I found this lovely little bakelite Flute at a flea market recently, and while I did not put my lips to it there and then (because ick, flea market germs) once cleaned and tested it produced a wonderful dry sound which I immediately knew I had to put into a sampler.

The flute, or rather The Flutina, has its origins in 1940s England, made by the Rose Morris company, which still exists as a music store in central London. Not much information exists about it online, and it seems like it wasn’t produced for long nor in great numbers. I hope through this sampler it will get a second life, or at least be remembered by more people for the future.

Requires at least Decent Sampler 1.6.9.

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Switch & Lever

Recorded with a Zoom H2n surrounded by acoustic foam. As the flute only really can play one octave, starting on C5, each note was recorded multiple times to create five levels of round robins in the sampler, and then that octave transposed to two additional ones on either side resulting in a five octave span from C3 to B7. The audio was filtered and EQed to remove background noise. The air hiss from blowing the flute was also filtered out and then added back later as a separate controllable effect in the sampler.