Greetings, fellow shakuhachi people!
I have before me a copy of Masayuki Koga's book, _Shakuhachi: Japanese
Bamboo Flute_, with which I suspect at least some of you are familiar. In
this book (p. 116) there is a table of measurments of the bore of the
author's favorite instrument.
This table has several missing data points which I do not understand. The
horizontal measurement at 4cm is missing, the vertical measurements at 7cm
and 8cm are missing, and the 45 degree measurement at 30 cm is missing.
It is easy to interpolate the missing values, but given the otherwise
apparent thoroughness of the measurements, the fact that some of them are
missing for an unexplained reason perplexes me. Do any of you here
understand why?
Another perplexing thing is that some parts of the bore vary by almost 0.5
cm over 1.0 cm of length. This seems pretty radical to me, based on my
limited experience, and I wonder if it is accurate.
Finally, the average interior diameter given in the table is not always
the numerical average of the other four measurements at the given length,
so I wonder if this is an error on the part of the author or, if not, what
method he used to make this measurement.
If you're interested in the data itself, I've placed a copy of my typed-in
and annotated version up on the web at
<URL:http://jeremy.org/tmp/koga-bore-profile.html>. (If you want it in a
spreadsheet format just let me know.)
Why am I so curious about this? A friend of mine has come into posession
of a computer-controlled milling machine and I've managed to get her
interested in working with me to manufacture some shakuhachi-like
instruments with it. In order to do that, I need an accurate computer
model of the physical form of a shakuhachi to use as a starting point,
since the machine can basically take a chunk of material and shape it to
resemble an instantiation of the model.
This machine is capable of cutting to very fine tolerances, and makes it
possible for us to use different materials to make a variety of
experimental instruments, with an eye towards investigating the effects of
minute, reproducible changes in bore profile and other aspects of the
instrument, including the use of a variety of nontraditional materials
such as metal, ceramics, or hardwoods. I don't know if the mill can
accurately cut bamboo--it might be too soft--but if it can then it should
be possible to make a very interesting bamboo instrument as
well--essentially a cast-bore instrument without the addition of any extra
material.
This is something I'm doing for fun and for my own education, but along
the way I hope to produce some interesting, durable musical instruments.
(I hesitate to call them shakuhachi per se.) I would expect the metal
instruments to have a loud, bright, cold sound relative to real
shakuhachi, but they might have their purposes for certain kinds of
performance or practice.
I'm interested to hear from those of you who have more experience than I
in these matters!
Best,
-jeremy
--
jeremy bornstein <uke@jeremy.org>
-*-
It is a little embarrassing that, after 45 years of
research and study, the best advice I can give to
people is to be a little kinder to each other.
[Aldous Huxley]
-*-
http://jeremy.org/
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