Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

My research on this issue is subjective and not scientific but for me keeping the throat open stops the noise you are talking about.  I think that noise occurs when the walls of the throat (not the voice box) start to vibrate against each other. This can only happen when the walls of the throat are pressed together. Meri position aggravates the problem as it can tend to make the throat more compressed. Consciously keeping the throat open helps this problem for me.  Maybe somebody else will have a completely different take. There may be more than one way to make unwanted sounds.

Watazumi makes the best of them!

chuck091956 wrote:

I've noticed recently, especially when I record my playing I'm make noises from my throat along with the flute sounds. During my playing I keep a focus on my throat and try to keep it softer and keep the noise from starting.

Any advice on how to not make throat noises while playing?

Best wishes all!

Throat noises are from tension in the throat. I find that the reason I make throat noises is when I'm trying to reduce the air pressure, I end up doing it by tensing the throat instead of using good diaphragm support.

To stop it, try thinking about a yawn to get that "open throat" silver flute players like to talk about so much. Unlike silver flute, throat tension seems to be an important part of shakuhachi playing since tongue positioning that requires throat tension is necessary, so while I wouldn't take the "open throat" thing too far with shakuhachi, I really doubt you'd need enough tension to cause you to phonate.  Of course, as Geni pointed out, there is Watazumi, who either decided he needed enough tension to phonate, or didn't care if he inadvertently phonated, or maybe liked the effect.