How To Play The Flute
Jeff Cook
that Ian Anderson admits that he couldn't play the flute "properly" till the
late 80's. It's a pretty long story, so if you don't want to sit and read
it on-line, save this post as a file and read it later on. It is worth a
read though...
My first ownership of a musical instrument was the more than slightly
disappointing result of mail-ordering a genuine high grade plastic Elvis
Presley ukulele. With imprinted likeness of the great man's autograph and
different coloured nylon strings, this wretched piece of tat was just about
playable, but failed to stay in tune for more than thirty seconds. It was
supplied with pitch pipes to enable tuning the notes of the open strings and
a chord chart to songs like The Campdown Races and Yankee Doodle Dandy,
which I could not remember Elvis actually having made famous. I was about
nine at the time.
At age eleven, I persuaded my father to buy for me a Spanish guitar, spied
in a music shop in Edinburgh, where we lived, and suspiciously cheap at £5
($8). This ferocious beast would not be tamed until fitted with steel
strings and pressed into an orgy of three chord strumming with the young
John Evan and Jeffery Hammond as reluctant witnesses, some five years later.
A solid electric guitar of nameless and vague origin came and went before
the purchase of a true name instrument, the Harmony Stratotone. Harmony and
I taught each other the rudiments of Black American blues courtesy of T-Bone
Walker, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker et al, whose records were bought by
pooling our meagre resources or, more than likely, by just pooling
Jeffrey's.
Later came the Burns Black Bison, an elaborately horned devil played through
a Burns 30 watt amp and which was soon traded in against a vintage (although
then a mere few years old) white Fender Stratocaster. This was purchased
from Lemmy, the rhythm guitarist with Reverend Black and The Rocking Vicars
for thirty pounds. Lemmy and I probably both wish we had kept the thing to
this day, since it would be worth around ten thousand in the condition in
which we owned it. Lemmy went on to a lengthy career with Motorhead and a
lifelong entanglement with the loudest bass guitar on the planet.
Around this time, I coveted the Shure microphones used by some of the
professional bands around the Blackpool area. Trading in the Fender, I
acquired the services of a Shure Unidyne Three and, to pad out the part
exchange, a shiny Selmer Gold Seal flute, in neat carry case with no playing
instructions; not even in Japanese.
No longer playing the guitar, since Mick Abrahams had by then joined the
band, I rounded out the musical trio of '68 instruments with a Hohner blues
harmonica, the Marine Band single reed version which, as I quickly learned,
you had to suck more than blow to get the blues thing happening.
At this time in mid '68, the Tull PA system was a brace of 30 watt Vox AC
30's, wired through a little mixer made by someone called Edwards. It had
five inputs and two mono outputs. Since one of the Vox's was a bass model,
you didn't want to stand on the left side of the Marquee club when Tull were
on if you wanted to hear the vocals.
My instrument line-up increased to include a hot water bottle, alarm clock,
tin whistle and the mysterious and almost legendary Claghorn, the resultant
bastard offspring of an unlikely midnight pairing of ethnic bamboo flute and
a saxophone mouthpiece. At the bottom, was taped the plastic bell end of a
child's toy trumpet and the whole thing wrapped in layers of parcel tape to
hold it all together. "Dharma for One" soared on the searing strains of the
mighty Claghorn, if a little loosely in terms of pitch and reliability.
The only guitar which I had retained, principally for writing songs, was the
Harmony, which now resonated uncertainly with knotted strings and missing
pick-up. The first songs for the Stand Up album were written with this poor
old wreck and the missing pick-up was found and later fitted to a three
string Balalaika in time for the recording of "Jeffery Goes To Leicester
Square".
My first Tull acoustic guitar was a Yamaha, the cheapest model in their
range, and the first mandolin was a bowl-back European-made thing purchased
from a little shop in Denmark to annoy Mick with on the return trip by
ferry, when I wrote "Fat Man".
Martin Barre kindly gave me a Gibson SG pointy horn electric guitar which I
ventured to use on the Benefit album, as occasional rhythm guitarist.
THE FLUTES:
With our first trip to America, my French Selmer flute gave out and was
replaced with a US made Artley, a basic student model sturdily made for the
school band trade. At one time I owned more than twenty Artleys, in various
states of repair (or lack of) and each tour in the seventies started with my
finding the best bits to put together to make up three playable instruments
for the duration. Having given most away to charity auctions over the years,
I retain only a couple, now largely unplayable.
