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I love shakuhachi, but I'm addicted to Turkish ney too. There's a lot of fine ney playing to be found on youtube, but here's one of my favorites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z27CncKyIJo
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great piece.Can you play it? will sound great with a 2.4 shakuhachi also.
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geni wrote:
great piece.Can you play it? will sound great with a 2.4 shakuhachi also.
No, I can't. I'm not that proficient at the ney, no lessons, same as shakuhachi. All I do is noodle around. However... Omar Faruk Tekbilek is now offering internet lessons, I've got my first one scheduled. If anyone wants contact information for him email me.
Geni, If I remember right you said you used to play kaval or something similar. If so, you probably can play oblique flutes, right? BTW, I owe you some thanks. In another thread you presented me with a challenge to sit down with a tuner and metronome and practice tone and interval exercises to demonstrate how much you can accomplish in 1 hour of practice a day. So, I got a decent tuner and James Schlefer's workbook and tried it. You're right, it's very effective. I still feel like I'm just barely warmed up after an hour though.
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I play the western flute also.
Tuner & Metronome helps a lot. Glad you having fun with it. The next step now is to work on songs. Maybe..learn that Ney Tune on youtube with Shakuhachi & Ney:-). First try to sing it (couple of days) than try to play it with both flutes.
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geni wrote:
... The next step now is to work on songs. Maybe..learn that Ney Tune on youtube with Shakuhachi & Ney:-). First try to sing it (couple of days) than try to play it with both flutes.
Geni, that's going to take much more than a couple days to learn how to sing it, it's too complex. I don't hear any musical rhymes that make a song, are you sure this isn't an improvisation? Maybe it's just me and you can hear it because of your background. Of course, even in jazz people learn other peoples improvisations so it's possible even if it is an improvisation, but that's very advanced. That's kind of a problem for me with shakuhachi too. I love the music, but very often the "songs" don't sound like they have any repeated phrases or any of the structure that Western music has that makes it easy to memorize.
That's why I chose to just noodle around for so long rather than dive right into learning the music, it all sounds like an improvisation that was written down to me anyway so I thought I might as well just improvise. Now though I'm at the point where I'd like to get it sounding a bit more Japanese (and Turkish for ney), all those old Beatles and Christmas songs are fun to play on the non-Western instruments, but it just doesn't seem right... Kind of... I was fooling around with Herb Alpert's "This Guy's in Love" last night, when you really slow it down and distort the phrases adding a lot of "Ma" it sounds really cool. It starts best on chi I think for anyone who wants to try it. I find it hard to stop the vibrato with that one though
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Speaking of Kavals, I had a friend of mine get me one from his homeland (Bulgaria). It's a beautiful wooden instrument, but one of the most difficult things to play that I've ever encountered! The embouchure that you use to play the Kaval is completely different than that used for either the western flute or the shakuhachi. A lot different! Kavals sound very nice but man, you thought that the shakuhachi was hard to get started on, I think the Kaval is the king in this regard.
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Dobur Den Michael,
I'm jealous of the Kaval. My bulgarian girlfriend of 3 years has yet to score me a good bulgarian kaval. I'm still waiting.
I've never played one, but as you say, it looks difficult. You probably know this already, but check out Teodossi Spassov, the bulgarian kaval player. This guy is incredible. I saw him live a couple of times in Montreal, but the jack asses involved in organizing the outdoor concerts screwed him over by making him wait to go onstage till other very lame and untalented performers were finished. They then only let him do half a set, cuting him off before he could finish. Let me tell you, there were a lot of pissed off bulgarians that day. The guy is a national treasure. Anways, good luck with that kaval. It can sound very beautiful and has a rich history behind it.
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Lorka wrote:
Dobur Den Michael,
I'm jealous of the Kaval. My bulgarian girlfriend of 3 years has yet to score me a good bulgarian kaval. I'm still waiting.
I've never played one, but as you say, it looks difficult. You probably know this already, but check out Teodossi Spassov, the bulgarian kaval player. This guy is incredible. I saw him live a couple of times in Montreal, but the jack asses involved in organizing the outdoor concerts screwed him over by making him wait to go onstage till other very lame and untalented performers were finished. They then only let him do half a set, cuting him off before he could finish. Let me tell you, there were a lot of pissed off bulgarians that day. The guy is a national treasure. Anways, good luck with that kaval. It can sound very beautiful and has a rich history behind it.
