The keyless ("simple system") flute or fife is a nice, relatively inexpensive instrument, for which instructional materials seem to be scarce and somewhat fragmentary. They are often presented as side notes in tutorials primarily intended for folks playing instruments with keys. Worse, compared to materials for other similar instruments (e.g. the recorder), materials for the flute/fife tend to concentrate excessively on a limited genre, typically either Irish or fife and drum corps music. This gives the impression, sometimes stated explicitly, that the keyless instrument is useless for any other purpose. We can do better.
To keep things simple, I won't attempt to duplicate materials that are already available. Rather, I'll try to stitch these pieces together, give you a sense of where to look for information, and fill in some gaps where I had a lot of trouble figuring out something important.
Simple-system flutes and fifes are available in a broad range of sizes and models. They are typically made in wood, but occasionally in other materials (e.g. plastic, metal, glass). The basic instrument, often called an "Irish flute," is pitched in D and about 24" long. So-called "low flutes" are larger and pitched 1-3 notes lower, i.e. in C, Bb, or A. Fifes are smaller and pitched higher: Eb up through high D. Fifes are most commonly pitched in Bb, but other useful keys are also available, most notably C, F, and G. The larger fifes are sometimes also called flutes.
D flutes are typically designed for quiet indoor playing ("concert" type harrinstruments) in a wide range of keys. Military fifes (typically in Bb and C) are designed to be louder and easier to play in the third octave. However, this difference is easy to overplay. Some "fifes", even in Bb, are designed for concert playing. And even "military" fifes may be able to play a wider range of music.
Music for these instruments is written as if you had a D instrument. For playing instruments pitched in other keys. This is ok if you really have a D instrument, or if the whole band is using the same alternative key (e.g. Bb for military music). Otherwise, see the Transposition section below.
The following picture shows a range of flutes and fifes. The top three are low A, low C, and D flutes by Casey Burns. The smaller flutes are F, G, Bb, C, and high D. The C instrument is a model F military fife. The rest are concert flutes/fifes by Sweetheart. A high D fife is only 12 inches long and weighs almost nothing. A low A flute is 31 inches long and quite a hulking instrument. Instruments of these extreme sizes are harder to play than the standard D instrument.
Despite superficial differences in construction, and despite being pitched an octave higher, pennywhistles are very similar to simple-system flutes in terms of how they are played. This means that it is easy to alternate between the two sorts of instruments, and instructional materials for the whistles are also useful for flutes.
Simple system flutes are also available with one or more keys and/or tuning slides. Some are made with more than the standard 6 holes. These modifications make certain notes easier to play, but they also increase the complexity and thus the cost of the instrument. This document concentrates on how to play the simpler keyless instruments effectively.
To get started, you'll need an instrument and a variety of basic information. The following sites have lots of general information and pointers:
At the moment, there seems to be no really good instructional manual. If you are just getting started, you'll want several books of different types.
The Gray Larson book is currently the definitive reference for Irish-style playing, but it has limitations. It's not really aimed at a beginner. It has a strong Irish focus. Its fingering charts are incomplete. And it's not something you can expect to just read through and absorb. Get it and look back at it now and then: some of his discussions will make more sense as you gain experience.
On the face of it, the Robin Williamson book is for the wrong instrument. And you'll need to look at a second book for advice about the embouchure. However, as mentioned above, the pennywhistle is fingered almost exactly like the keyless flute. This book has a great selection of beginner tunes with really good hints about how to play them.
If you aren't a die-hard fan of traditional Irish music, you may wish to check out the wide range of fife and drum tunes. A nice set, many of which should sound familiar to Americans, is in Walter Sweet's book The Bread and Butter of Jamming. More can be found on the web.
Good instruments are available from many sources. There is a a long list of flute suppliers at: A Guide to the Irish Flute. In addition, some well-known fife makers are:
A good place to start your search is the Sweetheart Flute Company. They sell a wide range of reliable mid-priced products, spanning both the Irish flute and military fife sides of the market. Whether or not you end up buying from them, they are a good place to get a grip on what's available and what you should expect to pay.
Accessories such as cases can often be obtained from flute and fife sellers. Check out also the sellers of native American flutes. For swabs, bore oil, cork grease, and the like, check out the products made for recorders and clarinets.
