Coda™ is a full-fledged EDC (EveryDay Carry) flute. It’s also a dream I’ve been doggedly pursuing for several years now, through many iterations, scores of prototypes, countless challenges, and unimagined setbacks.

During this long development process, my guiding criteria were the following:

Coda had to be tiny, tough, and light enough for EveryDay Carry so that we’d be free to bring it along and play anytime. At one point, I had finally achieved a beautiful version of Coda that I was ready to bring to the market. However, after agonizing over the decision, I chose to go back to the drawing board. Why? To me, that version was a little too bulky for EDC, and experience had taught me this: if you don’t have it, you can’t play it. EDC fits into life better and brings adventure into the mix.

It had to have two fully chromatic octaves so that we’d have enough range to play what we want, we could join in more easily with other musicians, and we could perform in more keys. Way back in 1996, I first began prototyping and eventually manufacturing wonderful pocket-sized flutes. Ultimately, they had one main drawback. They needed more range!

It had to have a simple intuitive fingering pattern so that we could not only handle challenging pieces but also ENJOY improvising and playing by ear. Simplified fingering was a tremendous challenge for a tiny flute with so much range, but, to me, it was vital. I wasn’t interested in traditional solutions that would have made Coda overly complicated or cumbersome to play.

It had to have good tuning and solid, pleasing sound across its entire range so that it was enjoyable to play and listen to.

It had to be relatively affordable . I added this last criterion after first experimenting with various manufacturing methods that resulted in Coda being far too expensive for my tastes. Thus, we began the enormous, costly, and time-consuming process of making Coda precise and yet more affordable.



Karl Ahrens