The Ultimate Guide to the Tonette
The Ultimate Guide to the Tonette
by Howard
Fosdick January 1, 2021
When did you start playing flute? Many of us began in grade school
or middle school. But rarely was the concert flute our first
instrument.
Schools often introduce children to music with simpler "pre-band"
instruments. Today that's often a cheap plastic recorder. If you're
a bit older, it might have been a tonette, song flute, or
flutophone.
This article tells you everything you'd ever want to know about what
I consider the most interesting pre-band instrument ever: the
tonette.
Goodness... why would anyone care?
Nostalgia is one reason. But there's more. As a flute player, you
can play the simple tonette from the very moment you first pick it
up. It gives you an entirely new sound to explore. A quality tonette
projects a haunting voice that baffles listeners: rarely can they
guess what they're hearing. I'll disclose why in a moment.
The instrument is portable. You can slip it in your pocket and play
it in conditions you'd never subject your flute to. And it's
inexpensive: you can buy one for the price of meal.
I use my tonette in composing. It's simplicity allows me to
concentrate on the melodies I'm developing instead of the
complexities of the instrument I'm playing.
If you agree that part of the fun of music is trying out different
flutes, you might want to add a tonette to your collection. This
article tells you everything you need to know about this playful
little instrument. It includes sound samples, purchasing advice, and
where to download so much free sheet music you'll never have to buy
any.
What's a Tonette?
Here's a tonette package from years past:
All tonettes are made of molded plastic. They either end with a
bell, as shown above, or in a bluntly rounded end. Tonettes were
made in various colors over the years, but for some reason black was
by far most common.
Here are top and bottom views of a yellow tonette with a rounded
end:
(Photos courtesy of vendor
iclaura at eBay)
Tonettes measure about eight inches long and an inch wide at their
widest point. They have seven topside holes for players' fingers,
and one bottom-side hole for the left-hand thumb. Note the two
finger rests: one on top for the left-hand pinky finger, and one
beneath for the right-hand thumb.
The mouthpiece is separate from the body. This allows for tuning
the instrument. It also makes for easy cleaning -- just remove the
mouthpiece and wash in warm, soapy water.
All tonettes have a closed end. Even the belled tonette! Inspect it
closely and you'll notice that the flare is just for show. The end
beneath it is closed.
Given its closed air chamber, the tonette is a type of vessel flute
or ocarina.
Vessel flutes work just like the pop bottles you blew into as a
child. Your breath produces sound by air resonance within an
enclosed space. This differs from concert flutes, piccolos,
recorders, and other flutes that have open ends. (They're
essentially pipes with fingering holes.)
The tonette's unusual closed design yields its singular, rounded
sound. Most musicians can discern that tonettes are not open-ended
flutes when they hear them. Many claim that they sound like a cross
between an end-blown flute and a ceramic ocarina.
Similar-looking plastic flutes that have open ends are not
tonettes. For example, the competing song flute is frequently mistaken for the tonette:
(Photos courtesy of Amazon (top) and The OnMusic
Dictionary (bottom)
The song flute features a gently-flared open end. Distinctive raised
tracks connect the finger holes. The song flute is a different
instrument with its own voice. (Learn more about it here.)
Origins
The tonette was invented in the late 1930s by Ziegner Swanson. His
goal was to develop a cheap, easy-to-play, cleanable plastic flute
for children. The genius of his creation is that this simple
instrument can serve as a vehicle for true musical expression as
well.
The popularity of Swanson's invention exceeded his wildest dreams.
By 1941, over half the
nation's grammar school students learned tonette.
Educators believed that kids could learn musical basics by starting
with an easy-to-play, inexpensive flute. Then they would graduate to
traditional concert instruments as they grew into their middle and
high school years. Generations of youngsters tooted tonettes and
then migrated to concert instruments.
During the tonette's heyday -- the 1940s through the 1980s -- its
main competitors were the song flute and the flutophone.
Together, these three flutes owned the market for pre-band
instruments well into the 1970s.
The three instruments share similarities in pitch and fingering.
Yet each has its own unique sound. (You can read a comparison of
these flutes here.) Here's how
to tell them apart:
Inexpensive plastic recorders arrived in the '70s and '80s. Given their greater capabilities and musical range, they quickly
grabbed the market away from the three traditional pre-band flutes.
Tonettes became relegated to a niche role in elementary education.
Often they were considered little more than toys. Tonettes made in
this late period are often cheap products with poor sound quality.
The fun little flutes disappeared altogether by the turn of the
century.
During its sixty year production run, several different companies
manufactured and sold tonettes. They used different molds and
plastics in production. So there are big quality differences among
instruments. Some tonettes sound as beautiful as any flute you'll
find; others toot like cheap children's toys.
All the tonettes carry an identifying stamp below the mouthpiece
stating "Tonette", "Swanson", or "Gibson". Tonette makers included
The Tonette Company, Chicago Musical Instrument Co., Swanson,
Gibson, Dimestore Dreams/Binary Arts Corp., and Restoration
Hardware.
Sound
The sound of a tonette depends on the quality of the instrument
-- they vary significantly. Here are several short samples recorded
with different instruments and microphones:
- A brief swing riff played on a US Army tonette dating from the Second
World War
All were recorded within walls that provided natural resonance.
