Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

A few years ago I was lucky enough to be in Kyoto during the 100th anniversary of the Meian temple shakuhachi gathering.   Basically this is an annual event in which individuals, and teachers and their students, perform shakuhachi in the Meian temple long associated with shakuhachi playing.  (I am sure many people on this list can give a far better and more precise description of what this event actually means - so my apologies for this meager explanation.)

At the gathering there were perhaps a 100 or so different performers and most everyone was dressed very traditionally and beautifully.   Which means it was as much a visual event as it was musical.  (I actually have a few photos which I will try to post later.) 

So at the event there were these three older men with long flutes that looked very much like the one linked to above.   The men were very impressive looking.  They had beautiful long flowing robes with what must have been many yards of layered shimmering fabric.   And they wore tall hats that to my western eyes looked like an elaborate pope's hat.   In short, they looked truly awesome.

So with great flourish they took the central part of the floor to perform for everyone and there was total concentrated silence in anticipation of the music these flutes would produce.

The head man took a deep breath, blew away and... there was no sound at all.  For several minutes they blew, and once in a while I heard a hint of a note here and there, but overall the men and/or the flutes proved more decorational than functional.   

Obviously this is not a useful evaluation of the flute in question, but it is still an interesting anecdote.

Since the gathering was at a temple the event did place greater emphasis on shakuhachi as a spiritual tool as opposed to being a musical instrument. 

This led me to understand that the greater value was on their intention and focus, rather than their ability to actually produce music. 

But hey, for me the most enjoyable part of the event was that I had so little understanding of what was going on.

Tairaku wrote:

Back to the flute. I played the flute you are asking about Matti and like Seth's robed dudes, it looks great and sounds,...................um .

Are we talking about "tuning is slightly off" kind or "Is this thing leaking air" kind of um? Could you, say, play some easy piece with it and someone could actually tell what you are playing or is it just lost cause to do anything but blow Ro one out of five times? This thing looks so lovely that I feel that it deserves to sound nice as well.

Tairaku wrote:

I have two Kikusui flutes, a PVC which is really nice and a wooden one. I will try to post some pics in this topic soon.

Please do. Are they as decorative as this one? What really caught my attention is the amount of detail in this flute. It almost seems like more time went into making this instrument look great than actually getting it to play well. I'm personally a big fan of instruments that look wonderful and I believe that playing a beautiful instrument adds to the experience even if beauty technically has nothing to do with the sound. I've seen some really lovely instruments with brush-painted scenes or poems on them. Somehow I find that a flute like that goes from being just another pipe that produces sounds to an unique piece of art.

I never thought a plastic flute would look beautiful before, but that's probably because of who made it. Those are really beautifull

jeff jones wrote:

I never thought a plastic flute would look beautiful before, but that's probably because of who made it. Those are really beautifull

It's the most satisfying plastic flute I have played. It has a distinct musical personality. I like PVC flutes, there's a lot of chikuin in them. The bore on this one is tapered and the bell is flared, which add to the "real" nature of the response. It also has a nice joint which you can see towards the top, so it's not nobe. Seems to me there's quite a bit makers could do along these lines. Someone (I think maybe Dan Soergel?) experimented with adding false "nodes" by putting rings around the node points in the hopes that some of the regular shakuhachi principles might apply. PVC is cheap, plentiful, malleable and easy to work with. A friend of mine, Mark Stewart (plays cello and mando with Paul Simon) makes all kinds of outrageous reed instruments out of it that look like science experiments.

Tairaku wrote:

Seems to me there's quite a bit makers could do along these lines.

I wanted to try this project out about a year ago but got nowhere due to lack of materials (ok, actually it was laziness in looking for them). I also can't help but to think that plastic flutes might work decently well with some effort. Typically most makers do them as their cheapest option which obviously translates to less time spent on them in comparison to bamboo instruments. No point in spending a lot of time figuring out how to best utilize plastic when you could spend that time in improving your skills at making the real things.

I'd love to try out various things like grinding the bore to make it less smooth or coating the bore to see if that makes any difference. Worst case scenario, they'd make for decent hands-outs once I run out of bamboo flutes to pass to interested people.

This is carved out of one piece of wood, with no joinery. You can follow the grain around the flute. Pretty good piece of carving.

For the wood one it looks like a stylized form of Dragon.

Now for the plastic pipe not sure of the first Kanji but second one is also a stylized form for Wind.

chikuzen wrote:

1st one is dragon. The top of the 2nd is Matsu "pine".

Wood flute is Dragon 龍
The plastic pipe is 松風 in this one both Kanji are the short form.
Thanks to Chikuzen Sensei for the Matsu Kanji!