Ronnie, did you check the link? I wouldn't really care what size it is
as it doesn't look too playable. And I don't want to just seem like a
shakuhachi snob making fun of it. Of course I am, on both counts, but
not "just"--it's actually kind of interesting, with the six little
holes and the flattened-off areas. Kind of an ugly duckling that's
off-putting but engenders compassion at the same time. Somebody made
this thing, somebody bought it perhaps, somebody played it, and maybe
even made nice music with it. I've often felt kind of sad when I come
across these half-finished, busted-up, or otherwise incomplete
shakuhachi. They're all part of some huge unrealized potential that the
whole world partakes in...or, perhaps, examples of a striving towards
the highest expression of the perfection of the imperfect.
It reminds me of one of my favorite tales from Zhuangzi:
Zhuangzi and a younger man are walking to a friend's house through the
woods when they come across a huge gnarled tree. Zhuangzi points out
that it demonstrates the usefulness of uselessness as it escaped the
hatchet due to having no usable wood to offer. They arrive at the
friend's house, and he orders the cook to kill a duck for the special
occasion. The cook asks which one to kill, the one that quacks, or the
mute one. The mute one, responds the man of the house, since the other
is more useful. This confounds Zhunagzi's travelling partner, and on
the way home he brings it up. "Which should I strive for then," he
says, "to be useful or to be useless?" Zhuangzi's answer: "Try to
reside in the space between the two."
Actually, what the hell that has to do with that old beat-up flute?
While I'm at it, a response to the query about bamboo and sound. I've
found that people really differ on that one. I've heard it said that
the shape of the bore, and small adjustments to the mouthpiece, affect
the sound more than the material. But personally, I find a distinct
correlation between the lack of filler in the bore and the quality of
the sound. I've never heard a flute with a lot of ji, or a cast-bore
flute, that sounds as good as a flute with little ji in it. Pretty much
every expensive flute I've seen has been really light--i.e. little
filler. I recently played a 2.0 over at John Neptune's place which was
basically ji-nashi and it sounded incredible (It was spoken for,
sadly). If you try a Gyokusui, or Neptune, or Deaver, or any other
maker's flute, that has little ji but a finely shaped bore, I think
you'll hear a quality that's hard to reproduce any other way. I may
well be wrong (not being a maker, and despite beng an avid
shakuhachi-sampler having tried a tiny percentage of all shakuhachis in
the world), but that's my experience. In fact, I once found a flute
that I thought was traditionally made, but it sounded--just slightly,
but distinctly--like a cast bore flute to me, and I later found out
(from the maker, who makes both types) that it was indeed cast. So I
think the material that's vibrating within the bamboo imparts a
distinct sound. Also, with these cheaper flutes, the difference in
sound between a hundred of them will be relatively small, whereas the
expensive ones seem to be more unique in their tone quality. It would
be interesting to get a bunch of flutes of all these types and do a
double-blind study with expert players. Then we could all go home and
sleep soundly :-).
Peter
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 09:09:50 PST