(Lake of the Pines Wood Flute Circle - Auburn California)
New Members Welcome
We are LOPING WOLF – "The Lake of the Pines Wood Flute Circle" - a group of friends bitten by "The Spirit of the Native American Flute", and subsequently “infected” with a “bad” disease – “Flute Fever”, for which there is no known cure....
"The Spirit of the Native American Flute" knows no political boundaries, no nationalities, no gender, no age, no amount of hair, and no body weight. The “Spirit” is, like, TOTALLY politically correct.
"The Spirit of the Native American Flute" manifests itself in the form of, basically, “a stick with holes in it” - a flute, whose “voice” is usually pleasant to the ear and whose “stick” is easy to play. It is a wonderful musical instrument.
INVITATION -
You are invited to join our Flute Circle, either actually, spiritually or just because you may want to join us one day to play flutes or simply listen to them. It does not matter. We have many levels of membership. (Loping Wolf also has drums, rattles and other rhythm instruments to accompany our flutes.)
We invite you to contact us via e-mail at flutecircle@lopingwolf.com or through our Web page at www.lopingwolf.com.
By your receiving this invitation, Loping Wolf already knows of your interest. Therefore, technically, you already “joined”. Wasn’t that easy? (Please let us know AT ANY TIME if you want to be taken off our mailing list.)
BUT – Loping Wolf HIGHLY recommends you contact our “Mother” organization - the “Northern California Flute Circle” (NCFC) at http://www.naflute.com and seriously consider joining NCFC. Mike Oitzman heads NCFC and is Loping Wolf’s “Flute Guru” – a fine musician, a wonderful flute instructor, and a source of unlimited information and help. Mike’s forte, however, is his ability to organize. Through him you will know what is going on, and who to contact for any flute-related information, events, and products.
BACKGROUND -
A single person is responsible for infecting us with “Flute Fever” - Mary Youngblood. We listen to Mary's music CONSTANTLY, but to no avail - we remain sick. Mary is not curing us of "Flute Fever". Her music simply re-infects us every time we hear her play, whether in person or on her CDs. Please check out her site and her music at http://www.maryyoungblood.com
One might say that Mary is our “Spiritual Leader”, in that we simply “lope” after her almost wherever she goes. Loping Wolf would not exist if it were not for Mary.
We also "lope" after Stan Padilla, Donna Brint, Mark Berry, JP Gomez, Geoffrey Ellis, Jim Pappas and Butch Hall, to name a few. They are not in the same group by any means, (and there are others). But they are all arms of sparkling light on Loping Wolf's illuminated cosmic dandelion seed, just waiting for us to gently blow them around us. They all fill our lives with wonder. It is all so cool.
LOCATION -
Loping Wolf mostly hails from Lake of the Pines, California, off Highway 49, between Auburn and Grass Valley, with a "Satellite Campus" in Woodland, California. We also host “Satellite Flute Circles” in Downtown Sacramento at the corner of 8th and “O” Streets, on the grass above the ATM machine, every Wednesday noon. We can also meet Monday and Friday, if that is more convenient for you. (IF it is bad weather, we do not know what we will do, because we are so new, we have not dealt with that situation, yet.)
A LITTLE MORE INFORMATION -
This “flute thing” is so huge, it baffles us. Plus it is growing every day. Most of our information we share with everybody will be found on our Web page, so please check back often. www.lopingwolf.com
Otherwise, we found that e-mail is the easiest way for us to get you a message. We will try to identify ourselves in the “Subject” box, so you won’t think we are spamming you.
In the meantime, here is some more information that may or may not be on our Web page.
LOPING WOLF BY-LAWS - (This is my favorite legal statement....)
[1] There are no by-laws.
[2] There are no dues.
[3] There is no board of directors.
FLUTE SOURCES -
There is a lot of flute information "out there": http://www.harpsong.org/traditional.html#native
There are a TON of flute makers out there.
See the links on our Web page. http://www.lopingwolf.com/Links/flutemakerlinks.html
COMPATIBLE KEYS -
Robin asked about what keys sound good together. She had a neat reason: when she is playing with another person(s) in the same key, she cannot hear herself. She figured that if she had a compatible key, she could hear herself PLUS contribute to a tune that sounds good.
The best source of an answer we found so far is the charts on the Stellar Flutes site:
http://www.stellarflutes.com/UNIVERSAL%20CHARTS.html
This was the site we looked at when we determined that the keys of "G", "D" and "C" sounded good together - or "are complementary" as they say on their page.
5-FINGER OR 6-FINGER FLUTES -
We started out with 5-finger flutes, because they were a little easier to play. But now that we are getting so good - er – I mean, “EXPERIENCED”, we see the advantages of 6-finger flutes.
Besides, we now know that most 6-finger flutes can be played just like a 5-finger flute if you simply keep your 4th finger from the bottomed “glued” to that hole. We can discuss this more, later, in person….
Also, looking at the Stellar Flutes site, again, it appears there are 17 notes "available" on the 6-finger flute tablature charts.
The 17-notes-available fact would give us more versatility in selecting songs we could play as a group, if we wanted to get "complementary" flutes in the same key.
MODES -
This is a large topic for another day. Trust me.
That's all for now. More, later, I'm sure.
Blessings,
-Dan |
