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| 01/30/2004: "A pertinent question and its reply"
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(Note: The following is an inquiry received today about a currently-listed ebay item, followed by a draft of my reply.)
romyboo
you have wonderful items!! and it seems that you've done substantial
research and have long experience on making the instrument
do you/ did you make any vertical end-blown flute? e.g. shakuhachi or
xiao or chiba alike?
- John
John, thanks for the compliments. I've spent the last twenty years working exclusively on bamboo flutes, even though it's been nearly impossible to make a living this way! Especially while concentrating on non-traditional designs...
I've made quite a few end-blown instruments, but having spent ten years playing a standard orchestral flute before starting to make flutes, transverse types are where I had the most skill as a player. I strongly believe that in order to make a really good flute -- especially out of bamboo, where every single instrument is different -- one has to be able to play the instrument very well, in order to evaluate and adjust it properly. Since I've never formally studied the shakuhachi nor spent a lot of time practicing shakuhachi, I haven't wanted to get too involved in that arena -- not yet. I'm also wary about immersing myself in such a tradition-bound field.
However, I plan to start making more end-blown instruments, and am willing to take on special orders for this type. Soon, I'm going to make a few non-traditional shakuhachi, using the same "modified shakuhachi scale" as the transverse flute currently on ebay. However, they won't physically resemble the traditional shakuhachi, since I don't really enjoy working with root-end bamboo. (Sometimes I suspect that root-end bamboo became traditional for this instrument partly to make things more difficult for the casual maker!)
Do you have any other suggestions for endblown flute types you'd like to see me experiment with?
--Romy
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