Actually my friend also scored me several Spassov recordings at the time he got me the instrument, and yes he is a master of the kaval.
BTW, If you do get a kaval be prepared for massive frustration. I gave up. Every once and a while I'll pull it out and try again but I haven't really gotten much out of it. I have a much better chance with the shakuhachi :-)
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I have a hard enough time with shakuhachi, so it's probably a good thing that kaval is a long time coming. Eventually I will get a kaval from Bulgaria, but lets just say I'm not in any kind of rush.
I think if I had two kinds of flutes then I suck would twice as badly at each. Bad x2 is not to be desired. Better to be bad x 1. Less aural pain for others.
Last edited by Lorka (2009-01-26 15:53:32)
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Lorka wrote:
I have a hard enough time with shakuhachi, so it's probably a good thing that kaval is a long time coming. Eventually I will get a kaval from Bulgaria, but lets just say I'm not in any kind of rush.
I think if I had two kinds of flutes then I suck would twice as badly at each. Bad x2 is not to be desired. Better to be bad x 1. Less aural pain for others.
I kind of think that's a very short term and musically unhealthy way of looking at things. Kaval is a very similar embouchure to ney, and the way it happened for me is that I got my first ney (an Egyptian folk ney) around 1995. I got an OK Turkish ney in 1996, and thinking it must be the instrument that was messed up (and it was partly, it had cracked) I got a good one in 1997. All during that time up until around 2001 I got roped into learning baroque flute to play for English country dances where I wasn't allowed to suck too bad. The ney got picked up occasionally all during that time. It wasn't enough to impede my progress on baroque flute, but when I really had the time to explore it around two years ago those occassional hours spent with the ney came in very useful. Now, 12 years later, while I can't really say I can play it because I don't know the music, at least I can get some decent sounds out of it.
I guess my point is that you've got more time to learn the thing than you think.
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can you imagne if learn a song a month for 12 years ? Not a bad goal. Time goes fast. Better later than never:-)
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geni wrote:
can you imagne if learn a song a month for 12 years ? Not a bad goal. Time goes fast. Better later than never:-)
I'll be starting lessons soon, maybe I'll make it a goal. Most of that 12 years it wasn't really possible because I didn't have all the notes on the instrument. I read in a comment on youtube that there are plenty of masters in Turkey but it's hard to get lessons because they won't teach until you can play. It kind of makes sense, since it's a more difficult instrument to get a sound from it probably has more discouraged students giving up than shakuhachi. I'd think it would seem a waste of time constantly losing students because they loved the sound but wouldn't put in the practice time to get the notes to sound. At least if the student went through that difficult period of just getting all the notes to sound that really doesn't require a teacher they'd be more likely to continue and learn the music.
Even though it took me a good 10 years to get an OK sound, I was only picking it up, getting discouraged only to try again after a few weeks and often months. If anyone was to hammer at it continuously without getting discouraged they could probably get to that point a whole lot faster.
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Hey Radiognme,
That is fantastic. I was referring to myself with the kaval comment, but your observation is a good one. It is pretty apparent that you have a good experience base and musical vocabulary. I have neither, but as you seem to indicate, that is no great barrier if you want something. Please update us about the progress with the Ney. It has such a beautiful sound. Will you be playing a Mansur? How do you determine what is the best length to play, as like shakuhachi, they seem to have quite a range of lengths to chose from.
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Lorka wrote:
Will you be playing a Mansur? How do you determine what is the best length to play, as like shakuhachi, they seem to have quite a range of lengths to chose from.
Hi Lorka, I think I'll use the mansur ney for the lessons because it's the easiest for me to play. From what I've read from various places on the web the usual suggestion is to start on the largest length that is physically suitable for you. The idea is that since smaller ney are easier you'll be sounding really good on all lengths once you master it. In reality though I've learned that it depends on the quality of the instrument.
The way it worked for me is that I got an Egyptian folk ney that got me hooked. So, knowing of no other source (this was before an alta-vista search on the web would yield any results for the search term "ney") I found a bamboo flute maker in Virginia who provided very inexpensive ney for people involved in a Middle-Eastern music camp. It wasn't made of reed but some bamboo that is supposed to be used for making furniture. It worked well, but cracked after a few months, and although I repaired it I felt I needed a "known good" instrument to learn on. So, after asking pretty much anyone who I thought could help me I obtained the address of a very good maker in France. I got a mansur ney from him. That's the one I learned on and basically didn't stray from it until recently. About 6 months ago I got a kiz ney from someone on Ebay who claimed his teacher said was a good instrument but that he didn't have time to learn it. I thought from what I read on the internet that since I already could get around on the mansur ney that I could really rock on that one, but it wasn't true, it was more difficult.
