Greetings

Welcome to the woodenflute.com website. The primary focus of the woodenflute.com website is simple system wooden flutes with or without keys, which are often referred to as Irish flutes. However, I hope to encourage discussion of wooden Böhm flutes, renaissance flutes, bamboo flutes, Native American flutes, and all other types of wooden flutes.

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Enjoy the site! Many thanks to the members who have helped make it a success.
Larry Owens (Screen Name: webmaster)

Irish Flute

The basic Irish flute is a simple system six hole flute tuned such that the lowest playable pitch (all holes closed) is the D above middle C, and the instrument will play a D scale (D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#) as the holes are uncovered sequentially to shorten the resonant length of the pipe. The basic flute can be played in the key signatures of D and G without difficult cross fingerings, which is sufficient for a large variety of traditional Irish melodies.

The basic flute may be embellished with the addition of keys (typically metal, mounted to wooden blocks) used to play pitches which would require cross fingerings or be impossible to produce on the basic flute. Four keys (short F, G#, Bb and Eb) are required to produce a fully chromatic instrument. Two keys (long F and high C) can be added to improve playability, and two more keys (low C and C#) can be added to extend the range of the instrument to middle C.