Wooden flutes take some time to break in. The most dramatic effects are during the first few weeks. But, even after that, they become easier and easier to play over a period of many months. Practice regularly and be patient.
If a wooden flute isn't properly oiled, the tone will go bad after a few minutes of playing as it absorbs water from your breath. Notes won't sound clear and higher notes may not want to play at all. If you suspect this, let the flute dry out overnight and stick a finger into the bore hole. If the surface feels dry, it needs oil.
To oil a flute , let it dry out (e.g. overnight) and then apply your favorite oil. Standard woodwind bore oil works fine. See the flute maker pages (above) for other suggestions. You don't normally need to oil very often. However, this varies with the flute and some new flutes may need to be oiled repeatedly until they settle down.
Standard D flutes can be dried and oiled with almost any sort of swab, designed or improvsed. Alto recorder swabs (look like soft bottle brushes) are good. So is a (standard concert) flute cleaning rod (long rod with a slot on the end) carrying a small piece of soft cloth. For smaller instruments, a soprano or sopranino recorder swab may work.
Getting a swab into a smaller diameter and/or longer fife piece can be more interesting. One-piece designs can be particularly difficult. Recorder swabs or even flute cleaning rods may be too short or too wide. Never push something into the bore unless you are sure it will come back out easily. Unwedging a jammed wad of cloth is no fun at all. Some suggestions
So, let's assume you've gotten a flute or fife and you've followed the instructions in one of the beginner manuals. So you can play perhaps an octave and a half worth of notes and some simple tunes. But the pitch isn't as accurate as you'd like. You can't play popular music because it uses lots of flats. And you're not sure how much you want to play traditional folk tunes. This is the point where many folks give up unnecessarily and blame the instrument.
It's important to realize that the keyless flute, like any instrument worth playing, requires care, attention, and practice to play well. You'll need to work on several issues:
In combination, these will allow you to play a wide range of music on the keyless instrument.
If you play these instruments in the obvious way, the notes will not be quite on the standard pitches. This is most obvious if you play with other sorts of instruments, or in keys far from D, or if you sit down with a chromatic tuner. And it will remain true even after the instrument warms up. (Wooden instruments play slightly flat when cold.)
One traditional solution is to accept a quaint out-of-tune scale. Another is to add keys and a tuning slide to the instrument. Both of these methods can be useful in the right circumstances, but they miss a key feature of the keyless instrument: the pitches are very plastic.
Pitches on a good keyless flute can be changed a lot by varying your embouchure and how you position the blow hole relative to your mouth (known as rolling in or out). On a good flute, the most plastic notes, C and C#, can be moved by about a half step. More rigid notes (e.g. G) can be moved somewhat, though not as far. Experiment with a chromatic tuner until you can move the pitches around somewhat. Try the embouchure hints in Gray Larson's book.
So, to play the keyless instrument in tune, you need to adjust the pitch of each note so that it comes out right. In this respect, playing the keyless flute is like singing or playing the violin, not like playing the recorder or piano. To get the right pitch out of the flute, you must have a clear mental picture of the pitch you want. If you don't have one, listen to the tune, hum it, or play it on another instrument (e.g. a keyboard) until you can hear the pitch in your head.
You must also have confidence. You won't be able to hit that high D or make things sound right in Bb unless you believe that you can. Use the Force. Timidity is especially bad when trying to play the fife: they like to be played loudly.
Despite claims to the contrary, all 12 notes used in standard Western music can be played on a good keyless flute. Some notes are harder than others to play: A and G are easy, Bb takes a bit of work, D# is quite difficult. As a beginner, you'll want to play in the keys of D, A, G, and C, but you don't need to be permanently stuck in those keys.
If a note isn't sounding well with the most obvious standard fingering, try some of the alternate ones, ideally with a chromatic tuner to assess pitch. The best fingering varies with the instrument and the person playing it. Here is my summary of what I've found from a wide range of flute, pennywhistle, and fife fingering charts. Try improvising similar fingerings and see what happens. Even when one fingering produces the best clear sustained note, another may simplify fast transitions e.g. in ornamentation.
