So what exactly is a "Traditionally Made 6 Hole Native American Flute"? To answer this question, it may be important to address another question first: what is a Native American Flute? If you wanted a "traditional" or "original" item from any culture, you would prefer it to look or sound very much like the best or oldest examples of the item available. For this reason, in the many years that I have offered my Native American Flutes to the world, I have only been willing to share truly traditionally made 6 hole flutes with a few people willing to hear my ideas and belief about what one really is.

Blue Bear Flutes' 5 hole Native American Flutes are the absolute BEST instrument for anyone wanting to begin their journey into the peaceful world of the Native American Flute! They play exactly like their predecessors have for thousands of years and we even offer them in "traditionally tuned" which means tuning without regard to modernized intonations, methods or notes, creating a flute which sounds uniquely elegant and very similar to the way the original instruments sounded. Certainly we also offer them keyed to specific scales as well as different frequencies like 440-A, 528-C and 432-A. Playing one of our 5 hole Native American Flutes is also very good for those who have already been playing a 6 hole flute from another flute maker, because they play exactly the same! Our 5 hole flutes also play the same number of notes as the "modern" 6 hole flutes which most other flute makers have to offer!

Having said all this, what I believe to be the difference between the "modern" 6 hole Native American Flute and a "traditional" 6 hole Native American Flute is the placement of one simple fingering (the 3rd hole on modern 6 hole flutes is covered most of the time). Most modern 6 hole flutes have the fingerings all relatively equally spaced from one another, as did the original 6 hole flutes, however -the size of the original flutes in diameter would have caused the flute to play in differently than 6 hole flutes today-. Having experienced the modern 6 hole flute first, I always asked myself "why would anyone drill this extra hole and never use it"? I have heard so many explanations of why there is a virtually non-functioning hole on the modern 6 hole flute however none of them make reference to why such a great people would go to the trouble and take the time to put a fingering in this location and then rarely ever use it, and when it is used it completely changes the tone and scale of this beautiful instrument. In my experience of playing thousands of types of flutes from around the world, the modern 6 hole Native American Flute is the only example of one with such a fingering requirement. It is my belief that the original flutes were designed in such a way that the bottom 5 holes were played exactly as all 5 hole flutes are stilled played today and the top hole was the next note of the scale which is also easily accomplished on a 4 or 5 hole flute. For more information, please watch our explanation video. If you are interested in the technical side of how they are made, check this video out.