This is about playing technique elements, little workshop secrets that make our playing authentic. Holding the whistle, vibrato, growling, tonguing, finger technique.
How to hold the whistle
An important feature of the shepherd’s flute is the whistle, which is placed at the bottom and plays an important role in the style. Place your lower lip on the edge of the whistle. This is the edge under which the air passes and goes onto the wind splitter. If you put your lower lip on it with great attention, it will play a part in shaping the sound, making it fuller and stronger. This play can be increased to the point where the two octaves can sound at the same time. This way, you get a distinctive shepherd’s flute sound that can’t be mistaken for anything else.
Its function lies not only in its beauty, but it also has a practical use typical of folk culture, namely to make the instrument sound stronger. And this is very important in a party. It is typical of the old style of playing of the Moldavian Csángó flute players, and in Transylvania you will find it combined with the next stylistic element, the whistle vibraphone.
Vibrating the whistle
A vibrating sound can be elicited from the whistle placed at the bottom, which results in the aforementioned full sound, another important characteristic of the shepherd’s flute, typical of Transylvanian dialects. When you have the instrument so close that you can feel the lower octave, try to move the flute gently so that the movement of the whistle can be felt and heard on the lower lip. You will then hear a continuously moving sound, varying in pitch within 1 comma, and the intensity of the low octave sound will vary. Describing this is very difficult, but try to get a feel for it, based on the recording of Viktor Timár below:
Of course, not all tones can be vibrated, because there is no time for it for short tones, so you have to pick out the fourths, halves and whole notes to vibrate, the rest should not be forced. Feel the strength of the movement, don’t rush it too much. Transylvanian parlando-style tunes give great opportunity to play out this style.
Very important for those practising the flute technique: classical flutists are taught to vibrate from the belly, so it may happen here that it comes naturally. This is a mistake, in folk practice this vibrato does not exist at all.
A growl:
Also a stylistic element that can be felt from recordings, it consists of the throat adding a continuous growl to saturate the timbre with a harmonic. This growl is a stationary sound, not too loud, just going underneath discreetly. The correct growl is below the volume of the flute, not or barely audible on its own. It is used by old people in all provinces.
Viktor Timár’s playing is characterised by these three stylistic elements, and a few other little things make it distinctively typical of the Gyímes valley:
Tongue techniques
Here I have to compare it to the classical, although the natural thing would be the other way round, because it was before… Well, the separation of the notes is much more subtle here than on the recorder. Instead of the constant “tu…tu-ing” of those brought up on the classical, a smoother solution should be found. Notice that when you say combinations like “tu-ru-lu” “tu-du-lu” “tu-ru-du” etc., your tongue breaks the air column on the roof of your mouth three times in one round (only once for classical). So you can start a separate note just as often, a little more subtly, but that’s OK. In fact, again, we’re dealing with a feature that is an important component of the sound.
Fingerstyle elements
Here I deal with those phenomena where the secret of style lies in the fingers, in the way they move. Here again, practice and awareness are needed to faithfully reproduce the different dialects of folk music. I have selected three types of ornamentation, depending on the range of the finger used for ornamentation in relation to the note being played. What they all have in common is that you should feel the intensity of the movement of the fingers used for ornamentation.
Supporting, assisting fingers
Before we get into embellishments, here’s a practical problem on how to hold an instrument: you feel the weight of the flute in your hand when you need to catch a note somewhere with the 5th or 6th finger (G, A). At this point, you often stop the flute in your hand by putting the 1st finger in place. This allows us to play and ornament steadily into this range. Practicing playing the supporting 1st finger is very important.
Picking up
Finger means the finger that is the lowest covering finger of the held down note. This is important for the D to A fingerings. It should be felt first. The intonation can slide upwards, which is why it is often used to intone the neutral third to the major third, especially in Moldavia (3rd finger). It is also common in melodies with a D minor fricative ending to achieve a fricative tone by intoning on the 2nd finger (see The Classe Lover’s Crotchet). It is also common, especially in Moldva, to embellish the A note.
Top
fingers means the fingers held above the held note. Roughly similar to the former sound, this sometimes makes the flute more “chirpy”, many data communicators swap the two into function, yet there are some sounds where you have to be very careful which one you choose. It’s good to be able to listen for it in original recordings, otherwise we’ll come back to it in the data intermediaries.
Bottom
Fingers, by fingers, I mean the fingers that remain free when the sound is held down. An important role is played by the use of the aforementioned supporting finger, which is under the grip. In the G and A grip, if you put your supporting finger down and move the 2 and 3 fingers over the hole, just enough to just tap the hole, you will hear a distinctive bump. To the outside ear, you would think you were swallowing the sound because it has a tearing effect. A similar situation occurs with the B grip. This is often incorporated into melodies.
How much and how many fingers you move depends on the type of flute, size, hole size, and what wind strength you are at. At high blowing volumes, the flute is more sensitive to these taps. In some recorders, such as András László, you can hear it from the E note up.
Correlations between melodies and ornamentation
Of course, ornamentation is more complex than that, not only techniques, but entire melody parts can be ornamental elements. It is very important to pick out the melody from the ornamentation, which has to be learned separately. It is also necessary to learn the ornamental motifs, which are specific to the region and the medium. Then learn how to combine them freely. A true folk musician is a master of these, and does not allow himself to play the same melody twice. This is where the spontaneous phenomena of folk music can begin to be exploited.
In Moldva, the vibrato achieved by moving the whistle is not used so much, finger ornamentation predominates. A song by András Hodorog from Cleja, which he learned from his mother, Aunt Luca:
Even a belted one, “degraded” by ornamentation, for “tanyításra” (for teaching):
A rare recording, I find it very valuable, because Pál Gusa is one of the first recorders to be known to the Hungarian public:
and another one from Eházaskozar:
Note the intonation of the third in the goatly (kecskés) melody with the sound picking up finger!
Another example of how freely the data communicators handle the instrument:
And be careful when learning to whistle: