November 30, 2007
FLÜTEDËATH returns
Gruntl, Lord von Flutedeathh, has offered to guest-post again in the near future. (The proper diacritical marks will be added when we get to a different computer.)
It's been a good while since old Gruntl last weighed in, and I for one welcome a new dispatch from our mad Livonian flute overlord. Stay tuned for that momentous event sometime during the first weekend of December! The anticipation is thick and strong... ---r.
November 29, 2007
Transverse utaguchi plans
A few days ago I finally decided to start making some flutes with an utaguchi. That's the Japanese word for an inlaid piece of hard material from which the blowing edge of a shakuhachi flute is formed.
Traditionally, utaguchi were made of natural materials such as horn or ivory, but acrylic plastic has come into wide use in recent years and is probably the dominant modern material. We'll start with acrylic and work up from there to experiment with other possible substances.
Here's a photo of a "Kinko style" utaguchi -- the photo was borrowed from the Bay Area maker Ken LaCosse, with no permission whatsoever: UtaguchiKL
The utaguchi provides a durable, permanent base for a sharp blowing edge. This is probably much more significant on a shakuhachi than it would be on a transverse flute: on a shakuhachi one blows against the end-grain of the bamboo, which is basically an array of the openings of tiny tubular structures which served as the living bamboo's vascular system. Also, bamboo wood is much softer at its inner wall, which is where a shakuhachi's blowing edge lies. These factors make the edge subject to erosion and deterioration.
On the other hand, on transverse flutes one blows perpendicular to the bamboo grain, and the blowing edge is on the harder outside surface of the bamboo. Thus, an artificial edge will be much less structurally significant on a sideblown flute-- but it'll look awfully cool, won't it? Probably an extra 50 or 75 bucks' worth of cool, dude.
Naturally this idea occurred to me many years ago, but I've resisted it until now. One reason for this resistance was a reluctance to evoke further association with shakuhachi; people are confused enough already, and at shows I'd invariably be asked over and over and over if my flutes were shakuhachi (or "shagahoochie," "sukiyaki," etc., etc.)
Another reason was a couple of early customers who also played shak and insisted that I immediately start adding an utaguchi to my flutes. These customers were utterly convinced that this would result in an immediate and radical improvement in playability and tone, while I insisted that it wouldn't do any such thing. Finally, one of these guys found another bamboo flutemaker who was willing to give it a shot, and guess what: a couple of years later he reported sheepishly that it hadn't seemed to make any noticeable musical difference. Fancy that...
Ever since, in a spirit of "I told you so" self-satisfaction I've paid no attention to the idea. However, the flute-gods recently informed me that the Time is Ripe, so we hope to post the first photos of a romyb flute with utaguchi, along with a full report on the process and its results, sometime in December. Let's hope that the resulting instruments don't get Panned... heh.
Of course if the job is done badly, adding an utaguchi could actually make a flute much worse. The same is true for lip plates, which have been a regular feature of my flutes almost from day one. It's actually much trickier to make a good flute with a lip plate than it is to make an OK flute without one, and I've certainly seen horribly unplayable flutes with lip plates. But they sure look cool, don't they dude? --r.
Yuletime flutes
This has been a slower than usual early holiday season in terms of "cold calls"-- that is, unsolicited emails or phone calls from new potential flute clients. Must admit that the Internet has me spoiled, since I haven't had to do much proactive marketing so far: just enough business to pay the bills seems to trickle in, even during extended periods of vegetable blogging and other irrelevant indulgences. That may be about to change, since recent disquieting rumbles in the USA economy serve notice that we'd better get more serious about the business of bamboo flutes.
OK, here's a start: from now on, please mentally convert the dollar amounts specified in my price list to Euros. Yep, we're goin' Euro, podner.
--What? You say that I don't have a price list posted onsite? Oops... well, that's another thing we're fixin' to get serious about real soon, bet yer bottom dollar-- er, Euro.
Anyway, there are a few very nice flutes hanging around the studio right now that would love to find a good home, and inquiries are more than welcome. I'll be visiting the Bay Area in just over a week and might even sell a sizable chunk of stock wholesale to a long-standing customer in San Francisco... in the meantime, we're more than usually amenable to wheelin' and dealin' and would be happy to offer y'all a great price on whatever's on hand. 'Tis the season, after all.