For a while I switched to 600 series flutes by Pearl, a Japanese company,
and then more recently in the early nineties to Sankyo Silversonics and the
US-made 2100 and 3100 Powell flutes. I use the Powells for recording and
take a Sankyo and a Powell on tour. The intonation and sonority of the
Powell is better, but the Sankyo blows louder and easier, especially when
the player's lips are fatigued and thus less articulate. The Powell has a
narrower bore and a more demanding Q or P headjoint than the free-blowing
Sankyo raised shoulder NSR1 headjoint. My practice, or kitchen, flute is a
Yamaha student model, cheapest in the line, and well recommended. I take it
on holiday and leave it assembled when at home to pick up and puff on
whenever passing. It undoubtedly helped when I gave up smoking, a good few
years ago.
THE GUITARS:
The guitar with which I am most associated, especially in the seventies, was
the US produced Martin 0-16NY, a small bodied so-called "parlour" guitar
which I first found in a shop (would you believe it?) in Tokyo during our
first visit in 1972. I still own three of these guitars, although they have
been reworked with slimmer contoured necks and new bridge pieces to improve
intonation. At the time of recording the "Aqualung" album, I was briefly
playing an Aria Japanese guitar. By "A Passion Play", I was on the Martin
New Yorkers. I also have about twenty classic Martins dating from 1834 to
the late 1930's. These are all wall-hangers rather than players but they
have featured on some recordings, notably "Too Old To R & R" and other
tracks from that period where I used 0-42 and 0-45 models.
During the eighties, I switched to guitars from Andrew Manson, an English
luthier, who works in Devon producing hand-made guitars for aficionados of
acoustic instruments. Based on traditional designs by the Martin Company as
well as on the ideas of Andy and myself, we have come up with modern
variations on the theme, giving a compact guitar with the resonance and
playability associated previously with the big "jumbo" style guitars
favoured by Country artists. The sexy little parlour guitars are not at all
common in pop and rock music: indeed, I am probably one of the very few to
use them. The instrument currently on tour with me is the smallest ever! It
is a 3/4 size parlour guitar based on a French design of 150 years ago. I
sent Andrew Manson the drawings and measurements and even he was surprised
at how well it played and sounded, especially fitted with one of the Fishman
transducer pick-ups which I have been using since the late eighties.
Below are a few more of the instruments which I currently use, together with
the more pedantic but equally important electronic counterparts to make them
actually heard in concert. Also listed are some details of principal
recording equipment in my studio.
Concert Flutes by Sankyo (Japan) and Powell (USA)
Alto flutes by Sankyo
Acoustic Guitars by Andrew Manson (UK)
Kitchen practice acoustic guitar by Norman (Canada)
Electric guitars by Schecter (USA)
Acoustic bass guitar by C. F. Martin (USA)
Bamboo flutes by Patrick Olwell (USA)
Tin Whistles by Generation (Ireland?)
Piccolo by Phillip Hammig (Germany)
Harmonicas by Hohner (Germany)
Mandolins by Ozark and Ibanez (Japan) and Fylde (UK)
Mandolas by Andrew Manson and Ozark
Octave Mandolins by Ozark and Paul Hathway
Bouzoukis by Paul Hathway (UK)
Recording equipment:
24 track analogue recorder by Otari
2 track digital recorders by Panasonic and Sony
Mixing desk by Soundcraft (Saffyre)
Monitoring by ATC 100A speakers and Genelec 1030A speakers.
Headphones by Sennheiser (HD480 Classic)
Microphones by Shure Bros.
Various signal processors by Sony, DBX, Alesis, Yamaha, Drawmer
Recording tape by Ampex and HHB.
Live performance electronic equipment:
Flute radio system by Shure
Monitoring by Shure in-ear system
Sound processing by Alesis (Q2)
Microphones, Shure SM Beta 58
and Countryman Hypercardioid headset flute mic
Guitar pre-amp and sound-shaping by Zoom (9030)
Monitor mini-mixer by Mackie (1202)
Standby monitor for keyboards, Turbosound passive low profile 2 x 12
Tuner by Boss (TU-12)
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I am probably both the first and the last person to ask about learning to
play the flute. Not because I don't take seriously the many requests for
advice, but because, although fairly widely recognised as an interesting but
self-taught fumbler, I have neither the vocabulary nor the skills to be able
to pass on what I have discovered for myself. But since you ask...
I began with the instrument in 1967 when I had just turned twenty, and at a
time when my guitar playing had become a bit stale and unfulfilling. Also,
we had at that time decided to find a really good guitarist and with the
interest shown by Mick Abrahams in joining the group (then the John Evan
Band), it seemed like the perfect time for me to learn another instrument as
well as concentrate on the not-too-good vocals with which I was stuck since
no one else could sing at all!
