how and why did you all start playing the flute?

mutepointe · Post by **mutepointe** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 3:55 pm

hey folks: i'm a curious kind of person. how and why did you all start playing the flute? i'd like to see how diverse we all are? mutepointe

Henke · Post by **Henke** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:11 pm

It all started with whistle. A friend of mine who was playing accordion (Finnish style trad) and I got the idea that we should start playing Irish stuff after a trip to a folk festival in Spain where we saw many Irish groups. I bought a couple of whistles and started tooting. A few years later I became really inspired by Matt Molloys playing on some of the Chieftain records. So I bought myself a Dixon, then a M&E.

chas · Post by **chas** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:25 pm

I also started on whistle, with the eventual goal of playing pipes. My wife is a lifelong Boehm fluter, and a few years ago I got her a Schultz flute for Christmas. After awhile she decided she couldn't live without keys, so it became mine. It was probably a year later that I really took it up, when I got a Bleazey, a much easier flute for a beginner. Over the following year I really got bit by the bug, and now never plan on taking up the pipes. I'm looking at the flute as a lifelong project.

BillG · Post by **BillG** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:30 pm

I started on a diatonic harmonica somewhere in the 6th or 7th grade, took clarinet lessons but drove my mother crazy (squeek! Blurp!) She suggested the piano but that didn't go for long. I picked up chromatic harmonica in high school, improved in college. Grade 9 a Boy Scout Fife, Drum and Bugle Corps with me on the fife. Loved it! A simple stick of wood with 7 holes did all that. Taught myself the Boehm silver flute during grad school and some more later on.

As my family grew we determined that the fife was not a parlor instrument but the Irish flute was similar in musical approach and style. That was that in 1999.

And here I are - flute and chromatic harmonica usually.

BillG

Gabriel · Post by **Gabriel** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:32 pm

Started recorder for fun, then added whistle cause recorder only was boring, then heard a flute, liked the sound and finally built one with guidance of Andreas Rogge. Now ordered a Jon C. delrin flute and am on my way making it to my main instrument beneath the pipes.

tin tin · Post by **tin tin** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:43 pm

I initially wanted to play trumpet, but I had braces and didn't want to lacerate my lips! My aunt had a student flute, so I was steered in that direction. When I was quite little, I though the piccolo was really cool...I'm less certain now!
I started playing Boehm flute in school in 1988 and studied privately through high school and part of college. I primarily played classical music but also made some forays into jazz and rock along the way. I didn't play much flute during the later years of college, but I got back into lessons and playing classical music rather seriously after graduating. But during college, a friend brought a whistle back from Galway, which planted the seed for playing Irish music. I really started playing Irish music (on the whistle) nearly four years ago. Two years ago I made the switch to simple system flute, focusing exclusively on Irish music, and haven't looked back.

treeshark · Post by **treeshark** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:22 pm

I wanted to play the flute from quite young, so when at twelve my school was given a fair number of musical instruments, I put my name down for a flute. In due course I was brought into the presence off a lady who was to teach us, she asked me to purse my lips, after peering closely at my mouth she shook her head and said that I would never be able to play a flute as my emboucher formed a way to one side.
About 20 years later I looked into a window in a music shop in Munich and looked longingly at the flutes, but remembering what I had been told I purchased a recorder. I then played the recorder for 18 years.
A few days before I was 50 I was in a folk instrument store and there was a very beautiful wooden keyed flute, so instead of buying a sports car as middle-aged men are meant to, I bought a flute.
I discovered in due course that the lady was wrong, which even after all that time made me quite cross...

Unseen122 · Post by **Unseen122** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:57 pm

A couple years ago (2003 and 2004) I went through a phase of playing any instrument I could get my hands on. As it turned out Whsitle was probably the first one I taught myself. Then I went to Mandolin and stuck to that for a while until Carpal Tunnel happened. So for a while I tryed really hard to play Fiddle and GHBs and had bought a PVC Flute just because I thought it would be a good secondary instrument after Whsitle. Well after a while I bought a Tipple Flute and then took a brake from FLute and stuck mostly to GH Pipes and Whsitles. Then around the end of 2004/ begining of 2005 I started listening to Danu and Lunasa and I loved teh playing of Kevin Crawford so mucht that I pulled out the Flute and realized that it was the instrument I was meant to play after getting my Lejeune Flute in August. That is my story, I have chosen to stick to Flute and probably take up Octave Mandolin to do chords when I don't know the tune.

