Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi Abraxas,

Do you have any suggestions of sites where I can post MP3 files?

Best,

Alan

I signed up at putfile but got error messages when I downloaded.  So I used 4shared.com

This link will take you right to the file I uploaded.

http://www.4shared.com/file/88405875/2c … Flute.html

It's about a minute of improv on my 0.875 ID round D-minor flute.

Ignore the link "Click here to download this song free. Really"

Instead click on the link "Dowload Now", which is below my file name "875 Flute.mp3"

Best,

Alan

Last edited by Alan Adler (2009-02-19 00:55:00)

Very interesting. Sounds a lot like an English Horn with some cornet mixed in.

Alan-

Any new developments?

Do you make these with a shakuhachi scale / fingering?  Or are these recorder fingerings?

What's your plan?

I'm very curious.

thanks
Seth

Its pretty easy to make a flute that sounds good.  Not saying easy to make a flute like the pros make, but basically all u need is a tube... make it from clay... roll out a slab of clay and wrap it around a paper towel roll and dry it slowly and dap it with a wet sponge every couple days to prevent cracking when drying.... clay flute... made 2.  Shoot, just use the paper towel roll itself and see if you can make a flute that plays...if u cant make a flute from a paper towel roll then u probabaly cant make one from anything that well.  I admit from a paper towel roll will be able to break easily and wont last long from moisture but u can make a flute in 5 minutes that can play mary had a little lamb very well.  Pvc pipe works, metal tubes work.. glass tubes work, japanese knot weed grows all over NY state and makes excellent sounding flutes but breaks easier than bamboo.  Elderberry trees are hollow inside and make awesome flutes...watch out they are poisonous inide and have to be dried first to getthe cionide out.  Big burdock plants work, sound ok but damage easy... reeds... grass between hands... just your hands all make nice sounding flutes...

Im surprised more people dont try to forget their scientfic mind and just simply start trying to make their own flutes...  You may find that they cant play shakuhachi songs well or at all..but u can create your own unique sounds/music that nobody can reproduce easily that actually sound soothing/great/nice/powerful.  Plus its fun if your bored.

Id like to see some of your flutes adam and see exactly what u have been developing on your own..  maybe a person makes 200 flutes and only really falls in love with one of them.. but if they didnt start making flutes they never would have gotten that one flute that sounds beautifully unique.

A good PVC shakuhachi does most of the things a shakuhachi is supposed to do, but it gets flat towards the top of the second octave. There's not a dramatic difference between the way a PVC responds and a real shakuhachi.

Alan Adler wrote:

As I mentioned in early posts, my aluminum flutes do not respond to cross-fingering.  When Mujitsu visited here, he speculated that this was due to my thin-walled tubes.  He was right.  Toby and I confirmed that.  We found that one of my old thick-walled phenolic flutes did respond to cross-fingering.

Many of you have made PVC shakuhachi.  Their wall thickness is somewhere between my aluminum flutes and a bamboo shakuhachi.  How well do they respond to cross-fingering, compared to a bamboo shakuhachi?

Best,

Alan

What's your definition of cross fingering? I thought it was a fingering to get a note flatter not by half-holing or shading but by closing some holes below the open hole for the note that you want to flatten. At my beginner level I've only come across one that's somewhat commonly used, that's the one for G#, where you lift the finger off the hole to get "Chi" but close the bottom two holes to flatten it. Experimenting a bit I wasn't able to find any other "cross-fingerings" that really worked.

Alan, I'm concerned that what you're  calling "cross-fingerings" isn't what a lot of others call "cross-fingerings". Maybe you're referring to the partial-holed notes that are very common on shakuhachi?

radi0gnome wrote:

I thought it was a fingering to get a note flatter not by half-holing or shading but by closing some holes below the open hole for the note that you want to flatten.

