12/23/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/1A4Bv43zKN/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Dearest Flutist, Flautist, and Flute Player,
There are many rituals in the musical world that delicately straddle the line between dignity and absolute chaos. Clarinet reeds soaking like suspicious biological specimens, brass players emptying spit valves with the enthusiasm of medieval gargoyles, the trombone player who definitely did see the accidental but will perish before admitting it.
Yet none, NONE, approaches the majestic disorder of a flute choir attempting to tune. Future archaeologists will write dissertations on less dramatic events.
The fall of Rome? Forgettable.
The sinking of great ships? A mild inconvenience.
A flute choir tuning? Pure, unfiltered carnage.
It always begins with false optimism.
The conductor, smiling bravely, trusting the universe for reasons unknown, utters the most naïve words in the musical language...“Let’s just tune quickly.”
Quickly?
It's as realistic as a quiet piccolo, a warm church in winter, or a flute case that actually fits everything it claims to.
The first A rings out, pure and radiant, shimmering with angelic promise.
For exactly three seconds.
Then the piccolos join.
Their A is not a note. It's a weapon.
Dogs three towns away sit bolt upright.
A satellite shifts orbit.
The third flutes look up and quietly admit they’ve seen God.
The altos enter with a low, sultry moan that could be an A… if one squints emotionally.
The bass flutes rumble several semitones beneath sea level and mutter, “It’s the room. It’s always the room.”
The contrabass sighs in a register that can fertilise houseplants.
Every flute player begins adjusting something, push in, pull out, rotate, twist, plead, bargain, perform ritualistic exorcisms, waging war against the great enemy, reality.
Within minutes, the room becomes a battlefield of tuners beeping, mechanisms clicking, headjoints swinging like periscopes, and at least one flute player angrily puffing air upward in search of divine pitch intervention.
By the time these heroic adjustments conclude, no one remembers what the original A sounded like.
It has evaporated into myth.
Historians will debate it for centuries.
The conductor gives another A.
The flute choir listens and collectively thinks:
Oh.
Well.
That’s different.
They are now tuning to a frequency detectable only by flute players and bats.
Then comes The Stare.
The sacred moment.
All eyes forward.
All brows furrowed.
All ears straining.
Nobody breathing, except the piccolos, who haven’t breathed since 2008.
Someone whispers, “I think I’m still sharp,” and the entire ensemble unravels like a poorly knitted scarf.
Fifteen flute players dismantle and reassemble their instruments with the urgency of bomb technicians.
The altos blame the lighting.
The piccolos blame altitude.
The bass flute files an existential complaint with the cosmos.
The contrabass rotates its crown joint so dramatically it qualifies as interpretive dance.
When the conductor finally croaks, “That’ll do,” everyone recognises this for what it is:
A comforting, essential, survival-based lie.
Because the moment the performance begins, chaos resumes its rightful throne.
By bar ten, the flutes are sharp, the altos are flat, the basses are subterranean, and the piccolos are operating in a neighbouring dimension.
This is not a flute choir.
This is tonal migration.
A musical diaspora.
And on stage?
Ah yes, the Sauna of Doom.
The lights blaze.
The air thickens.
Your flute expands like it’s preparing for a strongman competition.
You blow a note: flat.
You blow again: now sharp.
You adjust, everything worsens.
The piccolos ascend into the ionosphere.
The altos drift lower and lower, emotionally distancing themselves from the trauma.
The contrabass rumbles a pitch so ambiguous it can only be interpreted as a cry for help.
Finally, the conductor raises the baton.
A collective breath.
The downbeat.
The first chord resonates.
It is…
well…
it is almost in tune.
And that, dear Flutist, Flautist, and Flute Player, is the miracle.
The beauty lies not in perfection, but in the shared, courageous decision to boldly pretend everything is fine until tea break.
Yours in detuned devotion, vibrating restraint, and unwavering belief in A440(ish),
Jean-Paul
Flute Geezer at TJ Flutes • Patron Saint of Tuning Trauma • Defender of Questionable Pitch • Mediator of Headjoint Disputes
P.S. Excerpts from the 2025 Flute Choir Tuning Tragedy Survey™
• 95% of flute players admitted they forgot the tuning note entirely by the time they were done adjusting.
• 84% quietly blamed everyone else.
• 73% cited room temperature, humidity, or suspicious cloud formations.
• 61% of altos described themselves as “emotionally in tune,” which—while lovely—is not a thing.
• 42% of piccolos confessed to playing sharp “for visibility.”
• 19% of bass flutes insisted they were once in tune, though no witnesses remain.
• And a unanimous 100% agreed that when everyone says, “I’m good,” it is the single greatest lie in the flute community.
