Playing Techniques and Fingering Charts

When playing the flute, it is important to maintain good posture. Sit in a straight-backed chair or on the ground or floor with your legs crossed, if you prefer. Keep your back straight and your head upright. Keep your diaphragm tight, like the way your lower torso would tense up if someone was about to hit you in the stomach, which will give you good control while playing.

The most important thing to remember is to make sure that the holes are tightly covered when you finger a note. If any one of your fingers is not tight on its hole, the note will squeak or be either too sharp or too flat. Playing the flute takes a delicate breath - blow softly or the notes will jump octave. The flute can be tuned slightly up or down, if desired, by sliding the saddle on top of the flute slightly forward or back. Usually, the further forward the saddle is, the flatter the note, and the further back the saddle is, the sharper the note. The tone is also adjusted in this manner. To adjust for the best tone, hold your flute with all the holes open and carefully slide the saddle back and forth just a little at a time until you hit the ‘sweet spot’ where the tone is the loudest and clearest.

Though there is no standard set for Native American Style flute fingerings, there is a basic fingering chart below to help you get started. There are many more possible fingerings than those shown, and it is left to you to learn the flute’s secrets and discover your own personal fingering styles. However, here are a few advanced techniques to make your playing even better:

If you cover all the holes and blow softly you will get the lowest note the flute plays. However, if you blow harder, the note will jump up an octave. By learning how much pressure is required to overblow the bottom note, you can jump between them for some very interesting effects.

Notes can be bent, by rolling a finger slowly on and off the holes, which is essentially why you place your finger 1/4, 1/2, and finally completely over the last hole for the lowest three notes on the Traditional Tuning Fingering Chart. Start with one hole at a time, and then progress to bending two at a time, and so on, until you can bend the flute from its highest note to its lowest in one bend (difficult!).

You can add vibrato (wavering, like the sound of an opera singer’s voice) to your playing by quickly varying the pressure of the air you blow into the flute. It is difficult to get right, but well worth the effort to learn. It is especially important to keep a tight diaphragm for this technique, since it is what gives enough control over the air to do it. Listen to some recordings of flute music to get an idea of what amount of vibrato sounds the best to you, then try to imitate it in your playing.

Finally, try placing the tip of your tongue lightly against the front part of the roof of your mouth and letting the airflow cause it to vibrate so that the flute sounds like a police whistle. Using this technique every once in a while tends to give a song a very happy and energetic feel to it.

 

Fingering Chart for Watershed Tuned Flutes

 

Fingering Chart for Traditionally-Tuned Flutes (Fingerings are shown from lowest note to highest) ------>

Fingering Chart for Concert-Tuned Mode 1 / Mode 4 Flutes

Mode 1

Mode 4