Oiling the instrument should be done three to four times during the first month, and once a month after that However, if the bore or the ends of the tenons look dry then don’t hesitate to oil the flute on a more regular basis. Overplaying can be detected easily by Michael as a maker and this will void any guarantees on the instrument. A little care and patience at first will ensure your flute serves you well for many years. Long playing sessions early in the life of the flute are likely to cause serious harm, resulting in problems with swelling and cracking. It’s very tempting when you first receive your flute to sit down and play it for a couple of hours, but this is the worst possible thing you can do for the instrument.
There can be a slight variation to these times eg an extra ten or fifteen minutes occasionally won’t hurt the flute, but done consecutively day after day it has the ability to harm the instrument irreparably. It will take up an hour a day for the first week and then you can increase the playing time by ten minutes per day until it reaches your maximum playing time.
Although your flute has had quite a lot of playing during its making, it still should be played in carefully.
This is dependent on the amount of playing that the flute gets and the climatic conditions it is kept and played in and therefore it is vital that the acclimatisation process is a gradual one. The timber the flute is made from is dried in a special dehumidified room to optimum moisture content although this won’t be the final moisture content of the flute. Too much playing too early in the life of the flute can result in serious swelling around the flute joints, almost certainly changing the dimensions of the bore and altering the flute’s playing characteristics for ever. If it isn’t done correctly the flute can be seriously damaged and never recover from the problems that overplaying have brought about. Here’s a brief listen.īut if anyone reading this does play the whistle or flute in any sort of transcendental mode, I’d love to hear about it.Playing in is an extremely important part of the process to ensure the flute’s longevity and can’t be emphasised enough. meaning give up/surrender unnecessary attachment to the habits that are bugging you, holding you back, etc. Only contemporary I’ve heard consistently creating a Celtic spiritual music and using some flute is a fellow named Seamus Byrne, who’s assumed the contemplative life of a modern monk and lives near Wicklow.Ībout the closest I’ve come is a tune I composed last year called Salim Halak - en anglais, Give Yourself Up. is depicted as playing the flute or whistle of some type. He has immense knowledge about wind instruments and the earliest music on the North American continent.Ī nd it’s interesting that the mythic Kokopelli - nomadic, storytelling, trickster deity of the Anasazi people of the ancient Southwestern U.S. Or some of the Native American religious ceremonies that used a variety of wind instruments.Ībout twelve years ago, I was very lucky to have gotten to play a bit with Dennis Sizemore, an amazing performer of all manner of Native American flutes and whistles. Or the shakuhachi used in Zen Buddhist meditation. Like the music played on the ney for Sufi ceremonies, I mean whistle music that you yourself strictly play to move your mind into a deep meditation zone. Not talking about feelings you get when you play or hear a slow air that gets you teary or spacey. Started wondering: is anybody using the whistle to play Irish Traditional-type Music to get deeply in touch with Higher Power-type feelings? And the flute is often used in Hindu devotional music, heightened perhaps by the belief that the instrument’s tonal vibrations produce a mental state that helps the listener move forward along the road to Pure Awareness. Krishna is almost always portrayed holding and playing a flute. The first day of the festival marks the vanquishing of the demon Naraka by Lord Krishna and his wife Satyabhama (pictured below, post-vanquishing). Sri Krishna Chalisa (Hymn to Lord Krishna)Ĭelebration of the annual Hindu/Sikh/Jain religious festival of Diwali has been happening bigtime throughout our part of Central Jersey this weekend. I have emptied myself of non-self so that you may fill the void with divine breath.” The Flute was asked: “What virtue do you possess that you are allowed to touch the lips of Krishna?”