Introduction and General Information about Flutes:
Please watch the video below to learn the basic hand positions and how to blow into a bansuri. If you do not understand Punjabi, you may use the Close Captioning (‘CC’) feature on YouTube.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUDr2CxDxuM&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
NOTE: You may see the entire series of lessons here.
Introduction and General Information about Flutes:
Please watch the video below to have a general idea about the instrument. If you do not understand Punjabi, you may use the Close Captioning (‘CC’) feature on YouTube. I have also included the English transcript below the video.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0nC4pIcqzU&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
Today we’ll talk about flutes. Basically, there are two types of flutes, straight flutes and side flutes.
The straight flutes such as this penny whistle, have a mouth piece like this, and these are played holding like this. Our Algozay is also another example of these.
And the side flute, like this one, these we hold on to a side to play. And, these have a blow-hole like this one right here. I’ll show you a few examples.
First of all, I have , no examples of straight flutes. First is this Penny Whistle. It is played like this
[music]
Another example of a straight flute is this Chinese flute. You’ll see that in any straight flute, there is always a hole after the mouthpiece like this one and it is always cut on an sharp angle. So it becomes the same thing,
as we blow on an angle on this side flute, The sharp cut makes our straight blow hit the edge. When the air we blow hits the edge, it goes in and out rapidly and flutters. The sound of flute is not created by our blown air. Flute already has air in it. Our blowing just gives it a push to vibrate. Our blown air itself doesn’t vibrate.
And, this is a Chinese fuke (air), I mean a flute. Of course in China it needs Chinese air to play. You may have heard its unique sound.
[music]
And, the third example of the straight flutes are these Algozas. Because it is a folk instrument, so the makers normally drill the holes without any precision, and generally these are out of tune. As you see these Bansuries.
These holes have been drilled according to the laws of physics, with mathematically precision. But as you see on these Algozas, all holes appear distributed equally. Having said that, Algozas sound really great when they are slightly, just slightly out of tune with each other. As you see here. You play these together by keeping rhythm in your blowing. For example
[music]
The second way to play these is holding the keynote on one and play the notes on the other. For example
[music]
Just like that.
Now the side flutes, I have two examples here. The first is this one, it is a standard orchestral flute (C).
Playing this is very similar to the Indian Bansuri. Making sound out of it is a little easier than a bamboo flute
as it has a mouth piece.
[music]
That is the way to play it. And the Indian flute (Bansuri), we will also talk later in detail about how to play it or not. It is also capable of producing all the notes of an octave.
But its greatness is that, the other flutes sometimes play the notes rigidly like.
[plays]
But the Indian Bansuri can also play slide so that means it can mimic vocal.
That is its greatness. We will discuss it later in detail, for now it is played like this
[music]
Like that.
Later we talk about how to blow into it and how to play notes on it.
That would be for another time.