Hey,
I’ve recently been given a fife in C (Aulos C-21)
I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with a fife in folk music and any tips on playing?
I currently play the tinwhistle so i am finding it hard to blow in the first place?
Thanks!
Other people than me will have more technical advice and direction to give you. I informally taught myself to go from whistle to flute and then to fife because it seemed more portable. I think you’ll have a bit harder work to go straight to fife but you may be the better for it in the long run. I play what intruments I have too. When I was learning the flute, I could only manage to keep enough air going to play during TV commercials and then take a break during the actual TV show. Fifes are fun for folk music.
I have man hands and I’m guessing by your name, you won’t have the problems associated with too big hands.
The embouchure on a high pitch fife is more demanding than than on a lower pitched flute.
Embouchure takes a lot of work under any circumstance. So folks often play flute
first, then fife. So if you have lots of trouble with the fife, buy a flute, learn
to play that. This is the madness to which whistles lead sooner or later anyhow.
Welcome.
On the plus side, the fife/piccolo you have is the easiest to play that I’ve found, but in general the fife is a lot harder to make a good noise out of!!!
The Aulos C-21 seems to have a fingering pattern that is not consistent with the 6 hole fife, nor their recorders. With the exception of the R1 double finger hole it looks like it is very similar to the Yamaha fife. I don’t know if your fife came with a fingering chart, but I could not find one for the C-21 online.
I have no experience with this fife, but I would think that it is designed to play 2 octaves +2 starting with the lowest bell note. My guess is that the easiest note to start with will be the first octave G and then expanding from there. I think that the primary purpose for this and the Yamaha fife is for preparing youth for the full sized flute and has similar fingering to the silver flute, but I am not sure.
One of my earlier problems with playing the fife is that I would just blow harder to hit the higher notes, I found that if I could tighten up my embouchure and play a note quietly, that the next note could also be played without just blasting away with brute force (which is not musical and annoys your friends and neighbors).
Good luck and have fun.
There is a website by Ed Boyle for learning to play fife at http://www.beafifer.com/ .
(to Moderators, this is not meant as a C.P. and my apologies in advance if taken as such)
[ Looks fine. - Mod ]
Thanks for all the help! Via trail and error method i can near enough play the bottom octave now but will practise embouchure tightening and that to try get the next octave.
The fife did come with a fingering chart and seems near enough the same as a whistle with the exception of a couple of notes. Is this not the same with other fifes?
Thanks again!
Bought one of my fifes from Ed Boyle. Very nice and interesting guy.