On closer inspection, it was obvious that the cuts and everything weren't as clean but more importantly the hole in the node near the top of the instrument wasn't clean. I opened that up some and it plays a lot better but is still more difficult than mansur ney.
Be wary of the Turkish internet dealers. Somewhere along the way I purchased a PVC ney from a Turkish site. It was very cheap but the tuning was off. Some of these guys are apparently selling seconds to foreigners who probably won't know any better. When I started seeing ney offered on the internet for less than $200 I thought I must have gotten ripped off by the French maker who charged me $400 in '97, but now I'm pretty sure there are different quality.
Karl Signell, who is registered on this forum as Neyzen Hassan (or something like that) pointed me to Suleyman Erguner's site as a source for good quality ney. I never got any ney from there but I trust Karl because he's got the credentials, a PhD in musicology and he wrote a good book on Makam in Turkish music. You can do a google on Suleyman Erguner and get there fairly easily.
Last edited by radi0gnome (2009-01-27 20:26:34)
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Lorka wrote:
Please update us about the progress with the Ney. It has such a beautiful sound.
OK, I had the lesson with Omar Faruk Tekbilek. It went very well, I had a few problems with Skype, both in connecting, I had to call him instead of his calling me otherwise his image was nowhere seen (by either me or him), and there were quite a few dropouts in the sound, kind of like the old non-digital '90's era cell phones.
Being the first lesson, he went over tone production almost exclusively. I'll try to keep my mention here of things he taught to ones that are probably transferable to shakuhachi. One of the first things he did was ask me to play the easiest note, neva. Of course I went for the the 2nd register neva, as the bottom register isn't used much in ney playing because it's almost unusably quiet and difficult to play besides. Then, and this really threw me off-guard, he immediately said that for the tone exercise he was going to show me that I should be playing in the lower register. He said it's common for players to start in the easier 2nd register, but his reasoning to start in the lower register was addressed within a short lecture that had a somewhat spiritual bent to it about how approaching the ney in the second register was analogous to approaching a house and entering through the window as opposed to the door.
The excercise was to play long tones on each note 4 times each descending to the lowest note. This is pretty much a standard exercise for any kind of flute but there was a very interesting tip he threw in. Of course, he suggested using a tuner, but I always used the needle on the tuner to see if I was close. His tip was to use the tone generator instead because matching pitches is the skill you need to develop in order to play with other musicians.
He also addressed getting bored playing long tones. Again with a very spiritual base, he mentioned that if you get bored, you're doing it wrong by thinking about other things. He says it's more of a meditative thing. You have to learn with your body but that's not the goal, so you learn to produce the tones well enough so that you simply think the tones and the body disappears. But then, that's still not the goal, and what eventually happens is that the mind knows the routine well enough that it disappears and producing the tone becomes a pathway to a meditative state.
The next tone exercise wasn't new to me either, having been taught something similar on shakuhachi in a lesson I took once from Brian Ritchie. It's basically the ney equivalent to practicing meri's and kari's. However, the difference is that since Omar's lesson concentrated on only the two exercises, I actually practiced it. In the 4 days since the lesson my tone has improved considerably, and I attribute it mostly to these pitch bending exercises. I think the key here is to do it in a disciplined way on each note successively, and to really stretch the pitches as much as possible, eventually bringing to flute to very extreme angles, it was kind of incredible how far he could stray from the normal playing position.
For the next lesson in a couple months he says that he'll teach me an approach to makam, kind of the Turkish equivalent to modes or scales. There are several books and information on the internet about makam that makes it sound very complicated (I gave up self-learning them a long time ago) with the whole tones being divided into nine parts, but he says that being from the culture he can teach an approach that makes it simple.
I couldn't help being struck by the pleasant energy Omar had about him. You can get a glimpse of this in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyFt7EzB-qc
And if his tips, many of which he says he learned from his teacher, can get me to progress to even a fraction of the way towards the playing in this next video (American pop song turned into a Turkish art song!), I'm all for taking them to heart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIIvdbHm0j0
Also, it's a different kind of ney with an entirely different blowing technique from either Turkish ney or shakuhachi, but this guy has some good teaching videos that have a lot of stuff that's transferable to shakuhachi. They're worth the time watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRUKveL3big
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iSfyuwuMA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsAs67-B5J4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK5SbXGuitI
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Congrats man. Keep it up!!
