Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

OK, another update/observation on this topic from my beginner perspective. I still didn't get together with Perry to let him look at the other flutes and get a definitive answer to what's going on yet (BTW, I doubt his rates for lessons could possibly be any more modest), but for now I'll chalk up my newest flute's playing flat to the fact that different flutes play differently. It could have something to do with it being an old Tozan flute, all the flutes I was comparing it to are more modern.

But, if I remember right, one of the questions that came up early in this thread was what changes in the embouchure were needed to adjust for the difference in these flutes that seemingly play flat. I can't really speak for what the specific differences are, all the talk of "smiling", "pulling tighter" and stuff are best left for one-on-ones with a teacher and even then would probably prove frustrating anyway, at least that's what happened with almost any embouchure discussion I had with a teacher when I was learning to play silver flute. However, exercises often serve to clarify what's going on physically when words tend to either be too vague or prone to misinterpretation.

So... what I noticed in my efforts to pull the bottom notes up is that all the long tones on Ro didn't really help much. What did help was when I was practicing getting the Dai Kan of Ro down to pitch. It could be just the time spent in Dai Kan that helped, or maybe specifically the pitch bending I was doing on the Dai Kan Ro. It would take some experimentation to determine that, but I wasn't able to get a really nice focused Otsu Ro up to pitch until I spent that time up in Dai Kan trying to get that 3rd octave D.

At this point, my suggestion to anyone having problems getting their new flute up to pitch would be to spend some time in that 3rd register and see what happens.