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#26 2010-06-05 03:28:57

Eugene
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Chris Moran wrote:

You seem to differ from Toby when it comes to density? That's significant. Toby's argument doesn't address density, from my reading, only "smoothness." If you argue that two pieces of bamboo have to be the same density you're making the argument for the other side of the debate.

In fact, Toby explicitly stated that "everybody is convinced that wall thickness and/or density makes a difference, but this is all untrue". I read it as a matter of trying to keep everything else unchanged so as to more readily identify the cause of a difference, if any. That is, test for a difference when thickness is changed (but keep density the same), and also test for a difference when the density is changed (e.g., change the material, but keep thickness the same). You could kill two birds with one stone by testing for both simultaneously, but if there is a difference, then it will leave you in the dark as to which one (or both) is the factor.

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#27 2010-06-05 05:57:15

Toby
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From: out somewhere circling the sun
Registered: 2008-03-15
Posts: 405

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

There is an interesting point about wall vibration that needs to be understood. For the walls to actually vibrate to a significant extent, they have to have a resonant frequency that can both couple at a playing frequency or a significant harmonic thereof, and sustain that coupling. Consider a child's swing: to get it really moving, you have to pump your legs at the right time and in the right rhythm. Otherwise the impulses cancel each other out and the swing hardly moves, no matter how wildly you swing your gams.

So with the flute. Leaving aside the question of whether frequency-coupled tube oscillations actually change the sound (not significantly according to Gilbert), the first thing to find out is whether the tube has a resonant frequency in playing range. It doesn't. I can explain why not if you are interested, but take my word for it.

Of course thinner and/or lower density materials have lower resonances, but within the thicknesses and densities of walls that we deal with in bamboo, the resonances never get low enough to couple.

But density can affect the sound in a different way: bamboo has a cellular structure and micropores that have a bearing on bore smoothness in the range that can affect the sound. This could be significant in jinashi flutes.

Toby

Last edited by Toby (2010-06-05 05:59:26)

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#28 2010-06-05 09:29:33

edosan
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From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2005-10-09
Posts: 2185

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Eugene wrote:

Chris Moran wrote:

You seem to differ from Toby when it comes to density? That's significant. Toby's argument doesn't address density, from my reading, only "smoothness." If you argue that two pieces of bamboo have to be the same density you're making the argument for the other side of the debate.

In fact, Toby explicitly stated that "everybody is convinced that wall thickness and/or density makes a difference, but this is all untrue". I read it as a matter of trying to keep everything else unchanged so as to more readily identify the cause of a difference, if any. That is, test for a difference when thickness is changed (but keep density the same), and also test for a difference when the density is changed (e.g., change the material, but keep thickness the same). You could kill two birds with one stone by testing for both simultaneously, but if there is a difference, then it will leave you in the dark as to which one (or both) is the factor.

Just so. Thank you for thinking. The whole idea with science is that you try to control for things that might make a difference so that you
can observe the differences in the things being varied.

Also, Toby doesn't address 'smoothness', rather bore shape.


Zen is not easy.
It takes effort to attain nothingness.
And then what do you have?
Bupkes.

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#29 2010-06-05 12:43:11

Moran from Planet X
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

edosan wrote:

Also, Toby doesn't address 'smoothness', rather bore shape.

Toby wrote:

The thickness of the walls is not significant; the dimensions of the bore and smoothness are the main determinants of the sound.

Emphasis in the second quote, mine.


"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I am all out of bubblegum." —Rowdy Piper, They Live!

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#30 2010-06-05 14:50:39

Moran from Planet X
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Toby wrote:

... the method of choice for so many down through the centuries for finding truth.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Cucking_stool.png


"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I am all out of bubblegum." —Rowdy Piper, They Live!