So, after fiddling around with the Irish tin whistle and the blues
harmonica, I took the fateful plunge and part-exchanged my Fender
Stratocaster (purchased a couple of years before from a certain hard-up
Lemmy, later of Motorhead, but at the time with Reverend Black and the
Rocking Vicars).
The choice of a new Shure Bros. professional microphone was easy: what was
more difficult was to find another instrument to at least make up the
difference in the part-exchange, since the shop owner wasn't too keen on
giving me cash. The notion that violin or cello might prove possible was
quickly swept away when I confirmed that, having no frets on the
fingerboard, both might be a tad tricky to play in tune. The saxophone
looked dauntingly big and complicated and anyway, we already had two sax
players in the band at the time. Then, my Jackdaw eyes caught sight of a
shiny silver flute hanging on the wall. This proved too much to resist. It
seemed at once to combine the portability and compactness of the mouth harp
but with the greater potential for playing in different keys and all scales.
(I think chromatic is the musical term.)
And so I became the proud owner of a Selmer Gold Seal concert flute in C and
joined the other guys in the van to head off to some awful pub gig in the
north of England. Sadly, while everybody else, or so it seemed, was able to
get a note or two out of the wretched thing, I could not, for the life of
me, produce so much as a twitter and put the new acquisition away for the
next few weeks in acute embarrassment.
Towards the end of that year, we were due to head south to Luton to meet up
with Mick who was set to join the Evan band, but the reality of the
commitment was already proving too much for some band members. First the two
sax players announced that they would not stay, and then John Evan and
Barrie Barlow decided that they too had had enough. That left Glenn Cornick
and me to team up with Mick and his regular drummer Clive Bunker in a group
which, although calling itself the John Evan Band, merely grasped the
opportunity to take advantage of the few gigs which had been arranged by our
new London-based agent Chris Wright.
Our first few rehearsals were taking us down the path of blues based
improvisation and a repertoire mostly of things which Mick had played for a
while, giving me the chance to chime in with some elementary huffing and
puffing on the flute which Mick, to his credit but ultimate undoing,
encouraged. I figured out (or so I thought) where to put my fingers on the
instrument since Theobald Boehm's ergonomic excellence of design left few
alternatives. (I found them).
By trial and error I hacked out the riffs and simple improvisations which
echoed my limited guitar technique, which earlier had posed no immediate
threat to Eric Clapton's burgeoning career. But the major crossroads (O.K.,
O.K.) was about to loom large.
Jeffrey Hammond, my chum from the early days of the John Evan Band in
Blackpool was, by now, also in London studying fine art at the Central
College Of Art And Design, and had acquired a liking for Jazz, and a few
L.P.'s to go with it. Notable amongst these were an album by Roland Kirk,
the sax and flute player, and Ornette Coleman. Of the two, Kirk had the
simpler and to me, more useful approach: punchy melodies and gutsy, bluesy,
improvisation which sent me walking home from Jeffrey's bed-sit near
Archway, North London, one night with the strains of "Serenade to a Cuckoo"
ringing in my ears.
The next day, after a few minutes of trying, I managed the first few bars of
the verse and found the courage to take the idea to Mick as a fully fledged
flute instrumental for me to attempt on stage. The simultaneous singing and
playing which Roland Kirk employed had already come naturally to me: I had
used this approach before as a guitarist and to an extent on the tin whistle
and mouth harp, as well as flute, knowing that such "scat-singing"
techniques were legendary in the traditions of both Blues and Jazz.
The reinforcement of my tentative flute tone by singing the note in unison
gave me confidence and, ultimately, the bravery to trade phrases with the
guitar and drums and to lay down the basis of the style which started to
make an impact on our listeners in the early months of 1968 when we
gratefully took on a residency at London's famous "Marquee Club" in Wardour
Street. John Gee, the manager of the club, was a Jazz buff and saw in me, I
suppose, the more sensitive fledgling musician of which he approved; more so
than, perhaps, the loud and aggressive guitarists who would rock the Marquee
in a fashion less subtle than in its initial days as a Jazz club.
It was to honour his support and encouragement on a personal level that I
wrote and recorded the not very good, but well-intentioned "One For John
Gee" later that year.
While the double act resulting from Mick and I having a more or less equal
role in the early days of Tull proved popular, the impact of the flute, from
a media point of view, gave the band an identity which offered something
unique in a developing British music scene populated by guitar heroes. From
a musical perspective however, it was sometimes an uphill battle, struggling
to be heard above the exciting clamour of the blues and rock guitar-driven
music which formed the backbone of early Tull.