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Since Perry Yung posted instructions about the PVC shakuhachi and he did exactly 1 day after I made a PVC ney, I thought I'd provide the link to the instructions I used. The reason I made it is because I got a book on how to play Egyptian ney that came with a CD. It's a very similar flute to Turkish ney, but different music and playing style, and unfortunately the most common length is different. So I used the following instructions I found on the web to make one: http://home.att.net/~maged.k.mikhail/making.htm
It plays surprisingly well. I had to enlarge the three bottom holes (actually I elongated them) to make it play in tune and I can't get the top most note to play (G), but it's not bad at all. The little detail of the O-ring at the end of the instructions makes a big difference, it simulates the node nearest the mouthpiece. I ended up using a #8 O-ring, it took a few trips to the hardware store to find the size that would fit correctly.
P.S. If you don't already play ney, it'll probably be quite a while before the tuning problems become apparent so you might as well use the dimensions in the instructions, they're not very far off. Also, the PVC piping I found with the correct dimensions was 1/2 inch high pressure pipe.
Last edited by radi0gnome (2009-04-01 13:01:00)
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Gentlemen, thank you very much! I am also addicted to the ney, except I love the Egyptian ney, the one without the baspare (mouthpiece).
I am also addicted to the kaval! I have not purchased a "real" kaval from Bulgaria, but I have made several out of schedule 80 PVC that play decently. I used specs from several websites.
Michael Firman=You are right on. The kaval is hard as Hell!!!! I am just now getting to the point where I can play in the kaba register, and that not all the time.
Lorka and Radiognome=Keep on keeping on Gentlemen. Perseverance will win out. I tried for three years to even get a sound out of a ney, and a slip of a girl named Suzanne Teng showed me what was wrong in just five minutes!
Try a youtube search for Ercan Irmak. Some of the loveliest sounds I ever heard, and all on the ney. No wonder the oldest are the bestest!
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radi0gnome wrote:
Since Perry Yung posted instructions about the PVC shakuhachi and he did exactly 1 day after I made a PVC ney, I thought I'd provide the link to the instructions I used. The reason I made it is because I got a book on how to play Egyptian ney that came with a CD. It's a very similar flute to Turkish ney, but different music and playing style, and unfortunately the most common length is different. So I used the following instructions I found on the web to make one: http://home.att.net/~maged.k.mikhail/making.htm
It plays surprisingly well. I had to enlarge the three bottom holes (actually I elongated them) to make it play in tune and I can't get the top most note to play (G), but it's not bad at all. The little detail of the O-ring at the end of the instructions makes a big difference, it simulates the node nearest the mouthpiece. I ended up using a #8 O-ring, it took a few trips to the hardware store to find the size that would fit correctly.
P.S. If you don't already play ney, it'll probably be quite a while before the tuning problems become apparent so you might as well use the dimensions in the instructions, they're not very far off. Also, the PVC piping I found with the correct dimensions was 1/2 inch high pressure pipe.
Hi, do you have maybe that info on the site saved somewhere? or do you know of any alternative address to it? since this site (which seems to be full of info) is offline...
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Itamar Foguel wrote:
Hi, do you have maybe that info on the site saved somewhere? or do you know of any alternative address to it? since this site (which seems to be full of info) is offline...
Google is our friend...mostly:
http://www.google.com/search?q=make+a+p … =firefox-a
[Obtained by Googling: 'make a pvc ney']
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Edosan, there are no instructions there...just pretty sounds...
(actually there is somthing about parsian ney there but its not that clear and im looking for the egyptian type anyway)
but thanks for your effort
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Itamar Foguel wrote:
Edosan, there are no instructions there...just pretty sounds...
(actually there is somthing about parsian ney there but its not that clear and im looking for the egyptian type anyway)
but thanks for your effort
This was on the first page of search hits edosan's search got: http://tribes.tribe.net/musicalinstrume … ed5a2ba88d
It's not as good as the defunct one I had because it doesn't have diagram's, but all the dimensions seem right. It also doesn't mention the O-ring near the blowing end. You just find a rubber O-ring that fits in the tube and put it about an inch from the blowing end.
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