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#31 2010-06-05 19:09:40

Toby
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From: out somewhere circling the sun
Registered: 2008-03-15
Posts: 405

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Jon Kypros wrote:

Unusually cold temperatures produced low density wood for Stradivarius. Now people can use fungi to make low density wood creating violins that sound even better than a Stradivarius,

http://news.discovery.com/tech/fungi-vi … arius.html

Density for wind instruments only matters if, like Toby pointed out, the texture changes. One of the great tools at the jinashi maker's disposal is of course urushi which can change the density, and more importantly the texture of the bore. If a wind instruments bore reacted like a violin or sound board then low density thin wood should make the best sounding flute. But wind instrument do not work like that. Only the shape of the bore, taper, blowing edge depth, hole sizes and depths and bore texture matter.

Of course people are free to believe...
http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww21 … usdino.jpg

Strads get quite off-topic, but there are various theories about what makes them "special". Another is the change in the wood as it was kept for some time floating in Venetian lagoons, and chemical action changed the cellular structure. And of course the Maunder Minimum. Let us not forget that Stradivari was also a master violin maker (along with Guarneri del Jesu, Amati, and several other Cremonese of that period). Not only did he change the actual form of the violin somewhat, but he obviously knew exactly how to shape and balance the plates for the wood he was using. Still, clearly the wood plays a vital role in violin sound, and wood which has the organic materials destroyed while keeping the lignin and cellular structure intact is definitely going to be easier to get to vibrate, just as a speaker cone should (ideally) be infinitely rigid and massless.

There is, somewhere, an ancient forest discovered at the bottom of a deep lake. All of the logs have been worked on by anerobic bacteria so that the organic material in the cells is gone but the lignin structure is intact--only the skeletons of the cells remain. Apparently this wood has wonderful resonant properties, and is used in things like bridges for strings. It would be great if the fungus method described above could reproduce this wood.

Think how great a shakuhachi made from it would sound ;-})

Toby

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#32 2010-06-06 07:58:17

Yungflutes
Flutemaker/Performer
From: New York City
Registered: 2005-10-08
Posts: 1061
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Toby wrote:

Strads get quite off-topic, but there are various theories about what makes them "special".

Yes, since were here again, I'd like to mention that I held two Stradivarius violins last summer when my neighbor had them on loan. His orchestra was given a permanent loan of about 20 Strad violins. They are circulated among the musicians for their artistic growth.

He gave me a demo on them and after wards I asked if he could hear the difference between a Strad and another fine violin. He said, to paraphrase, "there is no Strad sound. They just feel like very fine violins."

His opinion was shared by another world class violin player also in my building. Again, to paraphrase, "no one can identify a Strad sound by hearing it. They do not have a "Stardivarius" sound".

I've read that some makers believe the secret is partly in the varnish.

Think how great a shakuhachi made from it would sound ;-})

Toby

I made a lot of PVC flutes recently for a show. They sound pretty good! smile


"A hot dog is not an animal." - Jet Yung

My Blog/Website on the art of shakuhachi...and parenting.
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#33 2010-06-06 09:30:03

edosan
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From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2005-10-09
Posts: 2185

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Chris Moran wrote:

edosan wrote:

Also, Toby doesn't address 'smoothness', rather bore shape.

Toby wrote:

The thickness of the walls is not significant; the dimensions of the bore and smoothness are the main determinants of the sound.

Emphasis in the second quote, mine.

My point there, ineptly made, is that bore shape (including tone hole depth) trumps everything; it's relatively easy to achieve equal 'smoothness' in the bores of two (or more flutes). Shape, not so much...


Zen is not easy.
It takes effort to attain nothingness.
And then what do you have?
Bupkes.

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#34 2010-06-06 11:13:17

Moran from Planet X
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Yungflutes wrote:

I've read that some makers believe the secret is partly in the varnish.

The movie The Red Violin had the luthier making varnish from his dead beloved's blood. And I believe it.


"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I am all out of bubblegum." —Rowdy Piper, They Live!

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#35 2010-06-06 11:16:47

Moran from Planet X
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

tddy934 wrote:

I've tried only a few types of bamboo, and I was wondering which one to try next, I want one the sounds good and is easy to work with.