When Mick left the band in December of '68 to be replaced by Martin Barre,
it offered me the chance to broaden my flute playing by moving out of the
blues form and towards the use of a more eclectic mix of influences, some
half-formed from childhood memories, some, more recently adopted from
Classical music, Asian music and the more adventurous peer group progressive
pop and rock work of the time.
Curiously, Mick's departure also re-awakened the guitar player in me; not
only acoustic and electric guitars but mandolin, bouzouki, balalaika and
almost anything with strings (and frets) attached! But that's another story.
The Bach piece "Bouree" became my next flute party piece on stage, after
hearing it repeated over and over from the bed-sitbelow mine in Kentish Town
where an English student was attempting to learn Classical guitar in his
spare time.
Although, as I recall, it was the harmonica playing which prompted my
tendency to stand on one leg during solos, the press put the one-legged bit
together with the novelty of my flute playing to come up with an "image" for
me. Although I self-consciously resisted this to begin with, it soon came to
provide an enduring visual focus for the band and I had to remember to
dutifully comply, at least when the photographers were snapping.
For the next twenty, or so, years, I continued with my home-grown style of
playing. This, unfortunately, embodied many incorrect fingerings and dubious
harmonics requiring constant changes to embouchure and angle of breath
stream to compensate as far as possible for the tuning discrepancies induced
. Playing some passages quietly was a problem: to get the note to sound at
all sometimes required brute force and a more subtle performance seemed
often beyond my capabilities.
I began to regard my flute-playing reputation as an impediment, rather than
an asset, and the chore of integrating my performance with the complex and
often forceful band arrangements, tended to become frustrating.
When my daughter, Gael, was coerced (as little girls often are) into taking
up an instrument at school, I suggested boldly that the Tuba was too big;
Violin and Cello too difficult; Saxophone too expensive and that I might
just have a perfectly acceptable old flute which she could borrow, quite
cheaply, for the year or two required.
A month or so later, on hearing the customary struggle to play some
perfectly easy passage of infantile musical mediocrity, I offered with
benign and lordly patience, a few tips on how to perform the said novice
piece.
"Oh no, Daddy," came the swift and deflating response: "That's not how you
play an E. You have to have your little finger there on that funny key down
at the bottom at the same time. And you don't put your first finger on the
left hand down for that D in the second octave. Oh, Daddy! Get a life. Or a
second job." (Actually, I'm making that last bit up, but you get the drift).
I was off to India on a promo trip the following morning and so, it was a
few days later that I called our Production Manager, Kenny Wylie, to get one
of the flute specialist shops in London, to send by fax, a fingering chart
to my hotel in Bombay.
In between amusing accusations by the usually polite but occasionally
contentious Indian media of ripping off the frighteningly similar one-legged
stance of Krishna, the flute-playing God of Hindu tradition (Honest to Gods:
I never saw his act), it seemed like a prudent idea to retire to my hotel
room at every opportunity with the grim realisation that I had some urgent
work to do.
The next few weeks, on my return to the UK, were spent in trying the
correct, although to me alternative, fingerings which I should have learned
in the first place. It was a little like learning to ride a bike with your
hands crossed over on the handlebars but, with perseverance, it gradually
began to make sense.
At about this same time, I received overtures from Roger Lewis at EMI's
Classical Music division, who asked me to consider recording an album of
instrumental flute music.
After my saying, "Thanks, but no thanks," a couple of times, Roger didn't
give up, so I cranked out a couple of demos which passed the test. Andy
Giddings and I began the recording of the album "Divinities", which was the
debut of my attempt to redress the errors of wicked, uneducated youth. Since
that difficult time, not many hours, let alone days, go by without my
picking up the flute to play for both practice and personal enjoyment. The
old riffs and solos sound the same: they are just more enjoyable and easier
to play. These days, I keep a beginner's student quality flute in the
kitchen as a convenient tool for self expression, rehearsal, and
song-writing as well as stirring the soup, and a much more expensive and
sweet-sounding solid silver conservatory grade model not too far away, in
the event that I don't mind cleaning it afterwards.
Therefore, the lessons to learn by example, should you so wish:
If, like my daughter, you are taken by the urge to try a musical instrument,
whether by inclination or demand, beg, steal or borrow the object of your
tentative affection. Don't, for goodness' sake actually buy one or worse,
let your parents buy it for you: (Then you really are going to have to have
to play the damn thing, whatever it is). Try whistling or humming Silent
Night, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, or the Spice Girls Greatest Hits and if
the folks around you are not covering their ears, you may assume that you
have something of a musical ear. Then, and this is important, assuming you
like the feel of your new friend between your lips, arms, legs or other
bits, have a lesson or two from a proficient teacher. This will, at least,
get you putting your fingers in the places mine didn't want to go for the
first twenty years.
