pulled notes?

[woof]

I was listening to a CD of Keltic music played with a
flute and harp. Several times the flautist seemed to "pull" the notes. that is
they seemed to stretch to the flat side of the note but not a complete flat
note??? At least I would describe them that way from my guitar playing days-
when you would pull the string at the fret to change the pitch a bit- add color
etc. So the question is- if you can understand what I am saying- how is this
done with the flute. Is it by partially uncovering the hole on an open holed
flute or would it be by changing the embouchure??

[minsmusic]

embouchure. I've done it a few times accidentally -
experimenting with trying to get a 'pure' tone.

[Kendall]

It's mostly done with rolling the flute in or out. It's
called tone-bending, I think is what your taking about. Sometimes if you have
tricky glissando you will do that instead

[Cleartone]

though it is true you can bend your tone by rolling your
headjoint in, that only tends to work with bending down and can effect your tone
quality. It is better to get proficient in minute rolls to take care of the
flutes natural intonation problems. Irish flutes have open holes, so you are
correct in your guess that they are rolling their fingers back over the hole in
between notes. However, in Irish music it is used more as a part of melody and
tends to be only a half step or whole step in range imitating the singing voice.
on the guitar the pulling of strings is used to flatten the third and/or fifth
to create a blues riff or scale. This can be done on the flute. I primarily use
this effect when playing jazz on the flute. It can be done on an opened holed
flute. There are different combinations of rolling my fingers back. One
combination is rolling the g and a keys back together at the same time to slide
between G and A to bflat to b. It all depends what key I am in. another is
rolling the fingers back during an e natural to g sometimes like in the case of
bending a note from c to c# I slowly release the key and bend the mouthpiece at
the same time. There are many more combinations to bending notes. You can, with
practice, play a glissando through the entire range of the flute, the difficult
part being the switch of octaves between c# and D. Take care. Great Question by
the way

[Cleartone]

Also I forgot to mention, in flute playing or shawm
playing from more ancient parts of the world like china and Japan, hole bends
are used to play quartertones. There are many world music scales that have these
bends as a natural part of memorized melodies. Some western music students have
notated these melodies and divided them into scales. They are very interesting
and you can learn a lot from them. Check them out if you are interested.

[woof]

Thanks for the great responses. I am a long way from
achieving that level of playing and I have a closed hole flute. However, I have
been listening to more jazz-- as I am at this moment "Nestor Torres- This side
of paradise" and he is bending notes all over the place. Sounds great. As you
mention the Japanese flute sound is repleat with "bent" notes.

[dddiam]

I tend to develop my best blues flute sounds by listening not to flute recordings, but rather to slow tenor sax recordings, and duplicating the sax sounds as best as I can on the flute. Lots of note bending, and very sensitive dynamics.

I use embouchure and rolling the flute rather than rolling the keys, because I have only one hole unplugged.

I am not a sax player, but I've been told that rolling the keys on a sax can be used to create a portamento effect, whereas rolling the keys on a flute creates a glissando.

David