This guy tddy934 must be a plant. Maybe a mole from a NAF forum. Perhaps a spurned shakuhachi aspirant.  wink wink wink


"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I am all out of bubblegum." —Rowdy Piper, They Live!

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#36 2010-06-06 11:34:55

Moran from Planet X
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

edosan wrote:

There is no doable 'test', because in order to do one, you'd need two shakuhachi with identical bores, but different wall thicknesses (and you'd need to assume identical bamboo density as well).

Back to the subject at hand. If there is no doable test, outside of some phantasy that you will find two absolutely identical bamboo shakuhachi --which you won't-- then you can quote theory until the cows turn pink and fly away on little blue gossamer wings, but you cannot prove that bamboo type, selection, thickness has no audible effect on shakuhachi.

You can make that assertion. You can "believe" it. You can start a new religion (see Wikipedia listing for L. Ron Hubbard). But your assertion is not provable.

edosan wrote:

Got any of those layin' around for the test, X?

The burden of proof lies on your shoulders to find the test subjects, create the environment for the tests, perform the tests, repeat the tests and submit the data for peer review.


"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I am all out of bubblegum." —Rowdy Piper, They Live!

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#37 2010-06-06 11:54:02

Eugene
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From: Singapore
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Posts: 12
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Chris Moran wrote:

Back to the subject at hand. If there is no doable test, outside of some phantasy that you will find two absolutely identical bamboo shakuhachi --which you won't-- then you can quote theory until the cows turn pink and fly away on little blue gossamer wings, but you cannot prove  that bamboo type, selection, thickness has no audible effect on shakuhachi.

If the theory is correct, then you do not have to find two absolutely identical bamboo shakuhachi, because even if they differ in other ways, as long as "the dimensions of the bore and smoothness" are sufficiently similiar, the experiments should prove the theory. Okay, almost prove the theory, since one might conjecture that the other factors in the experiment also determine the sound, but they somehow cancel each other out for the particular experimental setup. Then again, by repeating the experiments with different configurations of the other factors, this possibility could be made more and more remote.

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#38 2010-06-06 11:57:01

edosan
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From: Salt Lake City
Registered: 2005-10-09
Posts: 2185

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Chris Moran wrote:

...but you cannot prove that bamboo type, selection, thickness has no audible effect on shakuhachi.

The scientific method never 'proves' anything, it just gets us closer to what's really going on, unlike our searching, fallible, subjective, needy,
willing minds do.

It's very easy and reasonable to generalize the data Toby has so eloquently elucidated here to bamboo windblown instruments. What is so
special and different about bamboo that obviates all of that information? Please do fill us in on that, X. Perhaps with your own collected
literature on the subject.

The resonant frequency of wood is even lower than that of the metal that silver/gold/platinum flutes are made of, so the data is even more
applicable to bamboo in terms of its material affecting the voice of the instrument.

Frankly, X, I do not trust your ears, nor mine, to make such judgments.

------

Besides, I only need to do one fairly simple test:

1) Get three or four competent players, all playing the same tune, each of them playing either a Yuu or my 1.8 Ichijo (a very high quality
shakuhachi).

2) Everybody gets in the same room, one with fairly dry acoustical properties, with a blanket hanging in the middle of the room, players on
one side, X and whomever he wants to bring along on the other.

3) The players are handed either the Yuu or the Ichijo, chosen at random by a disinterested method (not difficult to come up with, a priori) and they play the tune, which flute played being noted. The listeners are meantime taking notes on which flute they think is being played in each trial, Yuu or Ichijo.

4) After each player has played the tune at least two times (doesn't matter which flute is used), X and the rest of his doubting minions are asked to compare their lists with that of the person handing out the flutes to the players.

5) The listeners' list must agree with the 'real' list by better than chance to show that plastic sounds different than bamboo.

6) The prime weakness of this method is that the players are not also blind to which flute they are playing. My contention is that this will not matter enough to make a difference, although some effort could be expended to hide the type of flute from all players as well, even though this is more difficult to do than with metal flutes. A simple blindfold would help, although the players could probably still tell enough of a difference that bias could not be completely ruled out. The idea is that the tune gets played enough times that this bias is small.

