Blowing the Melody

Swabian Jura region, which is present in Germany, had been the witness of Flutes, one of the oldest musical instruments of the entire human civilization. Since then, the culture of playing the flute has been continuously grown throughout the globe with a wide variety of structures, shapes, techniques and sound. The flutes, depending on their origin, can be divided into several categories, among which mostly two categories should be accounted for according to the geographic positions of their origins, viz: Eastern Flutes and the Western Flutes.

Eastern Flutes:

There are several kinds of eastern flutes, among which the most famous ones are the Dizi and the Xiao from China, the Shakuhachi and the Shinobue from Japan, the Ney from Turkey and the Bansuri from India.

Dizzi

It is a Chinese flute, used since the 1st. Century BC. These flutes are available with all the keys, such as A to G, and usually, most of the professional players own a set of all seven flutes. The flute is used in folk and opera music and orchestras as well.

The Xiao

This flute is another ancient and popular Chinese instrument, aged around 1400 years. It is a bamboo-made open-hole end-blown flute. It is available in several varieties and suits best with Chinese classical music. The Japanese bamboo-made end-blown flute was originated from the Chinese Xiao flute during the 8th century. Its blowing end is cut in an oblique manner directed outward, producing subtle variations in tone colours.

Shakuhachi

The Bansuri is the Indian side-blown flute, made of bamboo shafts with six to seven finger holes, as lengthy as 30 to 75 centimetres, is found to have a mention in the ancient Indian texts, such as Rigveda. It is used in Indian Classical Music.

Western Flutes:

There are several western flutes such as Concert flute, Piccolo Flute, Alto Flute, Bass Flute, Irish Flute, Native American Flute etc. We might have a look at these, as follows:

The Concert flute

It is often told as C flute is a renowned horizontally played western flute, based on the C key. The flute consists of three parts, the head joint, where the mouth hole exists, the body and the foot joint. The latter two parts consist of tone holes.

The piccolo

It is a western flute having three parts. The head joint has the mouth hole and the body consisting of the key work and the holes. It is mostly played in the romantic orchestra.