The young man sat there, beneath the tree, playing haunting sounds through the hollow limb. He picked up the fallen branch and discovered that by blowing through the limb and covering the holes, he could make beautiful music to match the feelings he had in his heart. As it fell, the wind blew over the hollow piece of wood and the young man heard musical voices in it.
#NATIVE AMERICAN FLUTE MUSIC CRACKED#
As the woodpecker kept pecking, the limb cracked loose and fell right beside the young man. The woodpecker started to peck holes, tapping along the length of this wood. The limb had been hollowed over time from the weather. As he sat there, thinking about the beautiful young girl, a woodpecker came and stood on a hollowed limb that was over the young man’s head. Feeling rejected, he went into the nearby old growth forest and sat at the base of a dead cedar tree. There, he dove off the rocks and swam across the river to show her that he was skilled, but still, she paid him no mind.
One day, when all the girls went down to the river to get water, he followed them.
Whenever she came near him, he would proudly ride his horse around, but still, he failed in attracting her notice. The young man was always trying to grab the young girl’s attention, but she never seemed to notice his efforts. The thick, short horizontal lines in the middle of each bar can be ignored for now (consider them rests, when no music is played, only silence).A long time ago, there was a young man who became interested in a beautiful young girl. On these lines, and between these lines, we place notes – written representations of sounds. Figure 1.1 shows a staff, made of five horizontal lines. Don’t worry if you don’t get it just yet. I will mostly use three sharps in order to represent actual key of F# minor. For example, Nakai’s notation uses four sharp symbols. Now, I will mention Nakai’s notation once again (since there are mentions of it within other articles on FluteCraft), but what I’m going to teach you will be universal music notation. With this, you’ll be able to play with other musicians, although let’s make this clear: learning theory and notation is one thing, but mastering this requires a lot of practice. Read music written by others and play it.You’ll be able to write down your music using standard notation, so other musicians can play it.
#NATIVE AMERICAN FLUTE MUSIC HOW TO#
The main goal of this series is to teach you how to read traditional and universal music notation, and understand what you’re reading and why we do things the way we do. I wanted to find the middle ground between necessary knowledge and simplicity. I decided to simplify this series of tutorials as much as possible, yet not so much that you would not learn everything that one must know about music theory and notation. Thus, I want to offer you a short series of tutorials explaining the basics of music theory and music notation with Native American flute in mind. That said, sometimes it’s easier for people to learn both theory and notation when they are given a book explaining these subjects in the context of a specific instrument. In addition, not all parts of standard music theory and notation reading apply in case of playing Native style flutes, even when played with other instruments. Music theory and note reading apply to all instruments and all musical genres. Music theory is universal – there is no such thing as “different music theory for different instruments”.