Cathy Wilde · Post by **Cathy Wilde** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:13 pm

Because my mother wouldn't let me play drums.

Sillydill · Post by **Sillydill** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:23 pm

I picked up one of those innocuous looking Waltons – Guinness Irish Whistle packs at the bookstore. At the time I had nothing more than a casual curiosity. I picked up the excellent Waltons book and perused it and thought, “I can do that!” So the set was acquired and I occasionally practiced for about a year. But the pitch was just to high and shrill.

So eventually I worked my way around to Irish flute and I'm now fully obsessed with them and their playing. I will claim to be a Scientist not a Collector. I obtain flutes to try them out and conduct my experiments. Then after I've gotten to know the flute, I pass it along to the next player (but not my Copley).

There is nothing quite so lovely as simply messing about with Irish flutes!

Jordan

Jennie · Post by **Jennie** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:32 pm

For me it was this board that inspired the addition of flute. I had begun to do _lots_ of practicing on whistle, and my dear spouse tactfully suggested that he couldn't sleep when I was playing. I mistakenly thought that flute, being an octave lower, would ease his discomfort.

Now I have a Casey Burns, I love it, and it is way louder than most of my whistles!

And I've fallen in love with the sound of the flute in Irish music. Don't ask me why it never struck me so during my years of classical music training.

Jennie

Blackbeer · Post by **Blackbeer** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:58 pm

Well I was born and raised a Catholic and although I rid myself of that curse many years ago I still have a tendancy toward doing penance for sins of thought word and deed

Take care

Tom

Loren · Post by **Loren** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:05 pm

Cathy Wilde wrote:Because my mother wouldn't let me play drums.

This is exactly why my flute playing sucks, my mother DID let me play the drums!

Doug_Tipple · Post by **Doug_Tipple** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:54 pm

I tried to learn to play the silver flute when I was in junior high school. However, when I looked around the room in band class, it became apparent to me that real men didn't play flutes. Flutes were for girls, I firmly believed. Besides, the used flute that I was trying to play was so hard to play that I was constantly out of breath. I don't know now whether it was me or the flute. So I gave up the flute, not knowing that I would come back to it years later.

Most of my life I have been a player of stringed instruments. For some reason, besides a little harmonica now and then, I started playing recorders. I remember looking at an expensive wooden recorder that I was considering buying. I told the sales person that I was not satisfied with the way that it sounded. Actually, I realize now that the sound that I was looking for was a flute sound and not the sound of a recorder. The salesperson assured me that the recorder sounded the way recorders are supposed to sound. But I didn't buy it.

I started making simple system pvc flutes about ten years ago. I don't remember what my motivation was, other than I like instruments, and a pvc flute looked like an easy thing to make, after having tried unsuccessfully to make guitars years previously. I think my introduction to the internet in 1999 was what opened my eyes to what was possible. I remember that I had a big laugh when I first learned that there was a website called Chiff & Fipple. Who was this guy, Wisely, and why did he have a website about whistles, I pondered? I still am not sure of the answer to my original query.

DCrom · Post by **DCrom** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:11 pm

I played a lot of instruments back when I was in school - recorder, saxophone, oboe, and guitar. And messed around a bit with piano and clarinet. Over the years, I dropped them all except recorder (guitar most reluctantly). Even recorder wasn't a regular thing - I practiced enough to keep up certain low level of competence, but most of the available music didn't grab me.

Then a few years ago I found the C & F site - it got me interested enough to pick up some whistles when I was visiting Ireland, and started to listen to IrTrad. I still play whistle, too, but the more IrTrad I listened to the more the flute pulled me. Dunno if I'll ever be a really good player, but I'm having a good time along the way.