Finally, a word or three about the types of flute you might encounter.
The shiny silver or gold one you see in the Symphony Orchestra, is the
modern realisation of a design by Boehm patented in 1850. It was a vast
improvement on the earlier efforts of countless others which embodied the
use of extra keys to enhance the playing possibilities beyond the
limitations of the six finger-hole precursors found throughout the world in
many cultures. Indeed, the flute, in whichever of its various guises, is one
of the most ancient of musical instruments. Its pure wave form
characteristics, combined with an oft-quoted Phallic symbolism, seem to have
secured for it a special place in the hearts and minds of many a young
female goatherd, not to mention the thousands of young people who take up
the instrument each year, making it arguably the most popular "real"
instrument both at school and for private lessons.
Assuming that you don't want to take up the six hole bamboo flute, the Irish
flute or tin whistle, or any other of the ethnic varieties, you will be
looking at one of many makes of metal, fully chromatic concert flutes. It
may well be Japanese in origin (fine to excellent), American (excellent to,
well, more excellent) or Chinese (check please). Over the years, I have
played Pearl, Yamaha, and Sankyo in the Jap camp; Artley and, more recently,
Powell amongst US makers.
Roughly speaking, $400 will get you something pretty good if you are willing
to pick a used model from a reputable specialist dealer. $1000 and you are
getting serious. $15,000 - $20,000 buys you a top quality hand-made platinum
or big carat gold professional model. But make sure that the flute comes
from a good retail supplier. Don't be tempted by the pawn shop or even the
music store which specialises in electric guitars in odd shapes and colours:
even new flutes out of the box have been known to be not acceptably set up
to play, and the unfortunate student may be left struggling, unaware that
the instrument itself, or factory quality control is to blame.
Some concert flutes have "open" holes, making them a little more difficult
to cover easily with slim feminine digits such as my own. Some have closed
holes which are easier to play, the only disadvantage being that you cannot
"bend" notes (glissandi), although that technique is not like to be part of
the normal teaching convention, or often applied in classical music. The
lowest note on the concert flute is normally C, but an extended length foot
joint may be available to take the lowest note down to B but the extra
weight and length probably don't justify the extra cost for a beginner, or
me!
The traditional "purist" configuration would be an open hole model with
"in-line" keys, but the "off-set G" makes for a more natural, less stressful
hold with the left hand. A "split-E" mechanism is useful to help with the
production of high E.
The "sharp" end of the flute is the section called the headjoint. The lip
plate and embouchure hole, (the bit which your quivering, tired lips freeze
against in cruel parody of the shark in "Jaws" after dental anaesthetic) can
vary in design and sophistication, but the standard version supplied with
your flute is probably best to start with. I use headjoints with slightly
raised lip plate and deeper "chimney" to the hole giving better projection
and ease of playing to the lower notes, but it's all too easy to get caught
up in the never-ending search for the unattainable when the problems lie
with basic technique rather than with the equipment.
The student range of concert flutes will most likely be of brass or
nickel/silver construction, plated with nickel or silver, but solid silver
or even gold and platinum can be used, albeit expensively. These metals
give, usually, a more mellow, darker tone. The brightest sound comes from
silver, plated again with a fine layer of silver and with thin walls to the
tube, particularly the headjoint. The headjoint itself contributes most to
the identity and quality of tone: even a cheap student flute can be
dramatically improved by the purchase of a better headjoint, provided, of
course, that the main body of the flute, its key assembly and key pads are
in good working order and are well adjusted to prevent leaks or "sticky"
keys.
So, there you have the potted guide to the decision-making process of taking
up the flute. The fun of playing any musical instrument, even rather badly,
should make the effort worthwhile, but if you ultimately prove to be simply
not cut out for musical performance, remember that the best and easiest
reward of all comes from sitting back, closing your eyes and listening to
the liquid dreams which we call music.
The best flute teachers in the history of planet Earth are out there on CD
just waiting for you to listen; whether they are playing the works of Bach,
Haydn, and Mozart or providing some of the great moments of American Jazz.
Consider the work of the Indian Bansari traditionalists like flautist
Hariprasad Chaurasia or the wonderful Irish Low Whistle playing of Davy
Spillane. Or if your liking is for the rock stuff, then in the best Spinal
Tap tradition, "Puff on, Cleveland"!
Ian Anderson, 1998.
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