![]() ![]() (photo courtesy of Gibson by way of Offerup)Īs with the three other instruments in this article, you progressively lift your fingers to play the scale. A few even sport a removable bell or tail. This permits tuning and easy cleaning with soap and warm water. Some tonettes consist of a single piece of molded plastic and are not tunable. Though they look like cylindrical bore flutes, tonettes sound more like the plastic ocarinas they are. This design is responsible for their unique timbre. In fact, they're inline ocarinas, or vessel flutes that extend straight out from the mouth with a row of fingering holes. The closed end means that tonettes are vessel flutes, instruments that rely on resonance within a closed air chamber for their voice. (Even those with the flared bell, which is purely decorative and serves no function.) Inspect the end of your plastic flute - if it has an open end, it is not a tonette. It's important to note that all tonettes have closed ends. Most have a tapered end, though some feature a bell reminiscent of a clarinet. They measure 7.5 to 8.5 inches long and a bit over an inch at their widest point. Over the decades they've been made in every color of the rainbow, yet for some reason, black predominates. These photos at Ebay show how a variety of tonettes look. On each instrument, a stamped imprint just below the mouthpiece identifies it as a tonette by the words “Tonette”, “Swanson”, or “Gibson”. A variety of companies have manufactured and sold them since including The Tonette Company, Chicago Musical Instrument Co., Swanson, Gibson, and Dimestore Dreams/Binary Arts Corp, and Restoration Hardware. The tonette was invented in the late 1930s by Ziegner Swanson. Top to Bottom: 2 Song Flutes, white Flutophone, Gemshorn, Red and Black Tonettes Let's take a close look at tonettes, song flutes, flutophones, and precorders. Here we'll focus on the traditional pre-band flutes. In a companion article on this website, I'll discuss recorders, ocarinas, and other folk flutes. And, Suzuki has introduced their precorder ®, which to all appearances looks like an updated, modernized tonette. Song flutes and flutophones continue to be popular but no longer reign supreme in schools. ![]() Today, the tonette is long out of production. Yet many schools persist with the flutophone, song flute, and even the modern plastic ocarina. Today they totally dominate musical education. Inexpensive plastic recorders flooded the market. Together, the flutophone, tonette, and songflute owned the market for pre-band instruments in the 1940s through the 1970s.īy the 1980s, things had changed. The company claims their product has since been the introductory instrument for some 50 million children. Trophy's flutophone ® joined the competition in 1943. Army distributed tonettes to military personnel during the Second World War. Wikipedia claims that half the grammar schools in the nation used them by 1941. These little black flutes quickly became familiar to an entire generation of schoolchildren. The pre-band concept started in the late 1930s with the inventions of the tonette and the song flute. It's amazing the music you can create with a ten-dollar flute. We'll listen to sound clips that prove these simple instruments can act as vehicles for true musical expression. You might actually enjoy playing them! They're not just for kids. 80 years of history proves this works.īut here's the best reason to explore these flutes. Given their wide classroom use, these flutes are often described as “pre-band instruments.” The idea is that kids start on an instrument that's as easy and fun as a toy in grade school and then graduate to concert instruments as they mature. If you play concert flute, you'll be able to play any of them from the very moment you pick it up. Their biggest draw is that they're so easy to learn and to play. These simple flutes are inexpensive, easy to clean, portable, and nearly indestructible. For one, they've introduced tens of millions of American schoolchildren to music. There are a whole host of reasons to familiarize yourself with these instruments. An article on cheap plastic flutes? Surely I jest! Actually, no.
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