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When I first heard that there was such a thing as a whole “band” made up of flutes, I was delighted. It turns out that there is more to this type of group than just flutists getting together to play – like our current flute choir ensemble.

Band Practice: Class, Taste and Identity in Ulster Loyalist Flute Bands

By Gordon Ramsey

Introduction:
Parading to fife and drum has been part of working class culture in Ulster since the 1780’s, when the practice was popularized by part time military forces such as the Volunteers and Yeomanry. The marching flute band became the dominant musical ensemble in parades by the turn of the 20th century, when many bands were sponsored by the mass political movements, nationalist and loyalist, mobilized by successive Home Rule crises.
Many loyalist bands at this time were supported by lodges of the Protestant fraternity, the Orange Order, and found most of their performance opportunities at Orange parades.
Today, the situation is radically different, with the vast majority of loyalist bands being independent of the Order, and Orange parades forming a very small proportion of their activities.”
Band Practice: Class, Taste and Identity in Ulster Loyalist Flute Bands

The Flute Band videos available on YouTube show a variety of “flutes” being played by individual bands. Some are only a little bigger than piccolos and have no keys and are either wood or “silver”. Some flute bands are pictured with what appears to be “modern” C flutes. Let’s dig into this a little deeper.

Ballygowan Flute Band

The Ballygowan Flute Band has a very interesting site with info on flute band instrumentation, history of the Ballygowan Flute Band – they actually bought land and built their own band building – a slide show of some of their parades and concerts and a list of the music they play with links to mp 3’s of them playing some of the pieces!!

Instrumentation

“The first flute bands in Ireland would almost certainly have started as melody bands, and the move towards playing parts probably came from the Army bands – the instrumentation would have been restricted in the early days to piccolo, Bb flute for 1st, 2nd, 3rd parts, an Eb flute and an F flute. A Bb bass (alto) flute was subsequently added, and later still what was known as a double Eb or double F (only contesting bands would have seen the need for the double bass flutes.) The early flutes tended to have only one key, so the music needed to be in the key of D-major. The Bb and Eb and F flutes had five or usually six keys.”

Flute Band Members

Band members come from all walks of life – men, women, boys, girls, professionals, farmers and tradesmen. Most indeed were born into a house already smitten with the banding bug!

Apart from competitions, the band is regularly requested to play in concerts, park engagements, church services – as well as leading parades to organisations’ church services and traditional parades.

The band has also made numerous radio broadcasts over the last twenty-five years – and two television appearances.

The range of music is vast – marches, selections from well-known musicals, Irish traditional music, and of course, competition test pieces are invariably from the classical repertoire.

Ballygowan Flute Band rehearses most Tuesday evenings, and approaching major events may get together two or even three times per week. Due to the foresight of the members in the early twentieth century, they own their own premises.

Here are a couple of the Ballygowan Flute Band videos –

Ballygowan Flute Band – Piccaroon

Ballygowan Flute Band @ Ballygowan Black Saturday 2019

And now – the Flute Band has evolved into what I would call a flute choir:

Ballygowan Flute Band Capriccio Italien

Fife vs. Band Flute

“The fife, most accurately described, is any cylindrically bored transverse flute, usually in one piece (but sometimes two), usually somewhat longer than the piccolo and having only six finger holes with no keys. It is intended and usually used for outdoor music, often connected with the military, and sometimes for signal purposes with or without field drum and other fifes of the same pitch. Flute, and in particular the band flute, properly speaking, best refers to any (nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century) transverse flute, in at least two sections, most often conical bore, and equipped with one or more keys of any system. It is usually in a flat key and intended for use in wind ensembles composed mostly of transposing instruments, including, of course, the flute band consisting exclusively of such flutes with percussion.
Library of Congress

Flute Bands play all sorts of different types of flutes as you will see if you look at some of the links below, but if someone talks about an Irish flute this may be the instrument:

Irish Flutes | Martin Doyle Flutes

What is the Irish flute called?

The simple system flutes such as those made by Martin Doyle are commonly known as ‘Irish flutes‘. The term simple system flute refers to the conical-bore flutes that were in use before Theobald Boehm introduced his cylindrical bore flute designs in the mid-nineteenth century.

Despite the implication of this commonly used name, the Irish flute is not an instrument indigenous to Ireland. The simple system, conical-bore flute is what people played before the advent of the modern, Boehm system, Western concert flute in the mid-19th century. Simple-system flutes are usually made of wood (cocus, grenadilla (African blackwood), rosewood, ebony, etc.). There were several manufacturers of this type of flute, among whom was English inventor and flautist Charles Nicholson Jr, who developed a radically improved version of the transverse wooden flute.

Playing technique

The modern playing technique within the Irish Traditional Music has much in common with tin whistle technique. This involves using a number of ornaments to embellish the music, including cuts, strikes and rolls.^[3] Common ornaments and articulations include:

Cut and strike (or tap, or pat)

Cut and strike “Cut” is rapidly lifting and putting down a finger; “Strike” is rapidly hitting and lifting an open hole with a finger.

Rolls

A roll is a note with first a cut and then a strike. Alternatively, a roll can be considered as a group of notes of identical pitch and duration with different articulations.^[3]

Cranns

Cranns (or crans) are ornaments borrowed from the Uilleann piping tradition. They are similar to rolls except that only cuts are used, not taps or strikes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_flute

Flute bands participate in a number of specific events. Here’s one:

Orange walks are a series of parades by members of the Orange Order, held on a regular basis during the summer in Ulster, Northern Ireland, and in other Commonwealth nations. The parades typically build up to 12 July celebrations marking Prince William of Orange‘s victory over King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Although the term “march” or “parade” is widely used in the media, the Order prefers terms such as “walk” or “demonstration”. Orange walks have faced opposition from Catholics, Irish nationalists and Scottish nationalists who see the parades as sectarian and triumphalist.