Don Hosek - Flute - April 2001
Bass takes over a bit
Featured flute recording
White Willow - Sacrament

Most of the best rock flute playing comes out of the prog genre, and this is yet another example. Picture Genesis and Jethro Tull mixed together with a touch of goth and this is what comes out. Definitely worth picking up.

Most of my musical efforts this month have been geared towards bass playing and singing. The month started out with preparations for Holy Week, which was then followed up with preparations for an opera for which I'll be the bassist in the pit orchestra. I'm keeping up with the flute playing, but not in any particularly interesting way.

The fife has been an interesting experience, and has helped get a sense of what the effect of excess keys down or up does to one's pitch. Because a fife is keyless, chromatic notes are handled through a combination of half-hole fingering (for which I'm a disaster still) and cross fingering. This latter is really informative. To get, for example, a Bb, one fingers B (LH:T1), leaves the next hole open to vent, then closes the next two holes (LH3, RH1) to lower the pitch. Similar fingerings apply for Ab and Gb. Eb and Db, because there are insufficient holes down the tube to use, are playing with half-hole fingerings.