7) A counter argument can be made that 'you're only looking at two jiari flutes' and not at all possible differences in bamboo wall thickness and density. I would reply that what we are looking for here is differences in ability to detect the material the shakuhachi is made of. If you can't tell the difference between two fairly similar flutes, one of plastic, the other of bamboo, how're you going to subjectively sort out ALL those other variables and produce an accurate accounting?

Last edited by edosan (2010-06-06 12:49:04)


Zen is not easy.
It takes effort to attain nothingness.
And then what do you have?
Bupkes.

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#39 2010-06-06 13:27:43

Eugene
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From: Singapore
Registered: 2010-05-10
Posts: 12
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Jon Kypros wrote:

The mind causes an individual to play one instrument differently from another as well as the instrument maker to pay more attention and put more in. If a big fat thick club of a tendon tearing carpel cranking flute floats your boat down the sakura gawa and over the takiochi then fat thick bamboo matters, in your mind.

I like the conclusion in that layman-friendly article that Toby linked to:

Bret Pimentel wrote:

While it seems clear from scientific investigation that, all else being equal, materials make no difference to a woodwind instrument's sound, it seems equally clear from musical experience that all else is never equal. Factors as small as the precise brass alloy of a saxophone's body can make all the difference in the world - not because of any acoustical affect, but because of the undeniable human element. So if you feel, deep in your heart, that a platinum flute or a rosewood oboe or a silver-plated saxophone will make you sound better, then it probably will  make you sound better.

Woodwind players will continue to play the instruments that feel and sound right to them, no matter what the scientists have to say. And so they should! A musician's instrument is the tool of his or her trade, a treasured possession, and a nearly constant companion. But perhaps a levelheaded understanding of the role of materials in a woodwind instrument's sound can lead to better instruments - and better musicians - in the future.

Last edited by Eugene (2010-06-06 13:29:30)

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#40 2010-06-06 20:59:35

Toby
Shakuhachi Scientist
From: out somewhere circling the sun
Registered: 2008-03-15
Posts: 405

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Chris Moran wrote:

edosan wrote:

There is no doable 'test', because in order to do one, you'd need two shakuhachi with identical bores, but different wall thicknesses (and you'd need to assume identical bamboo density as well).

Back to the subject at hand. If there is no doable test, outside of some phantasy that you will find two absolutely identical bamboo shakuhachi --which you won't-- then you can quote theory until the cows turn pink and fly away on little blue gossamer wings, but you cannot prove that bamboo type, selection, thickness has no audible effect on shakuhachi.

You can make that assertion. You can "believe" it. You can start a new religion (see Wikipedia listing for L. Ron Hubbard). But your assertion is not provable.

edosan wrote:

Got any of those layin' around for the test, X?

The burden of proof lies on your shoulders to find the test subjects, create the environment for the tests, perform the tests, repeat the tests and submit the data for peer review.

Science rests on making reasonable assumptions from the data at hand (predicatable and repeatable). and as Popper points out in relation to falsifiability and science, it is impossible to conclusively prove anything: one can only show something to be false, never show it to be true, as there are an infinite number of cases to test for any given theorem.

So, based on the evidence science has collected so far, we propose a scenario which fits it, and proceed to try to find a case where new evidence proves the model lacking. If we do manage to do this, we refine the paradigm and then try again to knock it down.

Now, so far all the evidence for the non-significance of wall materials in woodwinds fits prediction. The model works. Through the years, there have been certain experiments which have seemed to show the opposite--that wall materials do have an influence--such as Miller's experiment with organ pipes in 1909. However all such experiments have, on closer inspection, been shown to contain methodological flaws. Therefore, the scientific consensus is quite firm on this particular point. In addition, other experiments have clearly demonstrated observer bias, which reasonably explain why people like you keep thinking that wall materials make a difference.

