Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

I don't know much about Native American flutes

They are like wooden tin whistles, and I think they have a larger bore, which gives them more of an "airy" sound.

I love their sound. That is what attracted me to flutes in the first place. Of course, shakuhachi has a lot more to offer.

The chambered NAF is a very recent variant. The original NAF is the anasazi flute which is rimblown like the shakuhachi, and a bit more difficult to play.

And yes, that is an understatement!

axolotl wrote:

lowonthetotem wrote:

I don't know much about Native American flutes

They are like wooden tin whistles, and I think they have a larger bore, which gives them more of an "airy" sound.

Incidentally, I know this much, or that much with the radiogn0me correction added. Having picked up a few and played them.  They are essentially in the fipple-flute class, in the same category as whistles and recorders (and fujaras!)

I've kind of been eating my words since wikipedia says they are similar, and I guess they are since you don't have to direct the air with your lips, but if you've played or even just listened to both you know they are entirely different with almost no comparison. I'd even go so far to say that shakuhachi and silver flute are more similar to each other, at least as far as the sound you get from them.

   

axolotl wrote:

I've heard some nice long tones on the tin whistle.  Titanic theme anyone?   Ok, hate the movie if you wish, but the whistle playing is top notch (fipple pun not intended)

That was a low D whistle (kind of the 3.0 of whistles), and long tones on any whistle aren't that interesting. Start adding some finger vibrato and slide around the notes like the guy does in the Titanic theme and it sounds like heaven. They aren't anything like a shakuhachi, silver flute, or even a Native American flute where it's easy to sink into and love a single long tone with no vibrato or pitch variation.


EDIT - as a bit of clarification, while I guess I have to concede that I'm wrong because technically Native American flute is in the same class as tin whistles, my first response was based on my experience with wooden whistles (the ones I own and used to love playing were Ralph Sweet's wooden whistles). They sound entirely different than Native American flutes, so the statement about Native American flutes that "They are like wooden tin whistles" just struck me as being misleading. They are two entirely different instruments, kind of like Xiao and Shakuhachi, but even more different and I kind of doubt they even share the same historical lineage like those two instruments do.

Last edited by radi0gnome (2009-04-28 07:41:10)

I just found this, it's pretty cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEwo1U1vfUs

In the related videos there's a suizen part 2 that he does on a longer bamboo whistle. The tone seems a bit nicer on that one. You know, if you learn a roll on low D you've learned koro-koro.

edosan wrote:

radi0gnome wrote:

You know, if you learn a roll on low D you've learned koro-koro.

Um...no, actually, you haven't.

Well, not exactly, but close. All closed, lift the finger for hole 3 (this would be hole 2 on the shakuhachi), all closed again, lift the finger for hole 1, and all closed again. Rhythmically it's not the same but the way I was taught to practice it (from Larry McCullough, live, not his book) was by playing the notes the same duration for each to make sure I'd get the all-closed part of it each time. Also, it's usually only done once in a musical context, but repeated for practice purposes. So the way to practice it is kind of close to koro-koro. I've noticed on recordings that koro-koro's are usually resolved by going to some note that's unique to shakuhachi, so I guess you could say that's a difference too, but otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Different players use different fingerings, L.E. McCullough uses two different fingerings in his book, including the one I described. His book also differs in that he uses a cran (3 grace notes instead of 2) in place of a roll (2 grace notes) on low D, so what he had me practicing was half of the cran he wrote out in his book.

Given the rhythmic differences maybe some learn it without giving each note an equal duration, so I guess you could say not everybody who learned a D roll even with those fingerings unintentionally learned koro-koro. But despite my lack of experience, the koro-koro exercise Brian Ritchie gave me that I think is the same exercise in James Schlefer's book came to me awful easy, and it only took me a few minutes to realize that the reason why was the hours I put into learning D rolls on the whistle back in the early '90's.

So, why is it that you say I haven't?