The Basic Anasazi Flute Scale

The Anasazi flute, currently recreated by Michael Graham Allen, is starting to gain popularity among players of the modern "plains" style Native American flute. It's haunting tone and ability to maneuver through the overtones of the harmonic series creates a very seductive sound. Since more people are becoming interested in them let's take a closer look at how the basic scale is set up on this flute and how it differs from the modern NAF.


First here is a quick look at how a Anasazi flute is held. As you can see the lower half of the mouthpiece end of the flute is set in the middle of the jaw. The player blows across the top part of the rim with the flute held at a 45˚ angle. We'll take a closer look at this later. For now let's take a look at the basic scale.

A DIFFERENT PENTATONICS SCALE
The Anasazi flute, like the modern Native American flute, has a pentatonic scale as it's basic scale. However, it's not the NAF's minor version of the pentatonic but the major version. A pentatonic scale has five notes (from the Greek pente: five) plus the octave.

Let's listen to examples of both these scales starting on F#.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE


© Cedar Mesa Music

Two Tunable Drone Flutes

On my recording New Fire there is a song called "Cactus Dance". This was recorded using a High Spirits tunable drone flute. A drone flute is basically two flute chambers built into one fllute body. One of the chambers has finger holes and plays like a normal Native American flute and plays the melody while the other chamber doesn't have finger holes and therefore only plays one note or "drones". This second chamber is usually tuned to the bottom note of the flute. Not unlike a Bagpipe.


In this article we're going to look at two tunable drone flutes, both in the key of A.

One of them was made by Odell Borg of High Spirits flutes. (left)

The other was made by Rich Halliburton of Querencia Flutes. (right)

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

Playing in the Snow

Playing an Anasazi flute in Chiricahua National Monument, located in southern Arizona. Yup, southern Arizona gets snow from time to time. This is about 40 miles north of the border with Mexico.
Photo ©Keith Stanford

Flute Circle Pumpkin Crunch

Thanks to Cathy Tuhy for bringing this tasty treat to my workshop in Tucson last weekend. It was a hit.
Good for all flute circle meetings.

1 29-ounce can pure pumpkin
1 12-ounce can evaporated milk
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1 teaspoon butter flavoring
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons cinnamon

1 box yellow cake mix
1 cup chopped pecans
3/4 cup melted margarine

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix first
eight ingredients until well blended, and
pour into a greased 9 X 13-inch pan.
sprinkle cake mix on top and then cover
with pecans. Drizzle with melted margarine
over top. Bake 45 - 55 minutes or until top
is golden and a bit crispy.

Starting your own Music Label Part 1

THE ARTIST'S GUIDE TO
STARTING AN INDEPENDENT RECORD LABEL


So you want to start your own record label? And why not, there are plenty of reasons to do so. Here are a few:

• Artistic and Monetary control
  
• Record companies do not have a reputation for making small artists money
  
• Keep in direct contact with your listeners.
  
• No legal junk to deal with. (Not much anyway)

All of this is now possible in the world we live in mostly thanks to the Internet. (This is a good time to mention supporting Net-Neutrality.) Having you're own business is an exciting challenge and extremely rewarding. How far you take it is up to you and the amount of work you put into it. In this part of Starting Your Own Music Label we're going to look at the basics to get your company up and running. We'll look at:

• How big do you want to be?
  
• What it costs
  
• Where to start
  
  • Picking a Name
    
  • Setting yourself up with a Performance Rights Organization
    
  • Picking and registering your company name
    
  • Location, location, location
    
  • Business license and filing
    
• How your company looks on paper and on the web
  
  • Your Logo
    
  • Letterhead, Business Cards
    
  • How to get YOURBUSINESS.COM
    
• Banking
  
• Bar Codes
  

Article continues...