Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

A place for players of other folk/world music wind instruments.
Post Reply
SkB
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 12:35 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8

Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by SkB »

Was listening to some old Marvin Gaye session tapes and I'm having trouble identifying the instrument that comes in at around 7 seconds in this clip:

https://soundcloud.com/skhrmny/1a-1

And again at around 4 seconds here:

https://soundcloud.com/skhrmny/2a-1

It sort of sounds like air turbulence so I was thinking it's some sort of wind instrument/flute but I'm not sure what it would be...anyone?
User avatar
s1m0n
Posts: 10069
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:17 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 10
Location: The Inside Passage

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by s1m0n »

Got me. No idea. Either synths or some heavily processed accoustic instrument would be my best guess.
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')

C.S. Lewis
User avatar
benhall.1
Moderator
Posts: 14797
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2009 5:21 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I'm a fiddler and, latterly, a fluter. I love the flute. I wish I'd always played it. I love the whistle as well. I'm blessed in having really lovely instruments for all of my musical interests.
Location: Unimportant island off the great mainland of Europe

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by benhall.1 »

My best guess would be keyboard of some sort. Could just be a plain electronic organ. Mixed in with the other sounds, it might sound a bit different. Maybe if you could separate out the sound? I definitely can't with my rudimentary equipment.
SkB
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 12:35 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by SkB »

Hey. I actually posted this as a sort of experiment (though I didn't get too many responses to make it very meaningful haha). The instrument is, in fact, this:

Image

For those of you with the appropriate background, it may look like a bansuri. That's because it is, essentially. But obviously, it's not being played like one. The idea has been to approach the instrument like a big, "grown-up" version of a blues fife. This means that things like distortion (to the point of reaching natural "overdrive"), "punch," "bite," and "snarl" get emphasized and maximized.

The only effect/processing is a bit of snare drum compression.
AaronFW
Posts: 411
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:49 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I started with playing bamboo flutes. But I transitioned to primarily playing the Boehm flute a few lessons ago with the aim of getting good music instruction. However, I've been transitioning to playing Irish Traditional Music on simple flutes.
Location: Ohio

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by AaronFW »

SkB wrote:Hey. I actually posted this as a sort of experiment (though I didn't get too many responses to make it very meaningful haha). The instrument is, in fact, this:

Image

For those of you with the appropriate background, it may look like a bansuri. That's because it is, essentially. But obviously, it's not being played like one. The idea has been to approach the instrument like a big, "grown-up" version of a blues fife. This means that things like distortion (to the point of reaching natural "overdrive"), "punch," "bite," and "snarl" get emphasized and maximized.

The only effect/processing is a bit of snare drum compression.
Sneaky.

It looks like you’ve taken down the audio now? I did not listen to it originally since I am a novice musician and assumed others would have had better guesses than anything I could have. Or maybe I did not have time and was reading on my phone (I’ve forgotten which, or maybe it was a combination).

Though I do have an interest in flutes of all cultures.

Can you tell us about the flute? How long is it, it is hard to tell scale by the picture. Who made it, or where did it come from?

Why are you playing it like a “blues fife”? What is the inspiration for that, do you know others who do similarly?

(I did some graduate work in ethno-arts and cultural anthropology, so all the possible details are interesting to me.)
SkB
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 12:35 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by SkB »

AaronFW wrote:
Sneaky.

It looks like you’ve taken down the audio now? I did not listen to it originally since I am a novice musician and assumed others would have had better guesses than anything I could have. Or maybe I did not have time and was reading on my phone (I’ve forgotten which, or maybe it was a combination).

Though I do have an interest in flutes of all cultures.

Can you tell us about the flute? How long is it, it is hard to tell scale by the picture. Who made it, or where did it come from?

Why are you playing it like a “blues fife”? What is the inspiration for that, do you know others who do similarly?

(I did some graduate work in ethno-arts and cultural anthropology, so all the possible details are interesting to me.)
The flute was made as a standard E bass bansuri (note the large size of the holes relative to the shaft length; also consider that, though you can't tell visually of course, it is tuned according to an untempered diatonic scale). The length is about 31 inches. I believe the maker is a man named Jeff Whittier.

