I began to make handcarved Native American Style Flutes in 2011, in Aromatic Western Red Cedar, which goes under the name of Dream Flutes.
All my flutes are tuned in Concert minor scale, but are meant to be played in the traditional pentatonic scale.

My flutes comes in a range from low Eb minor to high C minor. Low ranged flutes (F-Eb) are around 70 cm long and have a beautiful deep, rich tone. Middle range flutes(G-F) are around 60 cm and high ranged flutes(C-A) are ca 50 cm long.

I also love composing music and have done so since I was 11 years old.
With my new instruments I recorded the CD - Blue skies.
The Cd has eight calming, meditative tracks with the Native American Style Flute along with harp and sounds of the nature.
You can listen to them on :www.myspace.com/thereselowdin1

Thursday, 26 January 2012

Should I build a 5 or 6 hole flute?

In the early stages of my flute making the placements of the finger holes made me really confused. Should the flute have 5 or 6 holes - where are they supposed to placed on the flute? I had no idea and I looked everywhere to find some good info.

When you start to make a flute I would recommend to begin with 5 holes. Just because the NAF (Native American Flute) is played with a scale called -pentatonic scale, which is based on 5 notes (see the black keys on a piano) The flutes are always played in a minor key.

Example on a pentatonic scale is:

Am would be - A,C,D,E,G,(A2).

A really good site for 5 hole fingering placement is:


http://walkingridge.net/native-american-flute-hole-placement-tool-gui/

Here you just measure the bore of your flute and put in your measurements and- voila. You have the exact placements for your 5  holes.

When you have made a few flutes with 5 holes you can begin to explore the 6 hole flute. What is different between the two is obviously one hole, but also, with a 6 hole flute you always have to keep your third finger from the top on. (You are still playing in a 5 note pentatonic scale)

The good thing about a 6 hole flute, comparing with a 5 hole flute, which is restricted to the pentatonic scale, is that you can play all notes (all 12 semitones/half notes) in a western scale, which means that you can play any music you'd like. (scales that are based on 12 notes)

                                                                    5 versus 6 holes

When you have the right placements of your holes, comes the fun part. Tuning your flute. I will go through the whole flute (chambers, measurements, bore sizes, tools and tuning in a coming posts)


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)