Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Greetings all,

I spent a few hours with another finnish shakuhachi player today. We sat in a lovely zen dojo that was empty at the time. I brought my 1.8 bamboo flute and my new 2.5 jinashi. He had a practice flute made out of some sort of wood. I had always assumed that non-bamboo instruments won't look like much, but this one was quite nice. It would have taken me a moment to notice that it was not real bamboo had I not been told. It was a flute with Tozan style utaguchi, which was also new to me.

Interesting thing happened when I got a chance to try the wooden flute out. With my current skills and the 1.8 bamboo flute I have, I can play some notes from Kan with some effort. It doesn't sound good, but it kind of works. The moment I tried to blow with the wooden flute, the sound jumped to Ro no Kan almost effortlessly. It wasn't unclear or fuzzy sound at all. Surprised about that, I went through the whole Kan from bottom to top. At no point did I really have any difficulties getting the notes right.

I had to pull out a fingering chart that he had brought out to check Dai Kan fingerings because I have never ever needed them before. Surely enough, I could get most of the early Dai Kan notes with about the same amount of effort that is needed on my bamboo flute to get early Kan notes. The Dai Kan wasn't as clear as Kan was, but I suppose that it's to be expected.

The downside of such a flute seems to be that it lacks some character that is present in the bamboo flutes. Especially the lower sounds tend to be somewhat less interesting. Despite that, they seem to make for great practice flutes early on, since it's much easier to get something out of it right away. I'm thinking of getting one myself from somewhere that I could use to practice my Kan notes.