"Forked" fingerings involve leaving holes open above the bottom finger. The most common of these are D (in the second octave), C, G#, and Bb. Using them can involve moving a large number of fingers at once. Doing this smoothly is a matter of practice. Folks playing recorder do this constantly. If they can do it, you can. Don't give up.
Some notes (notably F) require half-covering a hole. Be aware that there are many ways to half-cover a hole. You can literally cover half of it with the end of your finger. But you can also partly block the stream of air by tilting the finger slightly up to make a vent. You can even hang the finger in the airstream above the hole. There is no "right" method: try several things and see what works for you. You may need to take different approaches to different holes.
Most of the notes will come fairly quickly with practice. The exception is D# (played like D but with the lowest hole half-closed). You'll have to live without D# for a long time. It takes a lot of skill to make it sound, and longer still to make it sound strongly and on cue. But there is a big difference between difficult and impossible.
When trying to make difficult notes sound, try walking or sliding up to them from nearby notes. Also remember the advice above about having a clear mental model of the desired pitch.
I'm no good at playing in the third octave. However, I've compiled a summary of likely fingerings compiled from a wide range of fingering charts.
No matter how good you get at fingering, some tunes are simply awkward as written. They may involve D# (aka Eb). They may have a range that doesn't fit well into two octaves starting at D. They may be in flat keys that are hard to make sound right. They may have awkward accidentals, especially modern music or music from traditions such as Klezmer. Or they may involve fast ornaments that happen to be easy on a violin but not on a D flute.
So we come to your last weapon: transposition. Most awkward tunes can be moved into a key and/or range that is more friendly. Don't be shy: folks also do this for other instruments and voice. For all you know, that rock tune wasn't even originally written in the key shown in your (say) piano score.
The simplest sort of transposition is moving notes by an octave. Tunes that extend beyond the range of the flute can often be handled by moving the offending sections up or down an octave. Try to identify a coherent section to shift.
Transposition by other intervals (e.g. a third) can be used in three ways:
The first two of these methods are great for playing by yourself, or with friends who are willing to adapt to the new key. The third method, the most interesting, allows you to play with other folks who want to keep the tune in its original key. This method is used by folks who play transposing orchestral instruments and by those playing pennywhistles, which are cheap and come in a vast range of keys.
In particular, if your normal instrument is a D flute, it is extremely helpful to also own a flute/fife in the key of F and/or G and learn to transpose the right amount for these instruments. (A third down for the F flute and a fifth up for the G instrument.) Playing on these instruments (transposing so as to keep the original pitches) is a great way to work around keys with flats or tunes with awkward range.
Settle down with a music book, internet resource, or musically-trained friend and learn how transposition works. Transposing highly chromatic music from one key to a distant key is tricky. Transposing reasonable tunes by friendly intervals (e.g. second, third, fifth) is not hard. With enough practice, you can read the transposed notes directly off the score (though you'll probably want to write them out at first).
Sometimes the main skeleton of the tune is reasonably playable but certain fast ornaments are difficult. In this case, your best approach may be to rewrite the ornamentation. If you compare a number of recordings or transcriptions of a tune, particularly a traditional one, you'll often find that it varies a lot. Specific arrangements are often adapted to be easy one some specific instrument, frequently the violin. It may help if you can find (e.g. on the internet) a version for the pennywhistle, fife, or Irish flute. If you can't find such a version ready-made, it's entirely appropriate to construct one.
One key to building new variations is to be familiar with the musical genre, so that you have a sense of what sounds right. It is also critical to have a clear sense of what is the main skeleton of the tune and, thus, which notes are merely ornaments. Finding two variations of the tune and comparing them often helps here.
One common problem is that some pieces have few pauses because instruments such as violins do not require them. To play such pieces on a flute, you must rewrite to create space to breathe. To do this, first try to understand how the tune breaks down into phrases: you'll want to breathe at the ends of phrases. At these pause points, drop notes that seem less important and/or simplify ornamental runs into longer notes from which you can steal a bit of time. Often you'll want to keep notes that are on the beat and delete off-beat notes.
None of these tricks (fingerings, pitch adjustment, and transposition, selective rewriting) works on all situations and they all require practice. But they are very powerful in combination. There are some lovely but highly chromatic tunes (e.g. Hagrid's theme) that are just difficult on the instrument. But there are many more popular tunes that can be made to work nicely.