Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Greetings! New member "cryss" here... I am fairly new to the Anasazi flute but wanted to comment that Scott August is releasing a Signature Series through Geoffrey Ellis of earthtoneflutes.com within the month. Official news will be released in about a week or so, but I am partners in crime with the flute maker and have the inside scoop.

I just joined the forum as I am fairly new to the Shakuhachi but have been slowly learning and collecting world flutes. Since this is now something I am actively pursuing after trying one recently at a flute circle, I figured this forum would be useful for me. I will digress here since this is an Anasazi thread.

hi, inspired from this post which i was reading once and again i decided to make an experiment.  so i googled the image of anasazi flute and some more info and took precisely  the measures and the relations. 
i had a very light and thin but at the same time dense near root end shakuhachi 2.3A# +30c which i had put in ebay for sale and i decided to experiment on it. so i burned some more holes on it.

from the relations i figured that the 1st,3rd,4rth from the bottom on the shakuhachi are exactly the same place like 2nd,4th,6th from the bottom of the anasazi
so there were left to make 3 holes more only. the first two holes went down and up the 1st hole of the shakuhachi. and the third one went between the 3rd and the 4th. so i finished with one unnecessary hole for the anasazi. from my experience with more complicated native American flutes i knew the unnecessary hole can be closed by a leather stripe. so i did it like this. the back hole i always close by my thumb so there is no need for another stripe to close it even playing like anasazi. what is ore interesting only changing the position of the leather stripe its again back shakuhachi 
and the 2 unnecessary holes are in the middle of 1st & 2nd      and    3rd & 4th  so its very natural to close them with the middle fingers and no open them instead  of using 2 more leather stripes.  the shakuhachi is tuned, the anasazi not to the pentatonic but with some thinking it can be easily done which was not my idea when making it. i only wanted to hear how it sounds.
some other thoughts come about the original ~40 aspect ratio of the anasazi and this one/~30/. we loose the 4rth octave but this is balanced by easy RO and lower octave which i read are difficult with the anasazi. the best i think from this experiment is the possibility to play other flute without changimg the shakuhachi embouchure and the possibility to bend the notes.  now will post also some photos

I am resurrecting this thread, as I did get a flute from Coyote Oldman/Michael Graham Allen.  It is a truly wonderful and fearsome beast; I did get the slight shakuhachoid utaguchi cut rather than go fully untweaked.  It's still hard as hell to play, and it's fascinating that the 4th in the lower register is only reached via some tricky meri'ing (to my knowledge.)  When I get a chance, I will call Michael and tell him how much I love the thing.  Michael is a very reasonable and interesting guy. 

I also picked up Peter Phippen's CD, Summerland, on iTunes, and it's an excellent tour of this flute, other NAFs, and shakuhachi.

*edit*  I also notice that playing the Anasazi flute messes up my shakuhachi embouchure for a little while!  Ah, cross-training...

Last edited by axolotl (2010-09-18 14:35:37)