Why the flute?

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 10:33 am

Oh Well! (What do bodhran players know..I knew it was a jig.) Still, it was an amazing performance Dave!

I still remember a hornpipe that you played once, written by a friend of yours, just a lovely tune. What was the title?

MarkB

DanD · Post by **DanD** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 10:37 am

Saw Chris Norman play his 100+ year old boxwood with Helicon at the Memphis Dulcimer Fesitval in the mid 80's. Wow!

Played Baritone horn in band from grade school thru all of High School, but got involved with string instruments after college. Without getting too New Agey about it, the connection to the music feels stronger with a wind instrument than with a string instrument, & especially so with the flute. Something about transforming your breath into glorious sounds (ok, ok, they ain't there yet, but that's the goal!!

) is deeply satisfying.

ChrisLaughlin · Post by **ChrisLaughlin** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 10:41 am

Never buy one of those cheap tin-whistles, they lead to harder drugs like flutes, accordions, and bodhran.

Doh!

michael_coleman · Post by **michael_coleman** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 11:27 am

The dark earthen tone and range of expression. Also, it had the quickest learning curve for me.

cocusflute · Post by **cocusflute** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 2:01 pm

Oral fixation, baby, oral fixation.

RudallRose · Post by **RudallRose** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 2:46 pm

Mark:
Frank Grady wrote it. It's called Mystic Hornpipe. Yes, beautiful. I'm hoping to record it this winter (along with a few other items). I should share the ABCs on it.

Dan:
I just got to play last week with the woman who found that 100+ year old Boxwood Rudall that Chris Norman plays. She (Linda Hickman) sold it to Chris way back when. She's a fine player, lives in NYC (is from Colorado, so comes here every so often) and is with (married?) fiddler Tony DiMarco.
She's great. Fun and very talented.

Doc Jones · Post by **Doc Jones** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 6:51 pm

It was Loren's fault.

I once asked him what the "Best" Low-D whistle was. His response was "a flute". I started snooping around and got hooked.

I too play many instruments. None has the intimacy of the flute. No other instrument is such an extension of one's own body and soul.

Doc

gcollins · Post by **gcollins** » Fri Sep 03, 2004 7:51 pm

Why the flute or any instrument?

We perhaps need to think that we are in control, we have free wills and are animate, thinking beings. The world around us is a distinct group of objects we can manipulate for our own ends--living trees, dead wood, organic and inorganic, this computer. All that is true, like light as understood as particles; afterall there is thousands of years of evidence.

And when the topic comes up, we say "I" this and "I" that. We are ego--we cannot help it.

Then why the flute? why THIS flute?

...because the flute you have chose YOU as a tool through which it could be a flute and play music. So the question equally becomes why did this flute choose me and my poor embouchure? somehow, if we wake from the zone when playing the flute, we may be able to sense that is is also true.

eilam · Post by **eilam** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 12:32 am

g - of course thats all true, but why did the M&E pick me and not a keyed Wilkes?
what does it say about me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whistlin'Dixie · Post by **Whistlin'Dixie** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 5:01 am

[quote="gcollins

So the question equally becomes why did this flute choose me and my poor embouchure?

[/quote]

Oh great, now I have an image of my flutes sitting in my wooden trunk crying "Get me out of here!"

Mary

BillG · Post by **BillG** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 5:46 am

It all began in 9th grade as a Boy Scout playing the fife in a fife, drum and bugle group in Queens, NY. On and off for years thereafter. I checked out Skp Healy's fife site and found he made flutes too. Hmm! A little Virgo research and learned they were in the same key and were keyless and . . . to quote from Tom Madden (NJ Irish flue player), "The fife's just not a parlor instrument."

On to the flute buying the first one from Dave Migoya's site when he was selling flutes - a Casey Burns. And its all history.

Glad to read this thread since I've been off the flute - and my other instruments - for about two months - and am now enthused to get back into it again. Thanx for the tread.

BillG

gcollins · Post by **gcollins** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:26 am

eilam wrote:g - of course thats all true, but why did the M&E pick me and not a keyed Wilkes?
what does it say about me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Because my good and great brother of the hat-ready perfect head....the wilkes is still looking for you! And the M&E? Smart flute, if you ask me....not many flutes can go and live with a musical family in one of the great US meccas of art and craft. Geez, man, if I could be a flute (let's not get too freudian here), I might choose you too!

gcollins · Post by **gcollins** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 6:29 am

Whistlin'Dixie wrote:
Oh great, now I have an image of my flutes sitting in my wooden trunk crying "Get me out of here!"

Mary

Hilarious, Mary! You might be on to something. Maybe those flutes are being strategic--choosing you so that you'll trade them to the person they know you'll trade them to!

G

eilam · Post by **eilam** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 9:15 am

>Whistlin'Dixie wrote:

>Oh great, now I have an image of my flutes sitting in my wooden trunk >crying "Get me out of here!"

>Mary

>>Hilarious, Mary! You might be on to something. Maybe those flutes are >>being strategic--choosing you so that you'll trade them to the person >>they know you'll trade them to!

>>G

G - I really think we should drop the subject, I just remembered one of your flute dropped a long way, and I don't even want to think it jumped!

The M&E is my most played flute, and I only wrote the thing about the Wilkes, because it was in the other room "flute played "off with California" after beating its owner to death".

eilam · Post by **eilam** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 10:04 am

I started playing the flute in my second year at high school, listening to Jethro-Tull.
pretty soon after that, I started ditching school to play music (I was already ditching to go surfing, now I ditched when there were no waves as well!). I'd be so much into the music, that a knock on the door, and I'd need a few second to come back to this Earth.
Music still gets me to do a lot of traveling with out the need for a ticket.

ahh yeh - and I never became the rocket scientist that my parents hoped I'll be

Chiff and Fipple Forums

Why the flute?

Why flute?