How to tune a flute

Dear Jen,
I love watching and learning from your flute videos and I want to thank you for taking time to actually make them. Your passion for the flute is very inspiring.
I just started learning the flute but I had to move after two lessons for my college studies. I was hoping if you could teach me (us) how to actually TUNE a flute ? Once again, thank you! J.

Dear J.,
That's a good beginner question.
You'll find the basic beginner instructions for flute tuning are in this pdf article.

A list for beginners who need to break down the basic steps of tuning a flute is below.

How to Tune a Flute

1. Check that the headjoint cork is in the right place using the cleaning rod's tick mark, lining it up with the center of the embouchure hole. If unsure about this practise, read about headjoint corks here.

2. Set up your headjoint-body relationship:
Pull out your headjoint 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch (the amount of headjoint draw will change millimeter by millimeter, especially as your tone quality and centeredness of tone develops. So stay flexible and experimental about the amount at first).

3. Next: Take the daily practise time you need in order to develop your tone. In general:
Obtain your best possible tone quality over at least a month of focussed daily tone exercises(or a decade, why be stingy? hahhaa). You cannot skip this "finding a good tone" step.
Tone is part and parcel of the tuning process.
For example, flabby breathing, warbley flutey warbles, unsure embouchure (or a too tight embouchure) and/or possible whispy haunted house flute noises can not be played IN TUNE.

4. After a centered tone (a pure, singing sound) is established in at least the low and middle octaves, start working with a tuning drone during your practise, just like you work with a metronome. Simply work at all your flute pieces and studies, and longtones/scales etc. while matching tones with a drone or a generated in-tune pitch. If you are serious about doing this the fastest way possible, order a $22 copy of "The Tuning CD". It's the best ear-development/tone development flute tool you can have. See: www.thetuningcd.com
Alternately, you can buy one of those $25 flat credit-card sized electronic tuners that sounds the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, and is calibrated for A440 etc. Get one that is also a metronome and tuner all in one. They're very useful.

Also: Get your private flute teacher to help you spot-check your tone, dynamic range, breath support etc. Don't try and work in a vaccuum. Lessons each week get your ears and body skills all assembled for use.
And playing duets with the teacher are even MORE valuable for understanding tone and tuning and how they relate.

5. Caveat for intermediate flute students:
As you experiment with matching pitches you will learn to draw the headjoint out or push it in depending on the ambient temperature of the room (cold rooms make flutes go flat when they cool down; hot rooms make flutes go sharp etc.)
You will also find that as your playing style matures, you will eventually find one headjoint draw that seems to work 95% of the time, and can mark it with ink on the flute.

In general, all these stages of flute tuning and flute tone develop go much much MUCH easier if done with a teacher.

And, of course, it's an endless topic.
This "learning to play in tune" stage of flute playing actually lasts for the rest of your flutey days.
And, yes, there is no such thing as a flute that plays in tune just by blowing and pushing down keys. And just to make the study of "playing in tune" so vast we mere mortals cannot comprehend, every musical pitch is actually modified depending on its musical context.

In fact every thing I know (and I still know nothing---as my father used to say....) about tuning a flute is written in my website's vast tuning articles page.

Have at 'er. (as the west coast pirates say.)

Hope this helps. Happy summer holidays.

Best, Jen :>)