soflute » Klangvölle

“Der Besondere Kuss” short movie from KDJ festival

soflute — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:44 +0000

The Kino Dynamique Jena (KDJ) festival offered a spot for filmmakers from all over the world to meet and work together producing short movies. They got 60 hours of time for developing an initial idea, filming, cutting, post-processing and presenting the movies in a public screening at the Schillerhof cinema – plenty of time so to say
Nico Herzog came up with the Idea to visualize the flute playing and the sounds coming from the instrument. Izabela Spaleniak and me used the opportunity to help out Nico playing a improvised voiceless dialog with our flutes. The title “Der Besondere Kuß” actually originates from an article by Arthur Schopenhauer, who stated that the flute player’s lips actually form the shape of a special gentle kiss rather for a beloved one than for an instrument. Probably, this is one reason for the very special relation between flautists and their instruments – I like that idea

See the result:

Thank you Iza, Nico and Mathias for your support and of course: Thanks to the people who organized the festival!

Also have a look at some other movies produced at the festival here!

Klangvölle: Freeze Police

soflute — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:01:56 +0000

Recorded by Martin Hünniger, Mathias Krauß and Stephan in May 2009.

Download audio file (Freeze%20Police.mp3)

“Freeze Police” is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Germany License.

Bamboo Headjoint in buddhist Caves, Pune (India)

soflute — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:12:00 +0000

Few years ago I was traveling through India. While being on a trip around Pune I was visiting some old buddhist caves near Mulshi Lake with some frieds of Mystic Village. At that time I was into experiencing the sound capabilities of this instrument and also experimented with bamboo as an alternative material making flute headjoints.

The sweetness and expressive sound of the Indian Bansuri esp. in the low registers touched me in a way that no other modern concert flute ever did before. And I’m not the only one being impressed by that sound: later (just to do some advertising here) I a had some email conversation with Matti Kähönen from Matit Flutes and he too stated that the sound characteristics of the Indian Bamboo flutes, which might be a result of the fibre structure of the material, actually brought him into experimenting with carbon fibres to build his amazing Matit flutes.

So back to the caves: Their rich reverb brought me to do some recordings with my prototype bamboo headjoint mounted on my 200EUR Thomann flute:
Download audio file (bamboo.mp3)

Now here is some recording of a simular improvisation in the same room using the standart metal headjoint of the flute.
Download audio file (silver.mp3)

The intonation is not where it should be I admit, and actually that’s the point why I stopped investigating in that direction but still I do believe it was just my lack of craftsmanship rather than a fault of the material. So still I’m looking for a flute maker able to perfect my early experimental approches with bamboo headjoints.

Klangvölle: Amazing Grace

soflute — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:00:05 +0000

recorded 14th of June, 2008, Braun Professional Care with Timer, Motu Ultralight, Neumann KMS 105

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me….
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.