Whenever the doubters protest about the blockheadedness of scientists and the exquisite sensitivity of players in regard to this question, I like to direct them to this page, which shows that the human sensory system is not as infallible as they would like to believe. I suggest that you spend a bit of time here marveling at just how easy it is to fool your lying eyes:

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

Finally, given the weight of evidence that has accumulated over the past 150 years, it is rather that the burden of proof is upon you, since the tests have been carried out numerous times, by some of the best minds on the planet (who mostly were also accomplished instrumentalists), in methodologically-rigorous ways  that have passed strict peer-review.

Ed and I look forward to your efforts to falsify the present model. I am in contact with a number of eminent acousticians, and I am certain that they will be most interested if you manage to come up with something, since they are at a loss to prove it wrong.

Toby

Last edited by Toby (2010-06-06 21:05:03)

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#41 2010-06-06 21:35:57

radi0gnome
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From: Kingston NY
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Pure blasphemy. So we finally give in and acknowledge that Coperincus was right - http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art … QD9FS5R7O0 - and now you want us to believe that wall thickness and density doesn't effect the sound of a flute. When will it end?


smile


"Now birds record new harmonie, And trees do whistle melodies;
Now everything that nature breeds, Doth clad itself in pleasant weeds."
~ Thomas Watson - England's Helicon ca 1580

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#42 2010-06-06 23:34:43

Toby
Shakuhachi Scientist
From: out somewhere circling the sun
Registered: 2008-03-15
Posts: 405

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

radi0gnome wrote:

Pure blasphemy. So we finally give in and acknowledge that Coperincus was right - http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art … QD9FS5R7O0 - and now you want us to believe that wall thickness and density doesn't effect the sound of a flute. When will it end?


smile

Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Inquisition in 1633, and the Church did not finally drop all opposition to heliocentrism until 1835. So I'm thinking sometime around 2212 the idea might finally find some acceptance in the shakuhachi community...

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#43 2010-06-06 23:48:21

Tairaku 太楽
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From: Tasmania
Registered: 2005-10-07
Posts: 3226
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Toby wrote:

Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Inquisition in 1633, and the Church did not finally drop all opposition to heliocentrism until 1835. So I'm thinking sometime around 2212 the idea might finally find some acceptance in the shakuhachi community...

The idea is popular..........just don't know if it's true.

Can you explain in simple terms simple things like:

Neptune's jinashi flutes sound better than his cast bore flutes.

Let's say the Yuu is the best sounding plastic flute. It sounds better than bad bamboo flutes but not better than good ones. Why not?

It seems like if it were possible to make great shakuhachi out of wood, plastic, carbon fiber or whatever, somebody would have done it by now. It would be very useful to have access to great instruments of synthetic materials. But they don't exist yet.

I don't really have a horse in this race. I have actually used wooden shakuhachi frequently in recordings recently because if I need a certain key I'll use whatever flute plays in tune with the track which has been placed in front of me. And my wooden 2.0 and 1.7 are good for Western music. But I don't think those wood flutes (nice as they are) have the complexity of tone as my bamboo flutes, so I don't use them for honkyoku, for example.


'Progress means simplifying, not complicating' : Bruno Munari

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#44 2010-06-06 23:54:30

Priapus Le Zen M☮nk
Historical Zen Mod
From: St-Jerome, Quebec, Canada
Registered: 2006-04-25
Posts: 612
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Tairaku 太楽 wrote:

Toby wrote:

Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Inquisition in 1633, and the Church did not finally drop all opposition to heliocentrism until 1835. So I'm thinking sometime around 2212 the idea might finally find some acceptance in the shakuhachi community...

I don't really have a horse in this race. I have actually used wooden shakuhachi frequently in recordings recently because if I need a certain key I'll use whatever flute plays in tune with the track which has been placed in front of me. And my wooden 2.0 and 1.7 are good for Western music. But I don't think those wood flutes (nice as they are) have the complexity of tone as my bamboo flutes, so I don't use them for honkyoku, for example.

