Book Details

Celebrate the Native American Flute

If you've ever wanted to play the 6-hole Native American flute, and play it well, this book is for you. No musical background is required. All the tunes are written in an easy to read tablature, (music notation that anyone can understand), whether you know anything about formal music notation or not. Regardless of what kind of 6-hole flute you own, and regardless of what key it's in, (C, D, E, F, F#, G, A, it makes absolutely no difference), you will be able to play the tunes in this book. You'll learn to play Native American tunes, religious chants, and familiar folk tunes. You'll learn how to play the blues in the Pentatonic scale. And you'll learn how to use your flute for meditation. It's all here, in just one book.

The book begins with three scale fingerings you use as reference. Then you are given advice on what kind of flutes you might buy, how to care for your flute, and how to adjust the totem for best tone. On page 20 you are introduced to the tablature system, a system for reading music that is hundreds of years old. Tablature has stood the test of time, and you will learn its advantages in this book. On page 20, (there are 101 pages in this book), we begin to learn our first tune, "Finding the Path". In succeeding pages you will learn about tied notes, the trill, the vibrato, the bark, and pick-up notes. You will learn the extended scale so you can play a greater variety of tunes. You will learn how to half-hole notes so you can get those notes that are in between the holes. You will learn the slur, a technique put to wonderful use in the tune, "Dancing With Angels". You'll learn a weird sounding tune called, "Alien Encounter". You will learn about notes with different time values. You will learn how to play the blues, finally ending your blues study with the "Saint James Infirmary Blues". You will learn how to tab out your own tunes, and a tab blank that you can make many copies of is included with the book. You will even learn a tune of the Mbuti Pygmies who live in the Ituri Rain Forest. The book introduces to a variety of tunes from many different cultures of the world, and many of these tunes aren't found in any other Native American flute book.

Throughout the book you will find interesting topics that are there simply for your reading pleasure. You'll encounter topics like, What's a spit valve? How does my flute generate its sound? Who is the Kokopelli flute player? How can I pray or meditate using my flute? What does intonation mean? Who is Alan Lomax? Who started the Shaker faith, and why? These are only a few of the many topics discussed along the way of learning how to play our flute. There is also a discography at the end of the book that gives you the titles, along with a short description of the many CD's that have influenced and inspired the author's flute playing.

Also included with the book are fifteen MP3 files--examples the author plays from the book. These files can be played on your computer or your iPod, or, using a utility like iTunes or MusicMatch, you can burn the MP3 files to a blank CD so you can listen to the files on any CD or DVD player.

If you are serious about learning to play the Native American flute, Celebrate the Native American Flute is the book you need. It's written for the rank beginner, but you'll end up playing like a pro. Music has the power to move mountains, and the Native American flute is a jack hammer! Learn to play it!

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