Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi amokrun.  I hear what you're saying. A plastic flute in the hand is worth two bamboo flutes in humid storage.

I think you need more criteria to make the decision.  Do you have any visual or material/philosophical preference?  Your three options are so much more different visually and physically than they will be acoustically that a preference could make your decision for you.  Density, thickness, heat conductivity, environmental impact?  Important?  I have a maple 1.8 and PVC 1.8 and both sound just fine, no better or worse than the other.

Alternatively, why not try your hand at building a PVC flute?  Nearly free.  Even if you don't play it and settle on a wood or metal flute or someone else's PVC flute, the time will not have been wasted.  This way, you can customize the length and finger offsets for yourself.  Build instructions and the theory of PVC flutes are plentiful.

Metal is the most unique choice.  If you could get a wide diameter, long metal flute that plays well into dai kan, that would be interesting.

-Darren.

waryr wrote:

There are several makers of PVC Shakuhachi that make the 2.4 quite well, Peter Ross and Monty Levenson to name a couple. I have seen them made up to 2.7 and 3.0. I have played 2.0 and 2.4 PVC shakuhachi and they play very well. You might try one of these.

Are those long plastic flutes very thin? That's the only thing that bugs me about plastic flutes. A 3.0 flute that is as thin as 1.8 flute just doesn't feel right if you ask me. Now, if you do know where to get wider plastic flutes, that could indeed be very interesting. I don't generally have anything against the material itself. In fact, I was thinking that a yuu could turn out very, very nice if you'd apply a bit of paint into the root end to make it look a bit more natural. I used to paint miniatures back when I was a kid (more so than now, anyway). You can really make things look nice by painting the deep spots darker. If I find a yuu for sale for cheap, I will most likely try that out. Too bad there aren't "large yuu" flutes.

Tairaku wrote:

The Yuu is the best of these things because it has the tapered bore which most closely simulates that of a real shakuhachi.

Agreed. Furthermore, it actually looks like a shakuhachi which is always nice. Like I said earlier, a little bit of paint would make it even more lovely and could actually give it the appearance of "real" bamboo or something close enough.

Tairaku wrote:

And the bore is not thin.

Oh? How large are these things? Somehow the pictures always looked like they would be hardly any larger than your average 1.8. Given how my 1.8 almost fits into my 2.5...

Tairaku wrote:

In fact Ken was talking to me the other day about making a PVC Taimu style flute.

You are not kidding me, right? Now *that* is something I want to try out. I bought a non-Taimu flute from him and it completely changed playing shakuhachi for me. If he is making something out of plastic that follows the general idea of Taimu (or his other flutes, for that matter), I don't see how it could not be good. The downside is that he will almost certainly kill me if I send him any more e-mail. :-)

sigwada wrote:

1. I have tried thicker walled metal but have found them heavy.

Heh, the moment I read that I began to think of a flute made out of cast metal. Technically you could get any kind of shape you like as long as you have a mold for it. Weights a ton? Sure. Looks absolutely lovely? Most certainly.

In my eyes, weight is not a downside at all. In fact, I might actually prefer a really heavy flute over a light one. For longer flutes, I tend to hold the end on ground or against my knee and thus I don't have to support most of the weight. This could be just me but I think that a flute made in similar way as most of those really large bells are made could be lovely. Apart from just looking nice, it could be very useful for a form of practice I do occasionally. Basically you just tie a rope to the end of the flute and put a bell on it. Make it so long that lowering the flute even slightly will cause it to hit the floor and make a sound. Now you will instantly know when your position is falling apart. At least I have trouble telling if my position gradually drops otherwise.

sigwada wrote:

Thin bores are also nice to hold and easier to pack and carry around.

I guess this is a personal preference. For some reason, I find that playing a wide flute feels more "right" than a thin one does. Also, if I would get a lovely cast-iron flute that would weight, say, 20kg, I wouldn't mind carrying it around if I really liked it.

sigwada wrote:

I have emailed you but seems did not reach you. I mentioned  that the distance between us may have prohibitive cost and  instead I could give you free tips on how you can make your own metal shakuhachi. But otherwise I would gratefully make you one including a wider 24mm bore. See You Tube where I play on a 2.4 Shakusteel.

I did get the e-mail and was going to reply. Sadly I got distracted by something else and completely forgot about it. My apologies about that. I'll have to check the video, that sounds quite interesting.

For the record, David Brown does not make 'big bore' shakuhachi; his have a high aspect ratio.

eB

kyoreiflutes wrote:

the Yuu is the ONLY non-bamboo flute around that actually simulates the internal shape/acoustics of a bamboo flute

David Brown (and other makers of wood shakuhachi) might disagree with you on that point. 

-Darren.

David Brown's flutes have tapered bores, in fact, most of the turned wooden flutes now available have tapered bores.

eB

dstone wrote:

kyoreiflutes wrote:

the Yuu is the ONLY non-bamboo flute around that actually simulates the internal shape/acoustics of a bamboo flute

David Brown (and other makers of wood shakuhachi) might disagree with you on that point. 

-Darren.

As far as the internal shape, I'd think the Yuu has it over wooden instruments. It's not unrealistically difficult to get a cylinderical shape, but a cylinderical shape with a curve near the bottom has got to be tough. If material makes a difference acoustically, wood will be closer to bamboo than plastic.

Tairaku wrote:

I have a DB flute made of Sri Lankan royal ebony and it kicks ass. I think his flutes vary quite a bit depending upon the wood (although he disagrees with this).

It's surprising how many makers share his opinion. I'm not sure what to think sound-wise, but for the player the feel of the instrument definitely has some importance, and that would be affected by the material. 

