> To be sure, Nelson's mathematical treatments of the shakuhachi realm
> seem both sensible and rigorous. But by using them he ain't gonna
> arrive at no Gesshu 1.8, reasonable as the math may be. It's just
> some decent arguments about how the envelop behaves. On paper.
>
Hi all:
There are three completely separate things being discussed, and it seems to
me that most of the bile has come from either misunderstanding the
difference, or people trying to correct the misunderstand with bile.
Actually I don't feel there has been that much bile by my standards, but we
physicists (like Japanese businessmen, apparently) have no problem yelling
at people we respect and like.
In the interest of peace, these are the three, totally separate issues:
1. Accurately making a bore with specified dimensions. This is more or less
solved.
2. Using such a process to copy the bore shape of an existing instrument.
This can also be done, at least up to the accuracy that you are willing
measure. But whether such a copy would be accurate enough to produce the
subtlety of the original instrument, and how close are open (and to some of
us interesting) questions. I believe as I mentioned before that there are
some people out there who already might have some experience *copying*
existing instruments who could give preliminary answers to this question.
3. The question of "why" a good shakuhachi sounds good.
I originally stated that if certain features of the desired *sound* and
performance features* could be specified mathematically, then I knew in
principle how to calculate a *bore* that would repreduce those features as
accurately as possible. Given 1. is already solve it might them be possible
to test such design principles. I also said that one consequence of being
able to answer questions of the third type was that you could not only design
a bore with those qualities, but you could explore the question of how many
other bores would give rise to the same sound, what other ways that sound
could be achieved, and other things like, given a certain bore shape exactly
how to best perturb it to "fix" something, and which parts of the tradition
bore shape were accidental, and which were unique solutions to the problems
posed by shakuhachi construction over years.
Then I asked, "OK you experts, what about the sound and performance features
would you say makes a good instrument" given that there will be difference in
opinion (a good thing) about what make a good sound. I offered to *try* to
translate this into a more precise description, if I could, for any purely
musical notion that you folks came up with. Trivial example: when you say
something plays in tune in a wide range of volume that can be described
mathematically. I'm sure some things are too complicated, psychological, or
personal to do this for every notion of quality. However, since I live in
the 20'th century,and not in 7th century japan, I believe the sound qualities
have *physical* (that is real) origins. If we understood those sources
accurately enough they *could* be stated or described mathematically.
Instrument makers I'm guessing, even the most mystically inclined, are
already doing this to a great degree, even when it is subconscious. I never
said we wanted to make a computer designed mc-shakuhachi for general use.
Someone might want to, I don't have any interest.
There were a whole lot of other interesting possibilities that came up, many
off-line, but I think some people freaked out when I asked the question "what
would a mathematically designed bore sound like". This is an obvious,
trivial and necessary control experiment. You make one designed on the
mathematical principles you are testing, and then you check what it sounds
like. When it DOESN'T sound the same - that's where it is most interesting
and fun. Figure out more, and try again. This is related to the obvious,
trivial and necessary experiment we could perform to make a test any
systhetic design we cold cme up with. Do a "blind" sound test between
instruments and see you hear the difference. What seems to get Nelson so
teed off is when people keep giving opinions about this last question as if
they were obvious facts: things like "you can never design a flute on the
computer that would sound like my (fill in the blank)", or "you could never
design a computer program that could beat a grandmaster at chess". All the
experts and connoisseurs of the *art* of chess where saying this until it
happened.
m.
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