The Musical Instruments

The Snake

The Snake has arrived to the world of music! A new flute, very easy to play, robust and durable, and with a great sound. A tool to discover and develop your own music. Easy to get started with, and offering a lot to discover as you continue to play it. It has its own, thrilling sounds.

People with disabilities that affect their motoric skills will get much pleasure out of it. Children think it is all fun. Many people who consider themselves unmusical have been able to make little melodies almost at once. And for the professional musicians it is a new instrument with many possbilities.

Instead of using finger holes, you get the different tones when you vary the blowing pressure. The flute can give some 10-12 different tones when you blow it with different strengths, and even when you blow very slowly itīs possible to get some different tones. The tones are from the so called natural harmonic scale (see below) . The flute type is sometimes called overtone flute .

Click on the adjacent image to hear how it sounds. There is another page with more music examples. The idea is, that you let the flute "do the work" when you approach it, take the tones that come out and use them to play with. It can then behave almost as it plays by itself. As the time passes, and you get to know it more and more, you also become more and more able to control the tones. "A minute to learn - a lifetime to master".

Similar long wind instruments without finger holes can be found historically and in various folk cultures. Most of them however, demand a more difficult way of blowing, and an exact correspondence to an existing flute doesn't - to our knowledge exist. But please tell if you know of one!

The construction is very robust. It is hand crafted, entirely in plastic (exclusive ancient biological material ) and it can for example be rinsed under water. It comes in three colors, yellow, blue and black with glitter. Length 135 cm = 4.4 feet = 53 inches.

It can normally be used coiled or uncoiled, without changes in the tones. With the flute uncoiled, you can make some nice tricks, such as playing softly into the ear of yourself or someone else.

The position of the hose makes a difference if you pour some water into it and move it up and down as you play. Then you can get in principle every possible tone out of the flute. And you can make nice gliding tones. Hear an example here.

The Snake is easiest to handle when you use it coiled up. Here is also a trick for the experienced musician to have fun with: When you coil up The Snake you can put the arm into the loop and hold the flute at your shoulder, and play it (see picture and listen) at the same time as you play the guitar or the piano.

These are the tones you hear (a natural harmonic scale in C):

[c]

c

g

c

e

g

b b (low)

c

d

e

f # (low)

g

a b (high)

b b (low)

b

c

...

Here are some comments to the scale for the interested.