Sound and Character of the Clay Piston Flute
The source instrument is a tubular wind instrument made of clay with no finger holes. Its internal clay ball moves along the tube and changes the pitch, which makes glissandos and chromatic tones possible. That movement is the core character of the instrument and the reason it sounds unlike a conventional flute.
Pre-Columbian examples of the flauta de embolo were found in northern Mesoamerica. Today, reproductions are made in Costa Rica as an alternative to modern flutes that use a mechanism to change the sound. The Kontakt library captures this sliding, piston-driven voice in a format you can play from a keyboard or controller.