--r.
November 25, 2007
Music of the Whole Earth
Do you own a copy of Music of the Whole Earth by David Reck, which was first published in the mid-1970s? If not, you should. Despite some dated content, it's a fascinating resource concerning our human responses to and preconceptions about sound, and our organizational efforts at sorting it all out.
I haven't revisited my copy in almost ten years, which vastly predates our personal Internet Era. Over the next few days we'll examine and discuss a few passages in this book. See you tomorrow! --r.
November 20, 2007
Flutes, borscht and golden turnips
A customer recently inquired about available seven-hole flutes larger than a D, which he currently owns and plays. I sent the following quick pic: 5Flutes
After taking the photo I realized that it would have been useful to include a D flute for the sake of comparison, so the rough outline of a typical D was drawn in after the fact. (Should have done that in white though, so that it resembled a crime-scene chalk drawing... hmmm, more ideas.)
I made the best soup the other day: an improvised rendition of borscht with homegrown beets and several other garden veggies, all based on an excellent homemade chicken stock. All of a sudden the puny row of beets in our garden -- which went virtually untouched throughout most of the summer and fall -- looks woefully inadequate! Oh well: this is the season when beets really come into their own, and if my followup borscht experiment is half as good as the first we'll plant three or four times as many beets next year. Man, was that soup good!
Tonight's experiment: a puree of Yukon gold potatoes and golden turnips with chives and capers, topped with balsamic/soy/garlic-sauteed portabella mushroom strips and shaved parmesan. That recipe just popped into my head while wandering the produce aisle in search of inspiration; portabellas were on sale and there was a display of the most gorgeous golden turnips... hope it's as good as it sounds! I'm usually successful at visualizing such concoctions without reference to cookbooks and having them turn out at least edible, although that wasn't reliably the case in earlier days.
Bitter experience can eventually yield succulent fruit when constructively internalized-- and "internalized" in this case means "swallowed with great difficulty."
(The foregoing is a vastly inferior, hastily and angrily bashed-out version of a longer post which got vaporized due to a stupid blunder. WHEN will I finally learn to make a backup copy before doing ANYTHING else?)
--r.
November 18, 2007
Santacon scheduling snafu
We'll be in San Francisco on the weekend of December 8th-- and wouldn't you know, that's when the main Santacon event happens here in Portland! Then, after our return to Portland, San Francisco's own Santacon falls on the 15th, the following weekend! *Sigh* This is tragic, since I've been keenly anticipating the event after a small taste of the madness last year. Why did it have to turn out this way? It's just not faiiiiiir, Santa-- and I've been good! For the most part, anyway.
Our only hope is that a second, smaller Portland event gets scheduled for later in the month. Fingers crossed, and links coming tomorrow (currently on the Swamp Shack Mac, which still leaves us clueless and linkless.)
--r.
November 16, 2007
You ought to be on TV
Went over to visit my mom for a while today and she said, "I saw you on TV this morning!"
Which was completely baffling since I don't remember being shot lately so to speak, and couldn't imagine why I'd be on television this morning: "Are you sure it was me*, Mom?"
"Of course I'm sure," she averred. "You were at one of those... shows."
Ma can be a bit daffy and addled these days, but she was so positive that I had to believe it. However, I couldn't stop puzzling about how and why... ???
After half an hour of such fruitless effort, I finally gave up and happened to pick up a copy of the Portland Tribune, a pretty decent local biweekly paper. On the front page of the weekend arts and entertainment section, there was an article about the annual "Wild Arts Festival" sponsored by the local Audubon Society. Soon as I saw that, I realized that she must have seen a news blurb promoting the festival.
Which made perfect sense except for the fact that I've attended this show exactly once-- about ten years ago! Somebody either at the TV station or the A. Society had looked through archived footage -- I'm still not sure whether they still actually call it "footage" -- and had decided that a shot of me with the flutes was an interesting snippet to broadcast... pretty strange.
So that was our serendipitous six seconds of fame for today. Let's see, I had an idea of something else to write about... what was it? Oh well, that'll pop back soon enough; better go do some work now and perhaps it'll show up later today. Cheerio, and y'all have a good Friday if possible! --r.