Cross fingering is any non-sequential pattern of closed and open holes, not just for the purpose of flattening. For instance, san no u (in kan), with only 3 open, is higher than chi. Often cross fingerings are used to achieve a different tone color from the more standard way of playing the same pitch, as in the san no u example (same pitch as hi meri but much brighter sound). And when you get into the dai kan register, most notes are played with cross fingerings.

One of the ways to test the viability of a particular flute for traditional honkyoku is to test its ability to play all the cross-fingering notes easily. For instance, it is not uncommon for less than stellar student flutes to have trouble getting a dai kan ha with 2, 4, and 5 open (E flat).

I have been using Shugetsu's PVC flutes for the kind of travel where you don't want to bring valuable bamboo along, and they play all cross fingerings just fine. With a little bit of player adjustment they also play the very high notes in tune.

Alan Adler wrote:

When I mentioned that my thin-walled flutes do not respond to cross-fingering, I meant that there is little or no change in pitch.  This was verified with an electronic tuner.

However my flutes do change timbre as do most flutes when cross-fingered.  The tone becomes more muted.  I've assumed that skilled players overcome that by blowing a bit harder during cross-fingering.

Best,

Alan

I recently had a very interesting correspondence with Dr. Joe Wolfe, an acoustician at the University of New South Wales on the subject of cross fingerings. For the technically inclined, here is a very interesting paper on cross fingerings here:

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/fluteaco … sfingering

Go to the end of the section "Cross fingering" and click on the hyperlink "download a scientific paper".

Basically cross fingerings are a function of end correction and cutoff frequency. End correction refers to a phenomenon whereby the vibrating air column extends somewhat  past the open hole, and is dependent on hole size in relation to bore size and frequency of the sounded note. Cutoff frequency is a phenomenon whereby the open tone holes no longer look open to the air column past a certain frequency, and thus the air column no longer has good harmonics after that point. The cutoff frequency depends primarily on the size of the tone holes and that turns out to be very important

Normally, a cross fingering increases end correction and thus the air column is effectively lengthened, lowering the note. As the frequency of the sounded note rises, the amplitude of the standing wave propagating past the open tone hole gets larger, and thus is more affected by whether holes below the first open hole are open or shut. Therefore cross fingerings behave differently in the first and second registers, having more effect in the higher register.

However, as the sounding note gets closer to the cutoff frequency, strange things begin to happen. Cross fingerings near the cutoff frequency can lower the note, make it impossible to sound a note, or even raise the frequency (such as on shakuhachi playing kan and fingering LH thumb and 1st finger, and then adding RH 1st and 2nd finger).

I think with Alan's flutes the reasons that ones in different materials cross finger differently has to do with both difference in hole size relative to bore size, and also the fact that holes going through thicker walls appear "smaller" to the air column than do the same size holes going through thinner material.

These facts also have important bearing on shakuhachi making, especially the behavior of cross fingerings near the top of kan and especially the dai-kan register. Hole size is an important determinant of how the flute behaves in the kan and dai-kan as contrasted to the otsu. For instance, it is possible to make holes larger and move them down the bore and achieve the correct intonation in the otsu and even the kan, or vice-versa make them smaller and move them up, but these changes can have unintended consequences when using cross-fingerings in the high kan and for the general behavior of the dai-kan.

Another fact is this: larger holes allow for more volume and brighter notes with more high harmonics. This generally also should help the dai-kan, but if the dai-kan note being played depends on a cross fingering, it can change the intonation or even make it impossible to play that note.

Life is complicated...

Toby

All the makers I came into contact with in Japan stress "balance". The Japanese seem wiser about this than we in the West: we have winner moves and loser moves; the Japanese have jan-ken--scissors, paper, rock--where each attribute wins against one but loses against the other in circular fashion. I find this much closer to the reality...

Toby

Hi All,

I meant to post this under flutemaking, but it ended up here.

http://www.shakuhachiforum.com/viewtopi … 574#p29574

Best,

Alan