Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Kian wrote:

Going to the 2.4 with a rather larger bore, 26mm was a different story. I was under the false assumption that one needed more air and if that "may" be right to some extent, I now use only a slight more but nothing in comparison with my first attempts. This may be because when I struggled to get a good tone, I could get one with very little playing power, so blowing harder was rarely effective, buzzing sound and otherwise a lot air sound was generated.

While it's true to say that you don't have to blow harder to play larger flutes, the air used is less efficient on larger flutes. So if you can hold a tone for, say, 30 seconds on a 1.8, you'll probably only be able to get to 20 seconds or less on a 2.4/2.5 unless you fill your lungs more or squeeze more out or, if needing to take a breath before your lungs are empty is an issue, make sure your blood is oxygenated enough before blowing. I know this sounds paradoxical, and that if the air is less efficient you're using more and blowing harder, but it's really a better way to think about it because the difference in how hard you're blowing is so subtle.

Larger bore flutes can also handle more air better, meaning that you can blow noticeably harder if you want to for different tonal effects. You can do this with narrower bore flutes too, but there is less difference in blowing before the tone becomes unusable.   

As far as filing your flute, I wouldn't encourage anyone, particularly a beginner, to do it themselves unless it's a flute that you feel is worth the risk. Otherwise I'd only trust it to a good repair person, and even then I'd hesitate and give it more thought.

Thank you, Kian for sharing your trouble with the forum.

The problem you describe is, in fact, a very typical problem when moving from a shorter flute to a longer flute. When playing longer flutes, the bore typical is larger and therefore the diameter of the shakuhachi is larger too.
As you observed, if you place the larger bore shakuhachi on your chin as you have been used to on the 1.7 and 1.8, you get in trouble because the utaguchi will be placed too high in relation to your lips. And when you try to adjust that the lips are too far from the utagichi.
What you have to think about when placing a shakuhachi to rest on your chin before playing, is not where on the chin the back of your shakuhachi is placed, but where the utaguchi is placed in relation to your lips. It seems like you have got this far very well.
After nearly 10 years of teaching to many students, who come with all kind of sizes and length of jinashi shakuhachi, what I tell them to do when this problem occurs is:

• You have to pull the shakuhachi down your chin a little to get the utaguchi to be somewhat around the middle of your lower lip.
• If you just pull the flute straight down on your chin, there will now be a gap between the flute and your lips (and this is where you seemed to have been).
• Close that gap by taking the root-end of flute more upward.
• You will now have a good contact with your flute with your lips and it is plaed right on your chin, but it will be in meri position.
• Correct your head to kari position not changing the position of the flute on your chin. The last bit here often come as a surprise to many students as they often feel they are stuck in this meri position. But it is always possible to get in kari position by changing your head position even if your flute is placed a little more horizontally than you have been used to until now.

In this way it may have been possible to have got the positioning of the shakuhachi right without filing off the back side of the shakuhachi. I have the feeling you were only trying to adjust to the new positioning by changing your lip shape.

Some jinashi shakuhachi makers, incl kyotaku makers can be quite orthodox when it comes to how much should be filed off the back. And good makers will always have a good reason to stop where they stopped filing.
I am a pragmatic person, so I always try a flute for a while putting the shakuhachi in the position the way I have described above, and rather try to adjust to the flute myself than adjusting the flute to me. However, some people can have a very pronounced chin or some other chin shapes, which makes filing down necessary and desirable. I also file down adjusting more to my chin if I believe it affects the playability of the shakuhachi. It can at times help daikan if the back has been filed down.

Changing from 1.7 after a few weeks to a 1.8, then to 2.4 after 10 days is moving forward very fast. So, it is a lot of changes in very short time just in the beginning. Luckily, you have a teacher and are guided, so you should be fine.

A lot of my wonderful longer shakuhachi, made by different makers, do not have more filed off the back than my 1.6. Not even my 3.15. But you can experiment a lot, which you did. And if you did get a better result from your experiments, you probably did the right thing! Congratulations!

Good luck on your path of the shakuhachi!
Kiku