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| How To Make A Tone Blowing across the blow hole (Mukha Randra) to make a tone may take some time but, with just a little practice, you will soon be getting strong, clear notes. Remember; you must blow a thin stream of air ACROSS the opening, NOT INTO the opening. To begin, hold the flute extending to your right side. This is the traditional position whether you are right or left-handed. Of course, you can always be UN-traditional and position the flute out to your left side but it might cause unnecessary confusion. Place the edge of the blow hole just above the edge of your lower lip. A mirror can help you get a good embroucher (mouth position) in the beginning. DO NOT cover any of the finger holes at first. Now place your lips together and blow a thin stream of air across the blow hole as if you are trying to split the stream in half on the edge of the blow hole. Half of the stream will end up going into the blow hole and half will go across it. Holding The Flute Properly Your hands should be positioned so that your left hand faces toward you and the index, middle and third fingers covers the first three holes. These are the ones closest to the blow hole. Remember that the flute extends to the right. Your right hand faces away from you and the index and middle fingers cover the next two holes. You can cover the last hole with either the third finger or the little finger. Playing a Scale Now place the flute to your lips and take all fingers off the holes (but don’t drop your flute!). Blow across the hole like you did before and when you get a tone (this is the note we will later call 7.) Cover the first hole with the index finger of your left hand. The tone will change to a lower pitch(note 6). Practice changing the tone by lifting and closing just that first hole until it is easy to do. The next step is to cover that first hole and blow the note and then cover the next hole with the middle finger of your left hand. This will produce note 5. You can now play three notes and can even try a simple song. "Mary had a Little Lamb" can be played with just those two fingers. The sequence is: 7 6 5 6 7 7 7 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 6 5 6 7 7 7 7 6 6 7 6 5 Go ahead and learn to play this simple tune before we go on. Now we will add the next note in the scale by covering the third hole to produce the note 4. You are learning the scale backwards. This is the easiest way to learn it on the flute. After you can play the four notes with your left hand cover the next hole with the index finger of your right hand, note 3. You should have the idea by now. Continue the process until you can play the final note. This is note 1 with all of the holes covered. If at any point you can't play a note start over or at least back up to a place where you can make a pleasant sound. If you get a shrill high pitch instead of a lower pitch as you put down a finger try blowing more softly. This sound is a valid note in the upper octave which you will learn about later. Practice going up and down the scale until you can play any note by itself. You have now learned to play the diatonic scale. A great many songs can be played using this simple scale. Here is the sequence for Beethovens "Ode to Joy": 3345 5432 11 233 22 33 45 5432 11 232 11 22 31 23431 234321 52 33 45 5432 11 232 11 The Upper Octave If you know anything about music you'll notice that so far you are missing a note of the scale. This is the high "do" of the do-re-me scale, we will call it 8. You can produce this note in two ways on a simple six hole flute. The easiest way is to cover all of the holes except the one closest to the blow hole. Knowing this, practice the scale again but add this note at the top of the scale. That is go from 1 to 8 and from 8 to 1 until you can do this easily.The time it takes to learn how to do this varies widely from person to person. The second way to play the eighth note of the scale is to cover all of the holes and "overblow" the flute. That is, purse your lips together more than usual to increase the speed of air across the blow hole. You are not blowing MORE air, just FASTER. When you do this, the upper octave will jump out. Any of the notes you have learned can be overblown to produce a second scale that is higher in pitch than the first one you learned. This second scale is called the upper octave or second register. This is more difficult to do however and I suggest you master the lower octave first. Learning The Chromatic Scale So far you have learned that a simple flute with only six holes can play fifteen separate tones. You may be surprised that it can play ten more. These are the half tones or sharps or flats of the chromatic scale. This is pretty advanced. Use the fingering chart below to practice playing these notes by covering certain holes half way or covering a few holes below some holes to produce notes that are between some of the notes of the diatonic scale. |
