Hey, did you ever play in Efmonton? There was a guy who played some mean spoons back in the day. I saw him at Blues on Whyte, I think. Maybe playing with Rusty Reed.
Never played at Blues on Whyte, though I did play in Edmonton. A few places, most memorably at the U of A’s Horowitz Theatre, as part of a music and comedy revue. But places on Whyte Ave–well, not officially. 
Disagree there. The fingerings may be similar, but the embouchure is completely different. I was a clarinet player in band and messed around with friends’ flutes, but was never able to consistently get a sound out. I was exactly like the sixth graders when they would first get to try.
Not saying they couldn’t have taught her enough to get some sound out, but she could also just know enough to know the low note would have her fingers down.
If anyone has a clip, though, we could check if it looks like she’s playing and if she’s holding down the right note.
If you can dodge a clarinet, you can dodge a flute.
I’d expect that she was in fact actually playing, but that they replaced the sound with an actual professional flautist. The easiest way to look like you’re doing something is to actually do it, and if the sound wasn’t very good, that’s very easy to fix.
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. It’s one thing to be able to,do the fingerings of a song, it’s another to get great tone, timing, dynamics, etc. But maybe she did it.
I’m a sax player. I could never get a great tone out of a flute or clarinet. Not enough practice and my embouchure needed work for those instruments.
Yes, thank you @Sam_Stone . It’s more than just the fingerings on an instrument; it’s the tone you can produce, especially on a woodwind. I still remember my flute instructor telling me that I had to “dig into” a note, to produce a real note. According to him, anybody could produce a “breathy” note on flute. But he was going to teach me to play, “like James Galway, who digs into the notes.”
And that’s what I learned.
Tony Shalhoub learned a song on the Clarinet for Monk. I’ve read interviews where he talks about it.
The character is supposed to be an amateur and it wasn’t necessary to dub in a pro.
Forgot the cite. I’d forgotten Tony has sung in musicals and released albums.
But the real question is: did Adam Sandler do his own clarinet playing in Billy Madison?
I do know that George Carlin didn’t actually play the guitar in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They used a stunt-hands shot of a real guitarist.
Semi Hijack
Can Jim Parsons play the theremin? We see him appear to play in a few episodes of Big Bang Theory. I’m utterly lacking the dexterity to play one. I have tried at a museum in Florida. My GF was able to play a recignisable tune (the theme from Star Wars) after a few minutes of practice. It looks to me like JP is really playing.
Taking this more seriously than intended: I genuinely don’t know. It’s actually pretty hard to get sound out at all if you try to play it upside down like that. But, when you do get sound out, that is how it sounds. So he could have practiced just enough to consistently get out the bad sound–possibly even playing with different variations until they found the sound they wanted.
Or they could have just had him do it live, and changed the sound in post.
If we’re broadening the scope of the thread, I wondered if Sara Gilbert can play the violin. In an episode of The Big Bang Theory, she plays in a quartet with Johnny Galecki. According to IMDB, Galecki does and is playing the cello in that episode, but I couldn’t find out whether Gilbert actually knew what she was doing, or was just faking it.
I have a memory of her also playing the flute in an early episode of Buffy too but maybe I am making that up?
Another one for the “actually plays” file is Dermot Mulroney, who did his own playing when he guest-starred on Mozart in the Jungle as an internationally renowned cellist.
If Alyson could actually play the flute, don’t you think HIMYM would have worked it into Marvin’s lullaby somewhere?