Why am I playing it like a blues fife? Well, I'm playing it like a blues fife about as much as a guitar player plays a guitar like a diddley bow. I initially theorized that it was possible that larger, longer pieces of bamboo would be conducive for "liberating" the percussive characteristics I recognized in the smaller, shriller fifes used in the fife and drum blues tradition (perhaps interestingly, if you reference the history of the bansuri in India, you'll find that a very similar thing happened---larger, longer pieces of bamboo allowed flutes, previously considered to be exclusively "folk" instruments in India, to become "usable" in Hindustani raga based classical music). As far as I'm aware, I'm the first/only one to try this, especially to the extent that I'm treating the instrument almost like a three-dimensional, harmonically "competent" snare drum surface. Sharde Thomas (the granddaughter of the famous blues fife player, Otha Turner) continues to maintain the tradition of her grandfather, but, of course, in order to do this, she uses very small pieces of river cane. I would recommend you check her out (she's been able to achieve a very sweet, smooth timbre) if you're interested. But again, I don't know of any others who have broken into what I've been trying to develop.

Yes, I took the audio down. I mainly just wanted to get some "objective" input as to how the timbre and harmonic behavior of the instrument (when engaged with the techniques I've been developing) is being interpreted by an "impartial" audience. Since not very many people responded to or seemed interested in the original post, I assumed there wasn't too much of a point in keeping it up, though I could be wrong.
AaronFW
Posts: 411
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:49 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I started with playing bamboo flutes. But I transitioned to primarily playing the Boehm flute a few lessons ago with the aim of getting good music instruction. However, I've been transitioning to playing Irish Traditional Music on simple flutes.
Location: Ohio

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by AaronFW »

SkB wrote:Sharde Thomas (the granddaughter of the famous blues fife player, Otha Turner) continues to maintain the tradition of her grandfather, but, of course, in order to do this, she uses very small pieces of river cane. I would recommend you check her out (she's been able to achieve a very sweet, smooth timbre) if you're interested.
I will need to check her out.
SkB wrote:Yes, I took the audio down. I mainly just wanted to get some "objective" input as to how the timbre and harmonic behavior of the instrument (when engaged with the techniques I've been developing) is being interpreted by an "impartial" audience. Since not very many people responded to or seemed interested in the original post, I assumed there wasn't too much of a point in keeping it up, though I could be wrong.
From my perspective, this forum will be perpetually available to readers into the foreseeable future, so it is always a shame when media (such as music, videos, pictures) become no longer available. When the media is no longer available, the forum threads lose most, if not all, of their meaning. For example, the thread where people post pictures of their flutes is almost meaningless; or this thread regarding paintings of pipers where most images are now not available.
But that is always a risk with today's reality of data-limits, hosting, and the never-forgetting internet. Some data is kept forever, some data will always be lost. ... all that is to say, it is fine either way. Sooner or later the audio would stop being available.
Dan A.
Posts: 453
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:19 pm
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8
Tell us something.: I can only hope that my proficiency with the whistle is steadily improving. A few of my whistles get a workout on an almost daily basis. And I'm almost certainly afflicted with WhOAD.
Location: Detroit Metro

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by Dan A. »

AaronFW wrote:For example, the thread where people post pictures of their flutes is almost meaningless; or this thread regarding paintings of pipers where most images are now not available.
But that is always a risk with today's reality of data-limits, hosting, and the never-forgetting internet.
I had a gander at the flute pictures thread. Some of the missing images could reappear if their tags were re-formatted, i.e. [ and ] in place of < and >. And or course, the worthlessness of Photobucket does no favors in that regard.
SkB
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2014 12:35 am
antispam: No
Please enter the next number in sequence: 8

Re: Does anyone know what instrument this is? Is it a flute?

Post by SkB »

AaronFW wrote:
From my perspective, this forum will be perpetually available to readers into the foreseeable future, so it is always a shame when media (such as music, videos, pictures) become no longer available. When the media is no longer available, the forum threads lose most, if not all, of their meaning. For example, the thread where people post pictures of their flutes is almost meaningless; or this thread regarding paintings of pipers where most images are now not available.
But that is always a risk with today's reality of data-limits, hosting, and the never-forgetting internet. Some data is kept forever, some data will always be lost. ... all that is to say, it is fine either way. Sooner or later the audio would stop being available.
You're probably right.
Post Reply