Sunday, April 26, 2009

Pursuing the elusive tone

I have fallen in love with playing the flute. After a few months of daily practice, I find myself thinking about it a lot of the time. On those few occasions when everything comes together, the sound is utterly beautiful. There seems to be a myterious chemistry that makes things come together; a combination of mood, posture, concentration and luck. It's a much more fickle relationship than with playing the whistle, where What you Play is What you get. With the flute it's more like a negotiation; you have to persuade the thing to do your bidding.

We're not talking about a shiny nickel-plated instrument; this is an elegant, tapered two foot six rosewood pipe with holes in. It even smells lovely.

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