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In an old thread - A Steel Shakuhachi?
Vevolis wrote:
Making a steel utaguchi is a mystery (It still is, in any given material) but has anyone experimented with this?
This looks interesting...
alloy xiao F key 8 holes
john.
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Yeah, I saw them too.
I am going to build one out of a nice piece of green/black bamboo I have set aside that I need to flame roast and cure.
I got into a car accident years ago (bad whiplash) and recently tried transverse flute, and my practicing helped pay for my chiropractors vacation to Italy...That's one of the reasons I love the shakuhachi. It's end blown!
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I bought one of these on eBay recently and received it a couple weeks ago. I have to say I think it's a great instrument. The intonation seems to be very good, and the sound is lovely. I'm sure bamboo sounds even better, but I think of this as the Shakuhachi Yuu of xiaos -- reliable and indestructible, and comparably priced ($100 plus $35 shipping from China to US). It looks to be a thick-walled steel pipe lathed into a bamboo-like segmented shape, with the usual U-shaped blowing notch and 8 holes. Compared to the shakuhachi's blowing edge, the U-shaped blowing edge definitely makes pitch bending and degrees of "breathiness" harder, but both are still possible to some extent. And the 8 holes (between which the series of steps and half steps is unusual and interesting) allow for a lot of interesting melodies to be played fairly easily. Earlier this evening, in fact, I was playing along with the radio to blues songs in several different keys. (Not that I don't hope to learn some traditional Chinese melodies, too.)
Based on my experience so far, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone willing to spend the money. I'd be interested to hear from anybody else who's got one.
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