How are these notes being bent?

Irish Flute
1

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This is from an effort below to sell an Eb flute.
It’s lovely playing, all agree. Some notes on
the first number, Alice’s Reel, are being bent
and I wonder if someone can say how it’s
being done.

Learning the Reel myself, inspired by this playing.
Of course the flute is Eb, but no matter.

2

It’s called a note-bender. Home Depot carries them in the hand tools department next to the tubing benders. :smiley:

Jokes aside,it is lovely playing, but it is for someone more knowledgeable than me to explain that.

3

The note-bender! I scratch my head every time I hear Cathal McConnell do Farewell to Waverly Park (Long Expectant…) Now, I get it.

I wonder if they carry it at Lowe’s?

4

Wow! that is just soooo beautiful! Just wish they allowed us to download it. It would be on my mp3 in a second. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Install Real player(awful software, I know).

Right click on the flash player and select Download to Real player.

Mukade

6

ahhh…excellent! Thanks.

7

Normally the note at the beginning of the fourth bar of Alice’s Reel that you hear being bent would be a second-octave b (on a D flute, when played in the flute-friendly setting of this reel), but in this case he has changed the tune by playing a second-octave g (again, speaking as if he were playing a D flute). All you do is come up to the g from the f# by sliding your right index finger off the f# – and for special effects you can choose to not quite slide it all the way, leaving the g a little flat. By the way that’s a Bb flute he’s playing there, not an Eb.

I said “the flute-friendly setting” – what I mean is that many flute players play Alice’s reel in B minor, which works nicely on the flute, but I believe Frankie Gavin composed the tune in E minor, which sends the melody below D so you have to do octave jumps when playing it on the flute. It’s worth knowing both versions if you play the tune in sessions. Most fiddle players would do the tune in E minor because it was composed that way and sounds great on the fiddle.

8

Thanks, Brad. Helpful, as always.