The Native American Flute (NAF) is a pretty straightforward instrument. Made of wood, they come in five and six hole versions. The five hole is simple to use since virtually every note you play sounds good with other notes. The six hole has more variety but you can make poor sounding combinations. Most flutes are six hole, you just keep one hole covered all the time to play it like a five hole flute.
Each flute only plays one key. I have three, probably the most popular ones: One in the key of A, one in G and one in F#. My first flute was an A made by High Spirits. A nice flute but an inexpensive, massed produced, product that had it’s limits. After about nine months I upgraded to a quality flute and have never looked back.
*** Photo of flues ***
The A and G flutes where made by John Stillwell of Ancient Territories and I love those flutes, they have such a mellow sound.
** Audio of the A ***
** Audio of the G **
Two pretty complete web resources: Flutopedia and Flutetree. Yahoo Groups also has a NAF flute group.
One reason the flute is easy to learn is that a lot of the music see doesn’t require you to know how to read music, it has a notation that actually shows which holes to cover. Here is an example from Flutopedia for a less than traditional Native American song, Shenandoah:
If you don’t live in the west it may be hard to find a NAF flute instructor, not to worry, first, as I said above, without much effort you can teach yourself. The second option is that around the country there are a number of ‘Flute Circles’ these are places that like minded folks get together to play and teach. As you can imagine, NAF players are a casual lot, never met another player that wasn’t a really nice, nonjudgmental person. Find a flute circle, go sit in, and learn from other players. The two in my area are:
The Potomac Flute Circle and the Northern Virginia Flute Circle. They meet monthly, usually at someone’s home. The Potomac Flute Circle also sponsors an annual Festival as well as an annual retreat as well as other periodic events.
Two final notes.
- I’ve read in places that the NAF, and similar flutes from other cultures are very limited instruments because they only play in one key and don’t have all the note options of a carinate, sax, etc. Not so. Granted there are only so many finger combinations you can make with five holes but a lot of playing the NAF is how you blow into it. Changing the airflow changes the way the notes sound allowing you to add a great deal of richness. In the audio examples above you most of what you hear is me embellishing the basic notes by using different breath techniques.
- There is a mind set that needs to change when playing something like the NAF. Yes, you can find sheet music to play from, but a lot of the fun in the flute is the ability to quickly and easily improvise. After playing with the flute for a few minutes, getting comfortable with where the holes are, you will be able to play music that sound like someone wrote it. Very different from typical ‘Western’ music that is far more complex to learn. Playing the NAF is about playing from the heart, not the sheet music. I do play songs from music, but often I just sit and play - it’s more fun :-)