I only recall using it a couple of times due to the value and my fear of breaking it! You probably didn’t either.Īlong the way I bought a better flute – a Muramatsu conservatory model. I can’t say that, with my unorthadox and primitive style of playing, that I noticed much difference. This was a decidedly better instrument and I owned three of their student models including one in (to me) exotic solid silver! All my previous flutes had been so-called nickel-silver, silver plated bodies used for the cheapest student flutes to keep costs down. This was a marching band instrument made in Elkhart, Indiana and, although robust and chunky, I managed to break all the 21 that I was to own over the next 15 years! In fact, I used to travel with a case of about 12 of them to get through a long US tour and they had bits missing, dents, ingrained dirt and were a biological hazard to anyone who touched them.ĭuring the 80s, I switched to playing Japanese made Pearl flutes having been approached by the UK distributor. The lowly Gold Seal was my only instrument until it was lost or stolen in the USA in 1969 and I found a hastily-acquired local alternative in the shape of the Artley flute. But then he would, wouldn’t he? The Man With The Golden Flute has to keep up appearances! Sir James Galway plays these days a 20 Ct gold Nagahara and, very recently, a specially-commisioned thin-walled platinum flute. It has now joined his extensive collection the very poor and distant cousin to his Muramatsus, Nagaharas, Haynes, Albert Cooper and so on. I had it cleaned and restored and he managed to get a few notes out of it. I later bought for him a hard-to-find Gold Seal for a recent birthday. I think I liked mine better than he liked his, since he is often disparaging about the poor quality of his original instrument. Also it was the first flute owned by senior classical flautist Sir James Galway. So – the Selmer Gold Seal was the first one. The rest is history and well documented elsewhere. These formed the basis of the “blues scale” and I was up and running by January of 1968 and beginning to play along live in a few songs with the embryonic Jethro Tull.īy the time we were rewarded with a residency at London’s famous Marquee club, I was playing in a more confident and strident way and old school pal Jeffrey Hammond noticed my unorthodox style and introduced me to an album by American jazzer Roland Kirk who used that same bold technique of vocalising his tunes and solos. Without an instruction book or a fingering chart, I just had to make it up as I went along and soon found a few more notes, reinforced by singing them at the same time. However, early attempts to get a note out of the damned thing proved abortive and it wasn’t until December of the year that I managed to coax a wobbly, insecure note of G out of the thing. Well – at least Eric Clapton didn’t play flute so it seemed worth a try. The second choice was harder and the only thing that caught my eye was the shiny Selmer Gold Seal student flute hanging on the wall, glistening in the sunlight.
ARTLEY FLUTE B FOOT PROFESSIONAL
THE professional microphone, made in Chicago in the good old USA which began my long history of using Shure microphones and their other products to this day. Annes would allow me in exchange.Ī Shure Unidyne III was an easy choice. It all began in the summer of 1967 when I traded in my old Fender Strat for whatever Ken Watts, the music shop owner in Lytham-St. Some great, some not so great and some which are like old friends, even when I don’t play them so often any more. Over the last 51 years I have played and owned many flutes. I am often asked – what kind of flutes do you play?
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