Given the slight breathiness of many tonettes, playing in a
basement, hallway, or other location with favorable acoustics really
enhances their appeal.
You'll occasionally hear tonettes used for novelty effects in TV and
films. Serious composers score them, too, such as Peter Schickele in
his Gross Concerto (written under his pen name of P.D.Q.
Bach).
The rock group Cream employed tonettes in their classic '60s song, Pressed Rat and Warthog.
Listen to it here. Those ethereal little flutes
in the background add an appropriately weird touch to the psychedelic masterpiece.
Play
Playing the tonette is simplicity itself. You blow into a fipple,
similar to a recorder. There is no challenging embouchure to learn,
nor is there a reed to adjust to.
Play the scale by covering all holes and progressively lifting your
fingers. The raised lips on the holes make them easier to cover than
those of a recorder.
Players instinctively calibrate their breath pressure to accurately
sound notes. As with most ocarinas, you increase breath pressure a
tad to hit the highest notes in tune.
The tonette's range is from C5 through D6. Its C5 base note is the
same as that of the soprano recorder. That's one octave above middle
C on the piano (C4).
You can play all sharps and flats within the range by
cross-fingering (aka forked or split fingering).
There is one exception: playing low C# requires half-holing the
bottom-most hole. Musicians easily manage this but it challenges
beginners.
C5 through D6 is a pretty meager range: that's only nine whole
notes. But you can easily extend it by two more notes -- up to F6 --
by taking a small penknife and hollowing out the two covered finger
rests.
Remember, one finger rest is for the left-hand pinky finger, and the
other is beneath the instrument, for the right-hand thumb. You can
spot the finger rests in the photos of the yellow tonette we saw
above. This diagrams their locations:
(Diagram by H. Fosdick)
Here's a tonette with the two holes hollowed out:
(Photo by H. Fosdick)
Given that it's so simple to extend the instrument's
range, why weren't tonettes shipped this way? The answer is that one
always covers these two holes when playing the basic scale.
Hollowing them out extends the instrument's range on the high end --
but at the cost of adding cross-fingering. The fingering chart below
makes this clear.
Inventor Ziegner Swanson chose to keep tonette fingering dead
simple. This led to its great success as a training instrument.
Swanson wisely allowed advanced players to extend the range by an
easy modification.
I've never seen a complete C5-F6 fingering chart for the tonette, so
I created this one. Notes to the right of the vertical red line are
only playable if the finger rests have been altered into holes:
(Charts by H. Fosdick)
Alternate fingerings exist for several notes. Particularly with the
sharps and flats you should experiment with your particular
instrument to find its optimal fingerings.
To the right of the standard fingering chart I've added a few
semitones I've found useful in working with certain non-western
musical scales. These are not part of the standard fingering chart.
Sheet Music
All the sheet music you could ever want is available on the web
for free. Beyond tonette music, you can play anything scored for
common folk flutes including ocarina, song flute, flutophone, and
precorder.
You can also play soprano recorder sheet music. However, given the
recorder's greater range, some pieces stray outside what you can
play on a tonette. You can adapt most of these songs by
transposing them into a suitable key. A few tunes you may have to
forgo.
Ditto for the tin whistle. Songs for the common D- and C- key
penny whistles are playable unless they wander beyond the
tonette's more limited range.
You can download free sheet music from any of many websites:
FluteTunes.com,
MusicNotes,
CapostastoMusic,
Christmas Carols,
MakingMusicFun,
8Notes
recorder music, 12HoleOcarina.com,
Pinterest ocarina sheet music,
STLOcarina,
OcarinaSongbook , OcarinaTabs,
Free-Scores.com,
Pinterest recorder sheet music, The Solo Recorder,
Virtual Sheet
Music, Irish-Folk-Songs.com,
Tin Whistler,
8Notes
tin whistle music, 8Notes ocarina music
Selecting an Instrument
If you decide to buy a tonette, you'll have to look on the used
market because they're no longer manufactured. The challenge to
obtaining a good one is that they vary so dramatically in sound
quality. How do you pick the gem out of the slag?
First, look for tonettes made from shiny, glossy plastic. These
smooth-looking, highly reflective flutes inevitably sound better
than those with less-reflective or matte finishes. Perhaps the shiny
plastic is harder or denser and reflects sound waves differently?
Whatever the case, you'll immediately notice the difference in
voicing.
Second, I've generally found tonettes from the last decades of
production to be inferior. I suspect that manufacturers had conceded
the market to the recorder by this time and retreated to making
cheap kid's toys. Avoid them if your goal is serious music. I'd
recommend a tonette made prior to 1970.
Ultimately the only way to ensure you acquire a quality instrument
is to play it prior to purchase. It's worth the effort. For only $15
or $20 you can acquire a fun little vehicle to hours of musical
pleasure. As an flute player, you'll enjoy immediate proficiency and
discover a unique new sound with which to experiment.
Why not give it a try?
Related articles
Compares pre-band flutes: Tonettes,
Song Flutes, Flutophones, and Precorders
Compares folk flutes: Ocarinas, Recorders, Tin Whistles and Native American flutes.
jan@flutenet.com.
All text and graphics, Copyright © Howard Fosdick, The Flute Network and others, 2021. All rights reserved.
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