Tairaku wrote:

And the short ones are better than the long ones because the bore on the long ones is too thin to produce enough lows (IMO).

I've been thinking a lot about this myself after having just receiving a 2.2 from Perry Yung. It got me thinking that maybe that the reason my monsur ney (that's one of the longer ones) isn't strong in the lower register is because it's so thin. This is typical with these instruments, but there are recordings where some well-known players really get those low notes booming. This could have a lot to do with playing ability and recording technique, but I'm thinking maybe the instruments are better designed for it too.   

Also, labeling instruments that are inherently unique as "better" than another one is difficult. Some things are very objective and easy to make comparisons with. In the case of my 1.8 Jiari compared to the Yung 2.2 that I just got and am inclined to try to compare, the 2.2 is obviously better if you like low tones, and the tuning is better too (although I'm starting to think some of that may be because some of the Ji near the joint is missing). But as far as the tone quality and how hard or softly you can blow the instrument and the results you get from it is totally subjective. They are different, one is not necessarily "better" than the other. As far as plastic or wood where the uniqueness is lost, that's a big enough loss to endure to drive me to not want to experiment much with those materials, but I have a hunch I could grow to like instruments made of those materials very easily.

Nyogetsu wrote:

I'd like to put in my 2 cents!

If you take care of your Shakuhachi (which in my case means always keeping it in a plastic bag with a dampit inside, and a rubber band tying off the outside), you shouldn't have to worry about cracking. Any of my better flutes (which are all worth over $5,000-)...

I'm going to disagree, at least until someone changes my mind. I've been purchasing bamboo flutes since the '70's (didg's since the 90's) and have come to the conclusion that some are going to crack very soon, some later, and some much later. There's a chance that the ones that cracked later may have had some of their uncracked lives extended if I did the plastic bag and dampit routine, but flutes that crack within a week after I get them in my hands are a common enough occurence that I'm convinced it's not a care problem, unless this plastic bag and dampit solution is meant for overnight storage. There could be a few things going on, you mention that all your flutes were in the $5000 and up range, maybe makers at that price range either select better cured bamboo or the instruments are laying around their shops for enough time to get past the time period that all the new stresses from the building process will crack them before they leave the shop. OTOH, a particular maker in Vermont that I have a lot of respect for (Zachiah Blackburn for Sunreed instruments), confidently said to me that his instruments wouldn't crack when I asked if he guaranteed against cracking for at least a few weeks. 15 years after my 1st instrument from him, completely uncared for, rained on, brought to the beach, sitting in a steaming hot car, a freezing cold car, hasn't cracked. Neither have any of the other 3 instruments I got from him cracked.

Anyway, for those relatively inexpensive instruments (less than $200, some as cheap as $15, but there was a lot of inflation between then and now), the cracks never bothered me much. Until very recently the solution was wrapping them with electrical tape. I remember seeing Egberto Gismonti in concert once in the early '80's and his flute was so wrapped up in electrical tape it hardly had any surface showing. If it's good enough for him I don't see why I should be all that opposed to it, but the binding solution is relatively easy and looks a lot better.

For $5000 flutes, I've never owned an instrument of any kind I've paid more than $1000 for, and you could be darn sure I'd be doing the plastic bag and dampit routine even for a few hours storage if I had a bamboo instrument worth that much. So maybe my problem is a bit of a care problem. Heck, my car didn't even cost that much!

Nyogetsu wrote:

My teacher told me that if I miss a day on The Shakuhachi, I go back one week in my practice!!
I was afraid to go backwards and didn't miss a day for the first 5 years!

That's awesome!  I had a Chinese martial arts sifu who told me something similar about qi gong...  He said if I practiced every day for ten years, I would no longer need to practice daily, maybe only weekly if I wanted to, yet that would still be enough to maintain all the training's benefits. 

Of course just several years into that regimen, the idea of not spending 20 minutes on a quick set every single morning was unthinkable!  So the psychology of it worked!  (For a while...)

Back on topic...   sharing flute care philosophies...  2+ years with a handful of jinashi flutes.  No bagging, no humidifiers.  (Bagged only when I travel.)  A couple get daily practice, a few others maybe weekly or less.  No cracks.  Maybe Vancouver is just a moderate, bamboo-friendly climate, I don't really know.  Granted though, if I owned $5K+ flutes, my attitude might be a bit less cavalier. 

-Darren.

Last edited by dstone (2007-02-21 21:55:53)

edosan wrote:

radi0gnome wrote:

...unless this plastic bag and dampit solution is meant for overnight storage.

It's not quite clear to me what you are saying here, but:

Of course it's meant for overnight storage.

When you're not playing it, it's in the bag, with the dampit (or reasonable substitute). Period.

Yes, that's what I meant. It seemed kind of extreme, and a bit of a hassle, to keep putting and removing the instrument from the bag every day when you know your going to play it the next day. And, I don't know about others, but often if I have a lot of time on my hands the I'll play the instrument many times during the day with multiple breaks to do other things. The hassle of putting the instrument away each time and taking it back out would be discouraging in playing it. Of course, that's part of the reason why I liked the plastic Irish and baroque flutes so much. Plastic bags for the 4 foot bamboo didjeridus would be a major hassle too, might as well stick to PVC or eucalyptpus.     

edosan wrote:

Never had a shakuhachi crack in 16 years of playing 'em, no matter what they cost, bound or not, and I
live in the Rockies, the high and dry.

So I guess the plastic bag with dampit idea must be a very good one.

radi0gnome wrote:

Yes, that's what I meant. It seemed kind of extreme, and a bit of a hassle...

Not nearly as extreme as dealing with cracks in my precious flutes...

radi0gnome wrote:

So I guess the plastic bag with dampit idea must be a very good one.

It's the only one.

eB