Last year I went to England. Part of my work there was to do concerts with the London Mozart Players.
Up to that point I had not been interested in classical music. Since then it is all I listen to especially music of the baroque period.
I am finding that this style of music is begining to work it's way into my flute noise making session's.
Prior to this it is hard for me to say what music influenced my flute. Early in my relationship with the flute I listened to John Rainer , RC Nakai, Kevin Locke...but I stopped listening to flute music about 18 years ago. I would get frustrated at not being able to mimic/copy the songs. My wife suggested putting all my flute recordings away and play my own music. I listened...

So what influences your flute music. Is it another flute or the songs of creation/nature or Bach, or AC/DC ...

I'd love to hear a baroque inspired NAF piece! I'm not very good at mimicking music I hear either, though I try to listen to most all styles. Right now I'm satisfied to play whatever comes into my heart and mind while trying to think "melodically." Sometimes I'll try to play the treeline or a bird's flight, but mostly I play with my eyes closed because the visions are so much more intense. I will occasionally play pieces from songbooks by Mark Holland or Mary Youngblood to strengthen my sense of melody. I'd like to learn to work in more jazz lines.

I mainly Love The Traditional Sounds of the NAF, but also Love a Variety of Music. Not being able to read music really slows me down in learning the songs I would like to learn to play on my flutes but if I run across some of them written in tab form in a songbook or have someone write them down for me I can learn them. I have picked up a few songs by ear the more I play. My latest song learned was Simon & Garfunkels "Sound of Silence" I would like to learn "Fur Elise" and John Denver's "Annies Song" I play some Hymns and of course the Heart Songs which just flow from the Spirit. I will just continue to add as many as I can learn in the "Fluture" Now theres a new one for "Websters"!!! Many Blessings...Robert

Hi Paul,

I too play with my eyes closed...you can see more that way. Sometimes though I might play for someone who is listening...you know pick someone out like an Elder or someone expecting and direct the song to that person.
BTW...Your dragonfly avatar is nice. I have a connection with them also.
There is a plan for the principal violinist from the London Mozart Players to come to the state so he and i can work on some music. If all goes according to plan we will hang out for 10 days make up some songs then do a series of educational presentations. When he is not with the orchestra he uses his violin as a tool to promote Peace. Maybe some baroque inspired flute will be part of the music we make up...

Hey Robert,
Fluture is in the encyflutepedia. Look under Winds of Change...
I know how you feel about not reading music. I think the advice my wife gave to me is the best in terms of encouraging my exploration of ME and the FLUTE.

Aw Shucks! I done thought I had an "Original" going there! Oh well lets see... How about "Fluterized"? You know like "That Dude was so good on the Flute, he had all the Women at the Pow Wow "Fluterized"!!! Many Blessings...Robert

I love that song, I'll have to learn it. Have you got the Tab for it?
Another good one would be "Scarborough Fair".

Ed

Hey Ed, If you go to "makiowa.com" Karen Lancaster has a Few Tab Books which she also sells on ebay. The book that has "Sound of Silence" is her Folk Songs Volume One Book. It has about 12 songs in it including: "Morning Has Broken", "Blowing in the Wind" "Country Roads", "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" and some more good tunes as well. I got my copy off ebay for 12.95 Many Blessings...Robert

For me, I just do the Nakai thing. Sometimes it comes out well, and others....well that's why I only perform at relaxed events!

While I enjoy the harpsichord parts of baroque music, I tend to prefer any kind of flute music, that is emotion based, rather than a specific musical genre, on any kind of flutes. While the number of CD artists that do that well, are limited, it is my preference.

Next I still go to the classical Spanish guitar, 5 finger technique, acoustic only. When flute and classical guitar come together, that is really nice, also. I just got the tab for diatonic flute, for La Paloma. I will enjoy learning that song from song sheets, although it is not my usual way to play.

Two of my favorite artists play silver flute, as well as ethnic and / or pan flutes, and I enjoy their emotion based music, very much. PP is also an emotion based fav.

I really like the very ancient sound (not modern Irish), of Celtic music, and although I also like Irish, not as much as the more ancient sound Celtic.

Renaissance flute music is also quite nice.

I do not like regular western orchestral music as much, even with flute, as there are too many instruments, and you can't get involved with the emotional aspect of it, as you can with folk music, or new age.

I guess I like music to be more personal.

There are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. Good music inspires me, no matter what instrument, what century, what continent, what style. Keep an open ear, and you can get your inspiration anywhere.