This is what I feel for western music. I have practically NO experience in western music but was asked to do some recording with a Jazz Pianist and I felt that my wooden flutes for some strange reason were just in tone enough and tempered for that type of stuff my god bamboo flutes were ok but I felt they were either too strong or scratchy etc I had to play too soft in order to get t right and that pissed me off more so the wood flutes were just perfect for that.


Sebastien 義真 Cyr
春風館道場 Shunpukan Dojo
St-Jerome, Quebec, Canada
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#45 2010-06-06 23:55:54

Tairaku 太楽
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From: Tasmania
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Which wood flutes do you have, Priapus?


'Progress means simplifying, not complicating' : Bruno Munari

http://www.myspace.com/tairakubrianritchie

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#46 2010-06-07 00:33:28

Moran from Planet X
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

tddy934 wrote:

I've tried only a few types of bamboo, and I was wondering which one to try next, I want one the sounds good and is easy to work with.

Ted,

What kinds of bamboo have you tried so far?

Hundreds, no, thousands of years worth of experience of shakuhachi makers seem to rate Japanese Madake as the first and best choice. Then Chinese Madake.

Quality differs.

Caveat Emptor.

All the best,

--X.


"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I am all out of bubblegum." —Rowdy Piper, They Live!

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#47 2010-06-07 00:45:29

Tairaku 太楽
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From: Tasmania
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Posts: 3226
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Jon Kypros wrote:

Tairaku 太楽 wrote:

It seems like if it were possible to make great shakuhachi out of wood, plastic, carbon fiber or whatever, somebody would have done it by now. It would be very useful to have access to great instruments of synthetic materials. But they don't exist yet.

I could make them easily and for not much money. I could even copy a jinashi bore with perfect detail or the whole flute, inside and out. They could be lighter and stronger than a YUU and bamboo.
.

Anyway it really seems boring in the end to me though compared to the infinite variety that lay ahead in all those bamboo groves! But it's all very possible, it's not really hard to do at all and it's pretty cheap.

Cool, why don't you make some and let us all test them?


'Progress means simplifying, not complicating' : Bruno Munari

http://www.myspace.com/tairakubrianritchie

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#48 2010-06-07 01:10:18

Toby
Shakuhachi Scientist
From: out somewhere circling the sun
Registered: 2008-03-15
Posts: 405

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Jon Kypros wrote:

Tairaku 太楽 wrote:

It seems like if it were possible to make great shakuhachi out of wood, plastic, carbon fiber or whatever, somebody would have done it by now. It would be very useful to have access to great instruments of synthetic materials. But they don't exist yet.

I could make them easily and for not much money. I could even copy a jinashi bore with perfect detail or the whole flute, inside and out. They could be lighter and stronger than a YUU and bamboo.

I personally value the uniqueness each bamboo bore provides. Even bores with the same volume and length can very greatly because of taper. Mother nature gets to pick all of that. It's pretty amazing to me. Any well made jinashi will trump a cast bore I think because jinashi are all unique. However you can copy and cast uniqueness too. It doesn't sit well with me though. Finding a totally unique irreplaceable flute that you connect with is great as many of us know.

On another note I had a fantasy about a flute library where I had copies of bores or whole flutes filed away for posterity smile It's very possible and wouldn't be that expensive however it just seems weird. Matrixy even.
"Computer, start zee process on zee Edo #5 and zee Shiro #2!".
All the copying would also not harm the bamboo or bore a bit with most flutes. Even a raw bore wouldn't flinch. They'd have to be examined for anything that would cause problems like a chip in the plaster or something.

Anyway it really seems boring in the end to me though compared to the infinite variety that lay ahead in all those bamboo groves! But it's all very possible, it's not really hard to do at all and it's pretty cheap.

John Neptune told me that he and Monty Levenson used an interesting computer probe to measure full bores to some fantastic precision, in preparation for preparing mandrels for cast bores. That would do your work for you. But of course it is the unevenness of a jinashi bore that makes it most interesting and complex, and it would be damn near impossible to reconstruct a jinashi bore.

