bamboo flute

[arethinn]

I have just gotten around to buying the flute I was "told" a few months ago (by randomly getting a certain catalog in the mail not too long after having had that particular business mentioned to me by name by someone who could not have known my mailing address) I was supposed to actually really get around to getting, rather than just sitting about thinking "someday I would like to have a flute". I knew I wanted a lower-voiced instrument, but that I couldn't purchase one of the very lowest few keys (Bb below middle C - C#) because they were likely to be too large for my hands. I messed about with some Java pianos for a while trying to get a sense of what the various keys would sound like (for while I can read and play music, generally, I can't conjure up the tones in my head by hertz). Somewhere between D and F ("concert voice"), then. Unable to decide further I thought that pulling a rune might work well, since they can also be read just as letters, so I did that and got dagaz, or D, the meaning of which rune has other relevant positive meanings. Key of D it was, then. Filling out the order form, I see that with the postage, the total comes to $42.00. Hail Douglas! Also: name of flute seller = Woodsong Instruments, so more good stuff there.

Comments

[happydog.livejournal.com]

D is a pretty fabulous key for flutes, and I'm with you; the lower the better. Congratulations on your new venture!

[arethinn]

Learning to play it will be something else again. I can make a flute make the right noises (whether transverse or, um, whatever the opposite of transverse is), but specific fingering, and thus actually playing a coherent melody line, is currently pretty much beyond me. I may have to jump into the School of Mess Around Until It Works. *laugh* Actually, the bigger obstacle is not disturbing other people with my practice, but hopefully I'll be less annoying to the Other Residents (of the house, not fairies, although them too, I suppose) at 27 than I was at 8, which was the last time I tried to play the flute in anything like a serious manner (and that was a keyed metal concert flute, not this type).

[ex-casteylan314.livejournal.com]

D is an excellent choice. Most Irish music is written in the key of D. Also the corresponding guitar chords, should anyone wish to accompany you, are all easy ones. :)

[michiexile]

Stumbled across your journal via silmaril and love it already.

As for lower-voiced reeds or winds, I very recently stumbled across a guy selling armenian dudugs at a fleamarket in the vicinity. These are kind of like bagpipes or shelms (? skalmeja in swedish...) in tone generation, but with an insanely thick double reed - mine (a soprano) measures some 2mm each half-reed at the mouth, and goes out to some 1½-2cm thickness where it joins to the actual pipe. The pipe - with 8 finger holes, and about 20cm long - plays in tone like the lower registers of a Bb clarinet!

Just thought you might want to know... :)

[arethinn]

Oo er. Dunno if I'm up for a reeded instrument. I love the clarinet though. Can you use regular reeds on it like you might buy in a music store? or are they not replaceable?

[arethinn]

Now that you mention that, I seem to remember using lots of D and A chords in my stumbling attempts at guitar music when I was dating my last ex-boyfriend... Unfortunately enotsola's chosen future "wouldn't it be nice if" instrument is not the guitar, but the fiddle (specifically, electric violin, I think); but like no one ever wrote Irish music for the flute and fiddle, eh?

[ex-casteylan314.livejournal.com]

Irish music can be played with just about anything, doesn't have to be written specifically for a particular instrument. If it's for your flute, then so long as it's in the key of D, then the fiddle will be able to play along (just so long as he remembers it's F# in there).

Songs in any other key can be transposed to D, with a bit of math & musical know-how: if you need me to show you how to do that I can. Do you read music?

[arethinn]

Yes, and I know how to transpose (although I'm not sure I could do it on the fly, reading a piece of music; I'd want it re-written out in the new key). I have no idea if he does, though.

[ex-casteylan314.livejournal.com]

Hehe. No I can't do it on the fly either.

[michiexile]

The dudug has very specialized reeds that I've never seen before; but the guy selling it to me had some three-four extra reeds lying around as well.

That said, the reeds are extremely sturdy and should last more or less forever; and the instrument plays very differently to more .. modern/mainstream reeded instruments. (I've gotten a tone out of a bassoon once, and played clarinet and saxophone quite a bit...)

The most impressive about it is the deepness of the tone though. From a short piece of wood the size of normal soprano pipes you get a full and deep clarinet tone. I probably shouldn't go into the larger dudugs he demonstrated *prrrrrrrrr*