Flute Lore

The Mountain Ocarina is a new breed of ocarinas. Invented by Karl Ahrens, these little fellows will fit in the palm of your hand. They have a sound quality quite good for an ocarina, and are capable of about one-and-a-half octaves. Mountain ocarinas come in two keys, C, and G. The C’s are a bit larger than the G’s.

Mountain Ocarinas come in a couple of different materials:

Wood

Polycarbonate; a type of hard plastic

And Aluminum, very solid little bugers

The mountain ocarina is a ‘pick up and play’ type instrument. Everyone (musical experience or not) should be able to get a sound out of it at once; unlike most flutes and wind instruments (Western Concert flute, clarinet, trumpet etc.). The fingerings are quite easy to memorize. Start with all holes covered, then uncover holes (bottom to top) with the four right fingers, three left fingers, and right then left thumbs, consecutively.

Ocarinas are capable of all sorts of different music styles; but I (this is a personal preference) think they sound best in the Celtic/Irish genre (they also sound admirable in gospel music and christmas carols).

Recently, I visited Jamestown. In the gift shop I found some cheap bamboo fifes.

The visitor center

The Fifes were only 2.00, so I said, what the heck, and bought one.

Basket of ‘Bamboo Fifes’ in the shop

An artistic picture of the unopened fife.

Then of course there was that gosh darn piece of fluff that kept on bothering my dog, so I says,
“Johny, You’ve got to…
oops, sorry, got a little off track there.

For a 2.00 fife, It plays surprisingly well. It has the same range as a six hole keyless fife ([It’s in the key of C] It has low D, E, F, G, A, B, C mid D, E, F, G, A, B, C, and High D, E, F, G, B. About 2 1/2 octaves. Here is a sound sample of the scale

Theobald Friedrich Boehm (1794-1881), the man behind the modern flute (Western Concert Flute). He was born April 9, 1794–Munich Bavaria, Germany–the son of the goldsmith Karl Boehm. As most boys of the early eighteen-hundreds, he learned his father’s trade.

Boehm was very interested in flutes, and soon he had used his gold smithing skills to create his own flute. At age eighteen, he had joined an orchestra, and by twenty-one, he was lead flute in the Royal Bavarian Orchestra. Now, he was making flutes for himself, as well as for others.

At twenty-four, he married twenty-two year old Anna Rohrleitner (1796-1875). Altogether, they had eight children; one daughter and seven sons. First came Maria, two years after their marriage; then, following: Ludwig, Karl, Theobald, William, Max, August, and Otto.

Boehm started to experiment with different flute makeups. He was the first person to believe that the flute holes should conform to an acoustical system, rather than being limited to the finger reach of a flautist. In pursuit of this belief, he painstakingly designed a complex system of rods and pads that would accomplish his goal. He also experimented with different types of materials: tropical hardwoods, gold, copper, silver, and nickel. His first model was a wooden one, with a conical bore (this is known as the ‘ring key flute’). A while later, he remade it with a cylindrical bore, and a metal body. Many flautists of the time disliked Boehm’s flutes; they thought they sounded trumpet-like. When he produced his metal version, many musicians thought they sounded even more metallic and un-flute-like (especially in native Germany).

After his death on November 25, 1881, French flute makers modified his original version. These flutes were then copied by American and Japanese manufacturers

The ‘Western Concert Flute‘ is the type of flute played in an orchestra.

When one pictures the word ‘flute,’ in their mind, one of the pictures that may come to mind is this: a long silver tube with many thin rods, openings of different sizes, and an embouchere hole (this is the place that the flautist blows to create a sound). This is more or less what the average Western Concert Flute looks like, although some are made of silver-plated brass, gold, nickel silver, and wood. The Western Concert Flute has a cylindrical bore (as apposed to conical), which means that the inside part of the flute is even. In a conical bore, the inside is slightly tapered.

The Western Concert Flute is capable of roughly three and a half octaves, and is generally in the key of C.