Learning the Irish flute can be an exhilarating adventure! Although mastery may take some time and practice, the experience is well worth your efforts!
Listening to a range of flute players is one of the best ways to master your instrument and discover which sound resonates most with you.
How to Play
Playing the irish flute is an art, requiring much practice to master. But the effort pays off; its beautiful tones make an exceptional instrument!
First, it’s essential that you learn the correct way to hold your flute. Ideally, place it on your labiodental crease under your lower lip for best results; this ensures that when blowing into the embouchure hole, air is directed in an efficient fashion.
Next, it is necessary to learn how to play the flute by learning its fingers. For this task, a beginner lesson book and fingering chart may come in handy.
Play in front of a mirror to get your fingering just right and learn quickly and efficiently how to play guitar. This can also help speed up learning time!
Embouchure
Your Irish flute’s embouchure hole shapes and dimensions can make an enormous difference to its play. Each embouchure hole shape has been developed to achieve different acoustic characteristics that cater to the specific needs of different players or makers.
Classic elliptical embouchures often create too much noise and unresponsiveness for many flutists, while more flexible embouchures such as type 2 or two semicircles allow better venting while producing lighter sound that’s easier to manage.
An Irish flute’s embouchure hole can help players achieve volumetric effects by controlling where air enters it. Altering its size also can increase air speed by forcing air through smaller openings.
Breathing
Breathing is one of the few essential bodily processes you have control over. Breathing involves exhaling oxygen and carbon dioxide through your lungs – those pinkish-gray organs located beneath your chest that store air – into and out of them respectively.
Capillaries line the lungs, facilitating oxygen and carbon dioxide from outside air into your tissues – this process is essential to human survival.
Teaching oneself the flute involves developing strong tone control and breath management. While teachers or books may provide these lessons, it’s also beneficial to observe other musicians playing and experiment with your embouchure.
Fingering
Fingering is a technique for flute players that enables them to produce higher notes on narrower bore flutes by altering how air enters their embouchure hole and “overblowing” an note.
Start out by trying a narrow-bore flute or one of the lower fife pitches; these instruments make playing high notes easier, which is key for mastering this technique.
To finger, hold the flute against your mouth (first pressure point), and then place your index and middle fingers over any open holes on either end of it with either hand. Alternatively, a left-handed flute holder could do this too.
Scales
Scales in music refer to groups of notes arranged for some musical purpose and written or played ascending or descending patterns.
Scales play an essential part in both improvisation and composition, helping musicians identify the notes that create pleasing melodies.
Scales can also help to add depth and fluidity to certain progressions, like 12-bar blues. Furthermore, learning a few scales will improve overall fluency on the flute.
Simple wooden flutes known as D flutes feature six holes and play D scale without cross-fingering; more complex system flutes can be found with other keys available; these instruments can often be seen playing Irish music pitched at E flat, B flat and C pitches.
