Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

I have had the same experience! Don't worry-it's all part of the leaning curve.... Keep records of measurements of all your successes and failures: root/utaguchi diameter, length, circumference of bamboo at different points, nodal points, etc.  This data will be become more useful as you collect more.  Monty and tom Deaver have information on their sites about typical lengths/pitch (they do differ slightly). Also look at Zink's article about the 2.2 shakuhachi. There are detailed measurements and graphs of bore profiles on the shaku8 site. The choke point recommended by some is 84.4%. Also check out Neptune's and Mujitsu articles on tuning on their sites.  gambare!

costademaria wrote:

i have some questions about the bigger bored flutes.i mean near root ends or  rootends/in other words tapered/. apart from the diagrams is there any reliable method of choosing the proper pitch cause it happend to me two times that i make the same mistake.i make a shakuhachi and its almost ok but the otsu ro is lower than should be and the shakuhachi is not very loud so i widen,widen and at the end i finish the shakuhachi one pitch higher than i thought it should be. and the holes were there already so one ended with big holes and the other in the fire.and what about the choke point?

Boyan,

A few things come to mind. These may be obvious to you already or perhaps they can be of help.

A wide bore flute needs to be shorter to play the same pitch as a thinner bore flute. If you are basing your measurements on a thinner bore shakuhachi, that could be the reason the tonic is flat.

Another possibility is that as you drill each hole, the holes previously drilled become progressively flatter. (What happens is the bore is getting bigger and therefore flatter with each hole) So, if you start out with ro on pitch before drilling holes, it will be flatter after the holes are drilled. If you want the tonic to be exactly on pitch, it needs to be slightly sharp before drilling the holes.

I hope this helps.

Ken

tairaku, i totaly agree with you,i just try to make them on pitch cause when i focus to make them so i think i simplify the understanding proces. i try to make shakuhachi from some 5 months and the last week at the end i understood some important for me conclusions and some of them are:
-if a piece of bamboo doesnt feel like a shakuhachi it definetely would finish in the fire
-there is no point of wasting time on inferior pieces/straight bore/ cause whatever i do i am not satisfied from the result
-i read somewhere Ken said that he doesnt put even oil. after finishing some shakuhachi with 3 times polymerised tung and after that 3 layers of the best epoxy i found with the respective drying times and polishing i achieved a totally waterproof good sounding tough shakuhachi with a very tough unbelieveble satin silky finish. my conclusion from this-i will also not put more anything. simplicity is better. so when i learn to make them with closed eyes in pitch 440 i am sure i will not do them after that like this but simply go with the nature
by the way in my country/Bulgaria/ in the past the students of barrel making/ this big wooden things where you put your wine/ were accepted masters when they did one with closed eyes and after that entered inside,the barrel was closed and thrown from a high place in a deep river...just to check the leaks:-)

hey Costa,
do you make kavall? the bullgarian flute..
G

Teodosi is an inspiration, for sure.  My girlfriend is Bulgarian and she introduced me to the Kaval and Teodosi.  I saw him in concert in Montreal a cople of times last summer and it was truly incredible the sounds he was able to create.  I do find it a little high pitch and frantic though, and prefer the more smoothe sounds of the shakuhachi.