mouthpiece not the mouthpiece of the
instrument you want to take another
clean
cloth
and you want to wipe down all of the
the instrument
making sure to remove all the
fingerprints and all of the oils from
your fingers
because the oils on your fingers will
take the silver off
um
off of the instrument and it's going to
end up looking like this
all the silver is going to be gone it's
become discolored
and just
pitted and pretty gross so you want to
make sure that you get all
of the oil off
um
all of the fingerprints olive oil and it
should leave the silver nice and shiny
um the rods cleaning the rods is a
different story
you have to clean
in between the key
joints and underneath the rods and to do
that you want to get a um something sort
of like this
it looks a little bit like a mascara
wand
and then a paintbrush at the other end
you could actually use a cleaned mascara
wand or a paintbrush that was clean and
you just want to work the
the
spoolie end of the
brush through
all of the little areas and
clean
around all of the foot the feet of the
petals
and the the joints
then you can take the
paintbrushy end
and sort of clean in between
all of the um rods
and underneath them
like this
um so that's cleaning the outside of the
flute now comes the general maintenance
so you want to
make sure that all of the screws are
tightened
but you don't want them too tight so you
want a small screwdriver something sort
of like this this one's made for glasses
and
this screw here as you can see it's kind
of loose
so you just want to take the screwdriver
sorry
fit it in
and then screw it
but just until the screw stops you don't
want to tighten it too much it's going
to knock the rod
out of
alignment and then your keys aren't
going to seal right
so you want to be able you should check
every
week or so to make sure that all of your
screws are tightened
and then while you're checking that you
should be checking on your
keypads
um
over time the keypads can dry out or
they can wear out
and they wind up looking
sort of like this
um a key that's in good shape is going
to look something along the lines of
this
so if they dry out they're not going to
seal right you're going to get air leaks
and your instrument's not going to sound
right
so you want to make sure that you check
on those regularly
and if they are dried out you need to
take them somewhere like the music and
arts
to um have them replaced
and the last thing is you want to um
make sure that you oil
the head joint in the foot joint so that
they go in smoothly and it reduces the
friction so you're less likely to damage
your instrument and a lot of people say
that you can use chapstick to do this
and that's really not a good idea since
chapter chapsticks have abrasives in
them
and that's going to scratch up the metal
so you want to get
like a legitimate joint oil
to use and you don't have to do that too
often just every once in a while when
the flu starts to stick
so that's how to properly care for and
maintain your flute