Greetings all,
perhaps it is just me, but is there a link beginning to emerge between
the earlier conversation that was had regarding "what makes a good flute"
and the current debate regarding materials?
It would seem that from an utterly objective standpoint materials are not
the crucial factor (gold shakuhachi anyone?). The thing is, musicians are
not generally purely objective about their craft. The creation of music,
at least for me, involves just as many intangible aspects like feel,
colour, mood etc, as tangible ones such as frequency, tempo, and pitch.
By way of analogy.... I am a very ordinary shakuhachi player, but played
drums for a long time. Drummers frequently make distinctions between the
gear that they use in studios, where the focus is on the more mundane
aspects of sound production, and the gear that they truly love, where
things like materials become more important. A similar debate exists
within drumming circles regarding the importance of materials and sound...
In the meantime I will get back to playing my very beautiful WOODEN flute
(made by David Brown here in Australia). As a poor student I would like
to encourage those making less expensive flutes of any material, Monty, if
you are looking to get rid of one of those plastic prototypes I for one
would be happy to know.
Thanks
Paul
>=a0On 02.2.5 6:03 PM, "Monty H. Levenson" <monty@shakuhachi.com> wrote:
>=a0
>=a0>
>=a0>
>=a0> This became quite clear to me when developing a technique for
>=a0mathematically
>=a0> scaling the bores of various sized flutes to produce a prototype for
my
>=a02.8'
>=a0> (Key of G) shakuhachi. In order to minimize variations in wall
>=a0thickness and
>=a0> resulting finger hole depth, I attached bamboo mouthpieces to PVC
flute
>=a0bodies
>=a0> which were then outfitted with precision bores. The sound of100%
bamboo
>=a0> instruments that grew out of these experiments is indistinguishable
>=a0from the
>=a0> prototypes. They have identical pitch, timbre and resonance
qualities.
>=a0
>=a0
>=a0Monty,
>=a0
>=a0I don=1b$B%f=1b(Jt mean this to sound snide at all, but if that is the
case,
>=a0then why
>=a0don=1b$B%f=1b(Jt you just mass produce flutes made to your
specifications out
>=a0of PVC?
>=a0They wouldn=1b$B%f=1b(Jt be pretty, but they=1b$B%f=1b(Jd be very
cheap, and if
>=a0they had the exact
>=a0same sound, the only reason people would object would be romantic
>=a0sentiment
>=a0for the appearance of bamboo.
>=a0
>=a0Sincerely,
>=a0
>=a0Zachary----- End Forwarded Message -----
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