Meditative Musical Pathways Through Learning Native American Flute And Recorder

The central theme for this lesson is to help you think about your place in the world, where we come from, and how music can be a link to something greater than ourselves. The goal of this lesson is to show how indigenous beliefs, and connecting with a higher power, are experienced and expressed in different Native cultures. The chants and melodies provide pathway to a more connected sense of place and being. Hopefully, these voices will resonate with our own sense of purpose and being, and provided a sense of how music can begin to be a transformative pathway for you as you explore and express your own identity and connection to the world through music.

This lesson introduces the sounds of a variety of different types of Native American Style Flutes, each with a unique key, maker, and design. Demonstrations of different tones are featured, along with a comparison to the sound of the recorder. The Recorder has the ability to produce a similar sound to the Native American flute, and is a very affordable and available option for creating meditative music. In order to progress in the course, it will be necessary to have access to one of these types of instruments.

This lesson introduces students to the basics of holding and fingering the Native American Style Flute and the Recorder, and how both can play a basic five note minor pentatonic scale. This demonstration uses a right handed orientation. The minor pentatonic scale uses the following notes from the major scale, 1, flat3, 4, 5, flat7. This lesson demonstrates the similarities and differences for fingering between the Native American Flute and the Recorder when playing the minor pentatonic scale. This lesson also illustrates the fundamentals for holding both instruments.

This lesson introduces techniques that allow you to add your own unique style and voice to playing the Native American Flute and the Recorder. The concept of embellishment is introduced to illustrate how specific fingering techniques can achieve a variation of energy and vibrancy. This lesson also demonstrates how to create the sound of vibrato through covering all of the holes and adjusting the tone through breath control. By adding waves of breath that trail off, and then gain intensity, the fundamentals of vibrato can be achieved. These techniques allow for the ability to play more self-expressive and meditative musical ideas.

This lesson guides you through a step by step tutorial on using the Apple application, "Garage Band", so that you can create background musical tracks that can be used for accompaniment. You play the flute and recorder along with these tracks for practice and performance. Two tracks are created in this lesson. One track involves playing just one note, and the other uses the computer keyboard to play two basic three note chords, D minor and C major. This lesson also shows how to use Garage Band's built in Looper, so that short musical phrases can be repeated. This lesson also includes a short review of the minor pentatonic scale. This lesson does not require any previous musical training or any additional musical instruments.