04/12/2026
Why I Play This Instrument (Larry Rybka)
With my first purchased flute, the “F #”, I began by trying to imitate what most casual NAF players were up to: a lot of non-natives playing in “Native-Style”--whatever that meant. After a while, it became unrewarding. I wondered: “Is that the only way you’re supposed to play this thing?” I was going nowhere, locked into basic scale ornamented improvs, all sounding quite the same. Getting a mic and modeling amp to create reverberated sound effects, and also using live guitar accompaniment or “jam tracks" revealed that the less “musical” I was, the better was the overall sound. I justified staying in those limited spaces because I objected to the idea of playing in other styles, as “trying to make this flute into a regular musical instrument, when THAT’S NOT what it is,” or so I thought.
After months of frustration trying to escape the “Rut” I was in, something changed. I remembered playing “Danny Boy” on my harmonica, and when I discovered how easily and expressively it could be played on the NAF, I was ecstatic. A different door opened, and the old door was closed.
When we started selling flutes, I wanted to better demonstrate them. So as my first goal, I set out to memorize the 17 note Chromatic scale forward and backward. My next goal was to learn 10 songs. Rehearsing them, I didn't especially plan to memorize anything, but soon I knew half of them by heart.
One day at our street vending booth, a Native American stopped as he was passing by, glanced at me and said, “play something", so I played one of the songs I had memorized. He was impressed enough to give me a cash tip. Although he wasn't interested in a flute, getting a tip in that way was unexpected and never happened again. But it taught me something special. Learning a new song is the best motivator. So is having to play that song somewhere, for someone.
We've been posting songs and comments on Facebook, and promoting my book “Beyond the Native Scale” on song-within.com, to demonstrate other ways of adapting to this simple and versatile instrument, a contemporary version of the North American Indigenous flute. It's been a learning experience. It means listening to a song, transcribing it to interval numbers, and then finessing it to my liking, or combining it into a medley – all without having to pay homage to social convention or consensus opinion.
