I just bought a vintage nose flute

Subject: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Blackcatter
Date: 05 Apr 03 - 11:25 PM

Greetings all.

Wasn't sure if I should ressurect an old thread or not, cause that usually confuses me. The original thread link is below.

I just purchased a metal noseflute and am waiting it's shipment. I've been playing nosefult for about 10 years and am really looking forward to playing a metal one.

Anyone else like to play this odd little instrument (invented in the 1890s)?

earlier thread

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Bernard
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 06:11 AM

Snot something I've really considered, though I sometimes shove me tin whistle up me nose and play it!

Seriously, though, what are they like ('scuse the ignorance!)?

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 06:22 AM

Blackcatter, Strangely, I recieved an e-mail last friday from a TV production company asking if I could put them in touch with a nose-flute player. I said that I did'nt know of any, then you pop up. I think it is the people who put together the Des O'Connor and Mel lunchtime TV progs. Would you like to contact them at: [e-mail]

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 07:49 AM

G'day Blackcatter,

I had one of the tin-plated steel ones (also caled "Magic Flute" ...?) when I was a kid ... about 45 years ago, if you disregard the chattering masses! It vanished (probably quietly buried by my family) while I was working on the Snowy and Tasmanian Hydro schemes, back in the '60s ... and all I could find to replace it was one of the brilliant red plastic imitations (made by Trophy?).

However, I managed to do some trading with a friend who has a museum of musical instruments at Nowra( south of Sydney, NSW, Australia) and acquired a vintage tin model last Easter.

I need to do a bit more careful restoration ... but it beats hell out of the red plastic pale copies. I played it in the "Band Mixup" penultimate concert of the Australian Folk Gathering at Albion Park, NSW, June last year ... to the bemusement of the audience!.

BTW:Last year I published an archive photo of The Bushwhackers (of 1952 - 1957) ... the "Bush Band" that started the Australian Folk Revival ... and pulled out a close-up of the late Alan Scott as a new member playing to 3000 schoolkids at Sydney Showground in 1954 ... on a noseflute!

Regard(les)s,]

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Willie-O
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 09:29 AM

Hmm...so is a noseflute related to a digeridoo? And again I say...

HHMMMMMMMMMMMMUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMOMMMMMMMMMMMMUMMMMMM!!!


Actually, seriously, the only place I have ever heard of a noseflute is in the works of H.P Lovecraft, something about a marching band in a very evil sub-natural parade of the minions of Cthulhu, I think. What kind of tunes do you play on it BlackCatter?

W-O

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 09:52 AM

What a find there BC!!! Just think of all the generations of snot encrusted on it! Some real history there.......

Spaw

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: GUEST,A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 09:56 AM

I have a wooden one that I bought in a shop in Salzburg but my nose obviously isnt of the right diameter or something cause I can't get a note out of it.

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: artbrooks
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 10:19 AM

I have one of the red plastic ones, and I often dig it out to accompany the person who digs out her flute at song circles.

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: GUEST,Nick
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 12:16 PM

When you say vintage is this a flute someone else has already nosed? YUCK!
Nick

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 01:31 PM

I just bought a vintage noseflute
I can't wait until it's come
Oh what joy and what rejoicing,
Though my friends look rather glum

(Noseflute uber alles)

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 01:39 PM

Seems silly to me, to treat a childs toy as a serious instrument...

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Midchuck
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 05:05 PM

McGrath, you could use "Life Is Like a Mountain Railway," as well as Deutshcland Uber Alles, but you'd need to write a lot more.

Peter.

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Art Thieme
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 06:21 PM

When young---about seven or eight years old ----- I found one of the really old original ones. (1948) It was made of a carved turtle shell. It was cut in such a way that the shell had a slit between it and what was once the belly of the beast. The meat and other innards had been pretty much removed.---- Something was still inside it though----- just enough of the dry innards to keep the airflow through the thing rather impeded to allow exceptional intonation that was MUCH better than any wooden or metal or plastic nose flute (two words) I have ever seen. I bought in for a whole quarter in a junk shop in DeKalb, Illinois where a childs coffin was in the window along with a cat that had been mummified and wrapped as in olden days in Egypt. You could tell it was a cat mostly by the shape of the head and the ears that stuck up from the little skull. Still, it made me quite ill to play it. The aroma or whatever was still pungeant as hell. That meant that after three or four songs (medium length) I had to go out behind my aunt and uncle's garage and toss my lunch. Then I felt much better and could play the rest of the afternoon with fewer interruptions of that kind. I found my fist HARDY BOYS book in that wonderful little store-----and condems too. We didn't know what they were so we filled them with water and replaced my little brothers pillow with the unwieldy thing. That night he jumped into bed, hit that pillow with his sleepy little head------and almost drowned.

