Bamboo Flute in depth understanding & techniques

I have been recently studying in depth as to improving my playing, I fell back into flute playing and reading of bamboo flautists. From tones to tunes and advantages & disadvantages from styles.

My flute of choice is undoubtedly the the 8 hole bamboo flute (excluding the mouth hole) mainly used in Carnatic music, however not essentially limited to carnatic music it is a wonder of nature. Made of natural bamboo this flute is THE BEST FLUTE or even the best instrument as you don't have to tune, it is auto tuned upon completion by the maker to the specified key & octave based on the length of the flute as well as the size of the holes. Any composition of music sounds good on this flute regardless of the composition being meant for flute or not.

Myself having a stint playing the western Concert C flute feel that the Bamboo 8 hole flute gives the the player more control of the instrument as opposed to western flutes relying on finger keys. Despite the nice tone & sound produced by the western flute in my opinion the bamboo flute beats the Concert C hands down due to the level of control the holes gives the players as opposed to finger key pads. (I would like to have a flute made of stainless steel following the western flute + finger holes of the 8 hole bamboo flute though)

Most bamboo flautists encounter airy wind sounds being picked up when playing due to certain blowing techniques, this airy sound sometimes is not that bad as it helps balance the pitching. My blowing technique which I came up highly reduces this phenomenon however pitching needs to be negotiated by the player when playing higher octaves. Its a pro & con effect with no air sound when heading into the higher octaves there is a tendency for the flute to go sharp.

Fingering techniques, for ages flautists have been debating over, cross fingering vs parallel fingering. For me its a mix of both techniques to touch the right bending of notes. Its like having the best of 2 worlds and you have the advantage of striking clean clear notes from parallel fingering and nice intonation bends from cross fingering. At times it could be vice versa or both could be employed depending on the needs of the player.

Transposed fingering involves transposing of notes and the use of multiple flutes, while this can be advantages due to octave comfort of the player. The disadvantage is having to change flutes. I would not recommend this unless absolutely necessarily.

Myself, I normally only change flutes when I want to play the natural scale on the flute to the corresponding key a song or composition is composed to & NOT to use transposed fingering.

With regards to reeds & the thickness of bamboo, while there are some flautist who prefer thicker reeds for a rich warm tone when playing lower octave, this however causes airy wind distortion when playing higher octaves as such I prefer thinner reeds due to the clarity but not too thin either, somewhat medium thickness reed.

I also figured that versatility of the player has to be taken into consideration so as to not be only limited to 1 genre or type of music. I want to be a flautist who plays anything possible on my flute as opposed to being a genre based musician.

I was inspired when I wrote this & I hope this helps out fellow flautists.

My points stated are open debate as well as questions:)

Yours Truly,
 Prabu
 fluteprabu@gmail.com
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