Toby

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#49 2010-06-07 01:23:43

Tairaku 太楽
Administrator/Performer
From: Tasmania
Registered: 2005-10-07
Posts: 3226
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Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

I've seen cornetti and serpents made of carbon fiber. That seems like it would be a good material.


'Progress means simplifying, not complicating' : Bruno Munari

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#50 2010-06-07 01:26:40

Toby
Shakuhachi Scientist
From: out somewhere circling the sun
Registered: 2008-03-15
Posts: 405

Re: Best sounding bamboo? If Humans can be cloned why not shakuhachi? Etc.

Tairaku 太楽 wrote:

Toby wrote:

Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Inquisition in 1633, and the Church did not finally drop all opposition to heliocentrism until 1835. So I'm thinking sometime around 2212 the idea might finally find some acceptance in the shakuhachi community...

The idea is popular..........just don't know if it's true.

Can you explain in simple terms simple things like:

Neptune's jinashi flutes sound better than his cast bore flutes.

Let's say the Yuu is the best sounding plastic flute. It sounds better than bad bamboo flutes but not better than good ones. Why not?

It seems like if it were possible to make great shakuhachi out of wood, plastic, carbon fiber or whatever, somebody would have done it by now. It would be very useful to have access to great instruments of synthetic materials. But they don't exist yet.

I don't really have a horse in this race. I have actually used wooden shakuhachi frequently in recordings recently because if I need a certain key I'll use whatever flute plays in tune with the track which has been placed in front of me. And my wooden 2.0 and 1.7 are good for Western music. But I don't think those wood flutes (nice as they are) have the complexity of tone as my bamboo flutes, so I don't use them for honkyoku, for example.

1. Any jinashi flute is going to sound different than a cast bore flute because the bores are not the same. Because of certain acoustical phenomena, vanishingly small differences in bore geometry can have very large effects on the final sound. You can't compare apples and oranges, and that is what cast bore and jinashi are to each other. Also, there are certain limitiations to cast bores: for example mandrels for cast bores cannot have negative curvature, or you would never get the thing out. The same goes for wood reamers.

2. If you took a Yuu and carefully altered the bore to be the same as a good bamboo flute, it should have the same sound, but who would be crazy enough to spend so much time on a piece of plastic, when you could just as well spend the same amount of time on a nice piece of bamboo?...Buffet makes professional clarinets in both wood and a composite (plastic) material. They craft the bores of the latter just as carefully as the former, and the "Greenline" series is generally considered fully the equal of its grenadilla siblings, and are much preferred by many clarinetists for their dimensional stability and lower maintenance. Many years ago the Haynes flute company, famous for their instruments, put out a silver clarinet. Up until this time, almost all metal clarinets were student instruments, and many were horrible, and the rest not much better. The Haynes clarinet, although exquisite, could never overcome the prejudice. I was told of one professional clarinetist who had one of the only three hundred made, who was forced to paint it black, since many orchestra conductors would simply not allow a metal clarinet in their sight. Now, where does this leave the chances for our plastic shakuhachi?

3. There is no reason to suppose that people would take the trouble to make instruments out of another material if the ones they make of bamboo suffice, especially shakuhachi, hobbled as they are by tradition. In fact, it would cost serious money to set up a factory to make plastic shakuhachi, and probably no player would take them seriously unless you built up a great reputation, which is anything but easy. And let's face facts: bamboo is a wonderful material that feels good in the hands, and the uniqueness of each instrument is one of the great attractions of the shakuhachi. It would probably not be very good business to try to make expensive shakuhachi out of anything but bamboo.

And to be honest, even if a plastic shakuhachi were a sublime player, most people with a prejudice against plastic probably would have the impression it was not really as good as an inferior bamboo instrument when they played it.

I certainly would not invest (from a business standpoint) in a plastic shakuhachi factory...

Toby

Last edited by Toby (2010-06-07 01:35:32)

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