Ah, nostalgia !!!!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Blackcatter
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 06:40 PM

Hey everyone,

I have about 5 of the plastic ones everywhere in my life - I teach nose flute playing as well and I buy them by the dozen to give them away.

This vintage one is BRAND NEW with the original cardboard as it would have been sold in the late 1950s - early 1960s. I'm really looking forward to it.

For those of you who don't know the instrument, go to Mouth Music Press: a website for jews harps. They have the new nose flutes available for sale and explain what they are.

Mouth Music Press

And Clinton - who says that nose flute players treat them as serious instruments. Hell, I don't even treat my tin whistles that way!

pax yall

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 08:47 PM

G'day again Blackcatter,

I probably should have added that there are a whole group of cylindrical, tuned, finger-holed noseflutes ... mainly in the Pacific Islands, where the breath from the nose is considered to come directly from the soul ... and so their noseflutes are often the central instruments of religious playing!

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Charley Noble
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 09:00 PM

One of my former housemates in Michigan brought one home from Elderly Instruments one evening. We found it incompatible with drinking beer or sipping soup, at least in polite company.

THREAD DRIFT: Now is there another instrument for the much lower aperture and what would it be called?

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Blackcatter
Date: 06 Apr 03 - 10:26 PM

Talk about having to develop "breath" control!

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Kaleea
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 02:35 AM

Golly, a vintage noseflute? I have one too, and just love to play it, but seems like whenever I do a performance on it, especially "Concerto #13 in A# minor for Noseflute and Chamber Orchestra" by Johann Sebastian Bach--when I get to the scherzo movement, somebody in the audience yells out, "Snot funny!"

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Blackcatter
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 02:48 AM

Scarey image:

Michael Jackson playing Noseflute.

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Blackcatter
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 02:54 AM

Here's the noseflute I've purchased:

Vintage Noseflute on Ebay

And get this: The person who came in second place in the bidding just offered me $50 for it!

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 11:05 AM

A great lady I "knew" (in the Biblical sense) a long time ago used a plastic nose flute for contraception. It worked real well---until it didn't. A male friend of mine used one too---for the same purpose. He strapped it to his penis with duct tape and it made intercourse impossible. But blowjobs always had a unique soundtrack to 'em.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Charley Noble
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 11:43 AM

Art- for shame!

Well, I was doing very nicely accompanying a sprightly rendition of "Sal's Got a Meatskin" when I sneezed...

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Blackcatter
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 12:37 PM

Let's try that again

Noseflute

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 07:18 PM

G'day Blackcatter,

I had a look at the photo on the sale site. The design of this one is quite different from the old (Magic Flute ..?) tin-plated one of my youth ... made in the USA (...?) and corresponding closely to the patent drawing in Dallas Cline's How To Play Almost Everything. This is joined together by something like resistance ('spot') welding and has its metal mouthplate bent about a horizontal axis, such that the metal plates bear on the upper and lower lips at 45º.

The mouth plate of your metal Humanatone, bent at two points about vertical axes, appears to be the model for Trophy's plastic Humanatones (which appear on the linked site in several different colours ... but I have only ever seen them in vivid red!).

I also note that, at this point, the Japanese metal Humanatone, did not have the "patented tremolo feature" of its plastic successor ... a small hole on the right-hand side for the player to rhythmically open and close ... for a dubious 'tremolo' effect.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 07:20 PM

are you going to play the moonlight snotta?

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 07:30 PM

The Magic Flute - now I think that's a variation that Mozart would really have loved... Especially as adapted by Art's mate.

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 07:38 PM

Bob,

That damn hole was why she got pregnant !!! It was like having a salmon ladder on a power dam to get sperm past the flute and upstream to spawn. ;-)

By the way, if you didn't realize, my story about about the turtle shell Kishwaukee River nose-flute was a tall tale I made just for this thread.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage noseflute
From: Blackcatter
Date: 07 Apr 03 - 09:36 PM

I realize it doesn't have the hole - I'll do some surgery when I get it, the vibrato is what really transforms it into a beautiful instrument.

I do this cool thing with my tongue as well that sort of gets a trill sound - works only in the upper register though.

By the way, my range is from a B up two octives to another B or so. I can get higher, but I have to blow really hard and the quality sucks. It's kind of an odd coincidence, but my mouth corresponds to my Bb tin whistle.

Funny, huh?

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage nose flute
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 15 - 08:39 AM

More info available at noseflute.org

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage nose flute
From: Mr Red
Date: 02 Dec 15 - 08:00 AM

not to be sniffed at?

Subject: RE: I just bought a vintage nose flute
From: JHW
Date: 03 Dec 15 - 04:32 AM

On a concert at St.Chartier (sometime last century) some folks from Sardinia were playing them.
One guy played two at once.