The secret to making Native American Flutes

Hi, this is Charlie Montatuyela with another How to Play and How to Make the Native American Flute series. Today we are going to focus on the real secret to making Native American flutes sound good. There are a lot of things that go into making a Native American flute, but there's one thing that really is what determines how it sounds, obviously, by the sound hole. So we're going to look at that in just a second. This is a river paint flute. It's one of my flutes that I had to make to be able to play a certain song with somebody or another, so I know it's an F sharp, which I've had a lot of requests for that. Back in the day when I didn't make flutes tuned to a certain key, I didn't think that anybody needed one in F sharp until I realized why. If you need one, let me know. But anyway, this is made out of river cane, and it's using the same technique that I've used in my other videos to make flutes. I realized the flute video at Moundville wasn't as clear, but I definitely wanted to release it so you guys could see Moundville and that flutes can be made off in a remote location. We will continue making videos on the elaborate little this and that, every nuance about how to perfect the flute and make it play correctly. But today I wanted to focus on this spot, since it's the hardest part, really, in my opinion, for anybody to get right the first time, and sometimes the second, third, fourth, and 110,000th time. Eventually, you get it right. Anyway, so take a look here. I'm going to slide this piece of leather lace off. Take a little block off. This block is a sliver of river cane. It is nothing out of the ordinary. It's just a piece that I cut and sanded, and it's flat. Inside of here, though, this is the part that really matters. There's a square hole up here, which I've made flutes with round holes for their sound holes, and they work fine. You can argue that they're better or worse or what have you, but I've seen them every way. And then back here is another square hole that matches virtually. It's a little bit larger, but it matches pretty much the same size. At least it's the same width from here to there as it is up here. That's very important. The most important thing is how this air travels across here and goes. I guess it kind of splits, actually, right here. Part of it comes up, and part of it goes towards the inside of the flute. What I do is I have a metal burning rod, as you've seen in my other videos, and that metal burning rod I use to flatten this section here down. So I guess, really, first things first, I use a Forstner bit on my drill press, and I auger it down like this, and just basically the Forstner bit planes this area here down flat. And when it planes that area down flat, I go back and check for any kind of nuances or disturbances or anything that's not flat, flush, smooth, you know, like. I'm always going to kind of recheck your work. And that's why this part back here on this flute is a little bit rounded. It's actually this side of that Forstner bit that created it. Now this part is not. I used my belt sander on it, or my X-Acto knife to dish it out, as you've seen in other videos. I used a knife to dish this area here out to make it nice and kind of an angle if you look at it. I don't know if you can see it too well in the video, but it's not abrupt like this, as we discussed earlier, abrupt stop on this end. Originally it was that way over here, but I kind of ground it down. So anyway, that's important, but not the most crucial part. The most crucial part of making this flute play correctly is having the air channel right here that my knife is in the middle of right now. You can kind of see it's an indentation, but the air channel needs to let the air come through from this end of the flute, stop at the partition here, go up, and go across. That means above and below this area right here, and it does vibrate slightly, not a lot, but right there. Not the block, mind you. A lot of laymen ask me, does a block vibrate? I think it's like a saxophone or a clarinet, but it doesn't. Just this area right here vibrates so precisely and so tiny from the splitting of the air molecules, some going this way and some going that way, that that's what makes the sound of the flute. One thing I like to do, which you can try this if you're an advanced flute maker or if you're a beginner or what have you, but I like to make this area back here in the supply air channel, I like to make it kind of a dish as well. I like to dish it down so that the air kind of jumps up over the ramp, and then when it gets up here, it needs to be flushed straight across, and then this piece, what I like to call the knife edge, a lot of people call it the true sound hole edge or something of the like, but the knife edge over here, I like to have it nice and flat on top, and if possible, I like to have it a nice abrupt angle on the inside, which means using a knife like this or my burning tool or whatever you can get in there. I had one friend who used to use a dremel to get up in there and do that, which was precise and very difficult, but it worked for him. This is how I like to make my flute block area, the channel, the knife edge, the supply air hole, everything. This is how I like to do it. I have a friend, a good friend of ours who lives in Georgia, and he builds his up about this high. He's not the only person that does that, but it's amazing how beautiful sounding flutes he gets that have that channel built up that high, and one of my friends who belongs to another, actually a giant flute making guild, he showed me his flute track area is only, it's even shorter than the width of this knife blade, and in making his so short, he said it has a very quick response. Well, quick response sounds great, and it's one way to do it, but I know from having seen the block off of the 1700 year old pine flute that the Smithsonian has in their collection that the channel on it is actually twice as long as mine, maybe three times as long as mine, so there's something to the way the channel is made that is very important. Like I said, the basics are very crucial. It needs to be flat. It can be at an angle. It can be at a great angle or gradual angle or just straight across like I like to make mine. Another good friend who makes thousands of flutes, he makes his always at an extreme slant. They have a very sharp edge on them, and that's the way he perfected his. Mine, like I say, I use a burning tool, and I dip it a little L-shaped piece. I dip underneath of it and pull it back out, which burns it nice and flat here underneath at kind of an angle, and then I use the same thing back here so that the air channel has kind of a, like I said, it gives it a much easier path to follow to get to where it needs to go. That's basically how that works. I'll let you see what this flute sounds like. Even though I did tune it to F sharp, it is a beautiful sounding Native American flute. I say even though I did tune it to F sharp. I've always been one to not like to tune flutes, but I do it. Just not my personal ones. This one, once again, personal flute, but I had to. So that's basically it. One other thing I do, as I had kind of briefly mentioned, when I flatten this down, the concept I have with making these flutes is I'm actually taking the track area down so that it floats. One thing that people don't take into consideration is that the air inside of this flute, it's, there's air in it right now. I only speed it up when I play through it. It doesn't take the air out of it or, you know, put more air in it. It just speeds the air up a little bit. In essence, maybe it does put a little more in it, but there's fact checkers out there that like to watch my videos and say, why didn't you do this, or why did you do that, or what have you. They might find a discrepancy in that, but in either case, I like to think that that mass of air in there is like an ocean, and that the track, the block sitting on top of this track here, is floating on top of the ocean. The pathway, the little channel or track inside of it that I showed you a second ago, it is like a boat, and the boat sits down in the water. It doesn't ride on top of the water, and it doesn't ride under the water. It's kind of half and half. It floats, and that's the depth within the chamber of the flute itself, if you can understand that, that I like my flute to play. So that's how it works, and, you know, of course we'll have some other more elaborate videos to come. My son's really been getting on me about making more videos, because we need to need to have some more put out here, so we'll definitely keep it up. But otherwise, feel free to visit our website, which is Blue Bear Arts, Blue Bear Flutes, or BlueBearRegalia.com. I recently revamped it. I've gone back with my old service provider on that one, and we've got a lot of good things going on. You can check out our Facebook page, which is Blue Bear Arts as well. Not Blue Bear Arts as well, but Blue Bear Arts also. Okay, you fact checkers. But anyway, yeah, I'll be rethinking myself. Check out the flute videos we have. Feel free to ask any questions you may have. I prefer good questions, you know, if you guys can think of a good one. If you think of a real stupid one, please ask me those too, because that's probably the kind that are more my idea of what I'm thinking. People might be wondering, why is there leather on there this way, or whatever, but I don't know. Anyway, once again, no question is stupid, but you guys take care. Thanks again for watching this. Please favorite us, and also rate our videos, as well as check us out and like us on Facebook. Once again, Charlie Montantiello signing off for Blue Bear Arts, and you guys, happy fluting.