Victor.

PS ok, to list a few major influences on my music making: JS Bach, Charles Ives, and Paul Oakenfold.

Hey Robert...Is this Tab only, or does it include finger diagrams? Also, is it for 5-hole only?

Hey Paul, It isn't in the Nakai Tab, its finger diagram. Yes the Book I have is 5-hole but you might contact Karen as she might have it for 6-holes also? Her # is 865-428-5191 Many Blessings...Robert

The most I have done so far is figure out by ear to play J.S. Bach's "Jesu; Joy of Man's Desiring" on my flute. Not the whole piece obviously, but enough to evoke the identity of the piece. The slow melody line was easy, but I still have trouble getting smooth fingering work on the faster background part. Also, the NAF does not have enough of a tonal range to cover some of the higher notes, but it still sounds like the "Jesu" to me.

Not sure if it is baroque, but I've been thinking Pachelbel's "Canon" might fit on my flute.

I've figured out a few classical piece extracts on my NAF, with some Bach, Beethoven, Holst, Sibelius and Dvorak. Several of these melodies sound quite nice on the NAF.

Hey Martin, I love that Pachelbel's "Canon" I heard someone playing it at a PowWow once and it was beautiful. Maybe one day I might get that one onto the list of songs I can play before I run out of Breath! Many Blessings...Robert

Ah, man! Now you've done it! I love classical music. Now I'm going to have to transpose some of it for the NAF! And I just love "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".

AND I still need to figure out the Hallelujah Chorus before next Easter! Well, uh, it might take me a few Easters to get that one!

Hey wait! I just had an idea! If you have a flute in the same key but different octaves, you might could pick up the next one when you needed higher or lower notes.

Well, it was just a thought! Hm...

Jan, that requires some practice, to do smoothly, although I have seen it done. (2 or more flutes in a song.)

'How 'bout 'Flight of the Bumble Bee'?

I might could do flight of the three-legged turtle.

You post it when you record it!

I could do Flight of the Snail!

Hey, BTW, how's that new 'baby' with the Kokopelli on his belly doing?

My interpretation of that would more aptly be named "Plight of the Stumble Bee" Many Blessings...Robert

Influential Music...Church Hymns, Choir pieces from high school and college, the 70s: from John Denver to Black Sabbath and Mississippi delta blues.

Mark

From church hymns to Black Sabbath...gotta love a man with well rounded musical interests. Does the Ozzie songbook come with finger diagrams?

Good one Paul! No fingering diagram but a free plastic bat with a re attachable head so you can practice bitting it off over and over again .

Seriously, I found that many of the old spooky rock songs from Bands like Black Sabbath are easy to play on the NAF. I think they might have been using a minor pentatonic scale to be different or more edgy when writing their music. There is a song called War Pigs that just jumped out of the flute one day for me. I was practicing my scales and it just showed up. I play mainly by ear and often times I will get a little piece of a song and then curiously gets the best of me and I spend the rest of the day figuring out the whole song. For me, the flute seems to be an equalizer in that I really just hear melodies. Whether Black Sabbath, Gordon Lightfoot, Pure Prairie league or U2, I try to hear the melody in my head and reproduce it as well as my talents will allow. I learn alot on my flute journey this way. If I can hear it in my head, I may spend a lot of time trying to find where it is on the flute. This teaches me about notes that I did not know were there otherwise. Many times, I can only play part of the song such as the main verse and have to change the chorus or drop the octave due to a key change or some portion of the song that is out of the flute's limited range.

Well off to practice my version of Jethro Tull's thick as a brick.

learning to play your favorite songs is so cool.My wife figgered out how to play one of her favorites by ear,man did her ear hurt after she was done.Here I am lord was the song.Maybe I'll have her work on canon,that is a great song.We played her song in church,that was so cool.I wish I could hear the music like that,I mostly play from the heartbut I can follow tab.

Hawk, I've had parental, band, orchestra, and numerous "other" experiences throughout the years that have influenced and enhanced my ongoing appreciation and enjoyment of a tremendous variety of music, but . . .

Speaking of Bach . . . . Harmony . . . and Joyful Voices . . . . . . Let's try this with our flutes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47MNNrgz6pI...feature=related
~ 139th Street Quartet ~

And what about the Swingle Singers? They were my intro to Bach.

