Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Welcome to the forum Alan!

Its great to see you here.

Do you happen to have any pictures of your flutes that you can post?

cheers,
Erin

Thanks for explaining Alan.

Though only a beginning player myself, I'm excited by your experiments and am keen to follow your progress with the various creative shakuhachi designs you are coming up with.

OK, someone here on the forum who lives close to Alan, get over there and try out some of his flutes for us!

cheers,
Erin

Alan Adler wrote:

Erin asked me a few questions by direct email.  I'll answer here:

"As for the wide blowing edge, how much impact does it have on one's
embouchure?"

Probably not much, but that's one reason for getting together with a local player -- to get his/her comments.

"As well, often flutes with a powerful tones in the low notes have some
limitations when it comes to the second register and even sometimes don't
have much to offer when it comes to the third octave.  How do your flutes
handle the different octaves?"

I can only manage about halfway up the second register.  That may be due to me, or to my flutes.  Again, getting together with a local player could provide some answers.

I most enjoy improvising in the fundamental register.

Best,

Alan

Hi Alan, From one experimental maker to another, welcome to the Forum!

I just finished two custom flutes last week for the prolific bamboo flute recording artist Glen Snell. Glen knows that I specialize in traditional shakuhachi but he keeps commissioning me to make bamboo side blown flutes and special bass raga shakuhachi, all of which have ended up on his CDs over the years.

This one here is a 3.2 length flute pitched in E. It's about 38" long and 2" in diameter. This aspect ratio favors the lower octave (the diameter is wider than it should be for the length). This produces a big booming sound in the low octave but it only works well up to the middle of the second. After that, I get some wacky harmonics. Glen sent me this bamboo from Georgia and I told him this would be the case but he wanted to use it for the low octave only anyway. So, it didn't matter. He was happy to get a few notes into the second octave. It also has a unique tuning made specially to fit his finger span. Due to the length and diameter, the standard five hole Minor Pentatonic hole spacing would have been too far a stretch for most humans.




If you are ever in New York City, please come by my shop for a cup of tea.

Best, Perry

Last edited by Yungflutes (2009-02-15 22:18:45)

A few more words about my flutes.

My smallest satisfactory diameter is 0.75" or 19mm.  My largest is 1.14" or 29mm. 

The smaller diameters have a reedier sound, more like an oboe.

I've made 0.75", 0.875", 1" and 1.14".  I like them all.

Surprisingly, I can play the same range on all of them with equal ease.  But as I wrote earlier, that's only halfway up the second register.

My square flutes have ranged from 0.63" (16mm) square (very reedy sounding)  to 25mm square (too dull for my taste).  I like the 7/8" (22mm) best.

Holes sizes range from .375" (9.5mm) to .40" (10.2mm).

There are two unreachable holes at the bottom, D and C#.  When all reachable holes are fingered, the flute sounds primarily through the D hole but some of the sound is also emitted from the C# hole below the D.  Thus all notes sound through at least two holes.  This makes the timbre of the lowest D note somewhat more similar to the timbre of the higher notes.

The following tuning formula works pretty well, though it's not perfect at the upper end of the fundamental octave:

For all flutes
Frequency = 6830 / (L + k)
L= length from edge to center of hole inches.
k= end-effect correction inches (see below)

For square:

k=4.54*D^0.83     D=one side of square (inches)

For round:

k=4.18*Dia^0.85

Best,

Alan

Last edited by Alan Adler (2009-03-14 12:43:57)

Hi, Alan, and welcome.

Are those mouthpieces injection molded?

Or are they milled?  Very interesting.

Alan!
Interesting work there. Please do keep us posted. Any possibility of audio files?
later...

Toby wrote:

I love aerobies! Nice to see you bring your talents to flute. I should be in the Bay Area (San Jose) in April. Perhaps we can meet. I have some knowledge of flute acoustics.

Toby

Hi Toby,

Oops, I just now discovered your post.  Yes, I'd love to meet you when you are here in April.  You can call my office (Aerobie, Inc) 650-493-3050.  I'm not always there, but they'll call me wherever I am.

I've owned Fletcher and Rossing for many years.  And recently I've become aquainted with Rossing, who lives here now and teaches at Stanford.

I've also read many of Fletcher's papers.

I can only get halfway up the second register with my flutes.  But that doesn't trouble me because I like to play in the fundamental register.

Best,

Alan

Alan, I'm guessing that you are still not overblowing to the second octave, since a stepped bore like this should definitely throw the modes out of whack, with the higher modes being flat compared to the lower mode. I still owe you some quena measurements--I'll get to that soon, I promise.

Toby

Hi Alan,

AFAIK there are no actual stepped bore clarinets. Buffet makes a "polycylindrical" bore which is very slighly opened up at the top (for tuning purposes). Reverse-conical bores, such as in classical flutes and recorders have two effects: they stretch the modes and they move the impedance minima of the bore in respect to the maxima, allowing one to blow harder without as much rise in pitch. However that applies to a bore with a constant cone angle. Benade has written a paper in which he details the effects of enlarging the bore of a clarinet near the top, and the tuning effects of that enlargement. I think you might find this interesting:

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/marl/Benade/

go to > Writings > 1960 and download the pdf entitled "Summary notes on the mathematical theory of fingerholes, as applicable to clarinets." Check out the bottom of pg. 8 and pg 9.

Best,
Toby

PS: I love the AeroPress! I use it every day in China.