Here's their interpretation of "Flight of the Bumblebee."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGNjXjquVuc...feature=related

It was Utah Chris, knowing my love of Baroque composers, who pointed out that many flute duets, especially in when in two compatable keys, are really versions of canons or fugues. That helped me understand why i am so fond of that form, when composing songs, weaving melodies back and forth, almost like I know what I am doing.....believe me, I don't. But some of that, if you have listened to it long enough, becomes ingrained in the grooves of our brains- even with no musical training.

I would have to say the music styles that influences my own playing range from Gregorian chants through new age. I was trained in classical, love playing jazz, blues, folk, bluegrass, irish, scottish, ancient celtic, and just about everything else. Lately I have not been doing much flute playing, opting for six strings when I am not working on the new home site.

More than anything I am a child of the 60's. I was born in 1962, and I can still remember spending the summers at my grandma's. Mom was seperated, so we spent the summer there while she worked.
Grandma had this little white radio on the fridge I'd listen to everyday.
Stuff like the Beatles, the Mama & the Papas, The Grass Roots... Morrison, Hendrix... name it and I listened to it.
I love what is now considered "Oldies" Rock & Roll...
I also remember watchng the Monkees on TV, along with the Sunny & Cher show...
So even though I listen to a lot more, like someone said earlier, basically from Bach to Black Sabbath... the music of the 60's and early 70's is what I hear when I close my eyes.
So does that influence my flute playing? I don't know...
I'm not sure why I play like I do. I remember saying a while back when I was first starting I wanted my own sound...
and I guess I do play a little diifferent than most... faster, a bit more upbeat, more "hopscotching" up and down notes...
But I didn't conconcously try to sound like this... nor can I really think of any musican or band that really sounds like this.

Honestly, I'm not sure what influenced me, or why I play like I do...
Guess I'm just weird... but those that have met me already know this... hehehe

Interesting to see how widespread and diverse the musical interests and influences are here. I used to dabble in sixties rock and folk guitar. I'm not worthy of the label 'musician'. Hand me a guitar and I will prove that to you.

Influences--wide ranging but specific as to what touches deeply. I'm a Boomer-born 1951; Can call some sixties stuff close to musical home--Beatles, Stones, early Clapton, Hendrix, Janis Joplin. Joni Mitchell looks waay into my soul. Also some classical: Beethoven, Bach organ.

I came to NAF by way of a $7.00 Yamaha recorder. The recorder didn't speak to me at all like The Native American Flute.

I began with classic rock, which I still love. I sometimes think of Ray Thomas's flute solo on the Moody Blues “Legend of a Mind” when I play my block flutes.

In the late '70s, I began listening to pre-WW2 Delta and pre-60s urban blues. In the early '80s I moved into reggae, which is still a major influence on my music. About this time, I started playing classic rock, the blues, and reggae on bass guitar.

In the late '80s, Tower records began selling off their vinyl LPs. I picked up two albums of kora music from Guinea, West Africa. I still think the kora is the prettiest sounding instrument on the planet, and I finally bought one about four years ago. This, and Paul Simon's Graceland album led me into African traditional and popular music.

In the late '90s, I picked up samba reggae from Brazil, and moved from bass guitar to drums. I still lead a samba reggae band called Diaspora. In addition to Brazilian drums, I play congas and Japanese taiko.

Taiko led me to the shinobue, the Japanese transverse flute. I never did get the hang of it.

I now listen to Western pop music less often and focus on Afropop and traditional music from Africa, South America, East Asia (including Japanese shakuhachi), India, the Middle East, Bulgaria (particularly gaida bagpipes), and others.

All these styles influence my flute playing.

Boy this is a big question. Let me start by saying I love music period. However what has influenced my playing comes from a big list of artists and songwriters from across the world and genre gap.

My World Music Influences:

Rodrigo Y Gabriela
Niyaz
Anoushka Shankar
John Tesh
Sully Erna
Wounded Healer
Puya

Native American Influences:

Robert Mirabal
Jan Michael Looking Wolf
Longhouse
R. Carlos Nakai
Jeff McIntosh

Rock Influences:

Evanescence
Godsmack
10 Years
Deftones
Korn
Gabriel Yunes
Ill Nino

Metal Influences:

Meshuggah
TesseracT
Aghora
Rising Up Angry
Five Finger Death Punch
Paralysys
Apocalyptica
Kamelot
Ankla

Progressive Influences:

Dream Theater
Tool

These are just a tiny list of what has influenced me in my own musical project. The list goes on and metal seems to be the music that drives me to make world music. I really don't know why but it's just the way it is.

I would love to hear others