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*Years ago she would have corrected me on that, but it's a lost cause.
November 14, 2007
Busy week
It's been a busy week, and we apologize for the recent lack of new postings. Although I've often joked that a few hours' time would suffice to teach a flutemaking newbie everything there is to know about this gig, in reality it's a bit more complicated. It's been quite invigorating to spend a week in intensive instruction with the new international apprentice, and time flew by quickly. In retrospect, it seems that we barely scratched the surface and could very easily have spent several more weeks delving deeper into bamboo-flute lore.
I'm telling you: if I'd been taught half so much in my first week or two of flutemaking we'd be at least a decade more developmentally advanced at this point. Ten+ years of hard-won experience imparted in a mere week...
More... later... --r.
Spam on the front page
[Happy now, vile Spam-Scum? That will be $1,200, payable immediately.]
(Obnoxious spam sample perversely posted here for two days but that's enough of that; deleted 11/16.)
--r.
November 7, 2007
Hey, it's beyond tomorrow already!
Yeeks-- just remembered that the last entry contained a promise to expound further on something or other "tomorrow." Well, too late.
So why bother? Failure is failure, and what you see is what you get: that "tomorrow" was yesterday already. Ain't it funny how time slips away?
I probably should return to writing about mushrooms or vegetables... after all, those have been the most fruitful recent subjects in terms of word count. ---NAAAAHH.
So, watch for a major new entry about flootz soon... if not tomorrow. --r.
Posted by Romy
12:49 AM PST
November 5, 2007
Apalethargy (???)
We still haven't managed to shake off a lingering summertime apalethargy here at the Complex, and this Journal reflects that reality. Those days when we averaged 5,000 wpm (words per month) seem like an ancient memory, but the tide should turn soon. Fall's first light frost glazed the Swamp Shack grass just a couple of days ago, and surely the expected surge of autumnal inspiration will kick in at any moment.
In just over 48 hours my first international apprentice will arrive for a week's visit. Although it would be good to have a rigorous curriculum prepared in advance, perhaps it's even more appropriate to represent the true reality of a bamboo flutemaker's life in its ragged, dishevelled, and socially-marginalized glory. Accordingly, I've made few special preparations and will probably burn up most of the week with a maddeningly protracted "wax on, wax off" shtick. (Smiley emoticon.)
If all goes well in the first few days we may even reveal the sublime secret of How We Know Where to Put the Holes on this initial visit. But don't count on it, Grasshopper XVII.
Back tomorrow with more on that... --r.
Posted by Romy
07:07 PM PST
November 2, 2007
Just one of those days
Boy, you just know it's going to be one of *those* days when you're heading to work while whistling a happy tune-- only to glance up at the sky and see something like this:
Surrender
Looks like we're in for a probing today... --r.
(Comments disabled due to more obnoxious spam)
Posted by Romy
10:07 PM PST
Chopsticks have many uses
Yesterday we mentioned an experimental technique for adding material to the inner bore at strategic spots, and here's a photo of the guinea-pig flute at its current stage: Chopstick
Yup, that's a sawed-off chopstick plugging the epoxy hole! About to go cut it flush and file all smooth... the flute's playing quite well now, huzzah! --r.
November 1, 2007
Redemption Song
What do you know: the "ruined" flute I sulked about earlier has been rescued! As we whiningly recounted in that entry, a high-hopes flute got dashed 'n' trashed by careless, overhasty bore gouging.
Yesterday I thought of drilling small holes at the critical borepoints where too much had been taken out and dribbling in a tiny puddle of epoxy to replace the over-scraped material... and what do you know, it worked like a charm! Not that we'd want to make a habit of this -- I'll always favor reductive over additive borework, and will always select bamboo blanks with that principle in mind -- but on the rare occasions when too much gets removed this technique should be a lifesaver.
The epoxy-dribbling holes are easily plugged with a small glued-in bamboo peg, and throwing a wrapping over the peg leaves no visible trace of the repair.
This will still be a last-resort technique, but discovering it is wonderful: even if only 5% or 10% of my flutes are afflicted with overscraped-bore syndrome, the disproportionately demoralizing effect of those screwups can be devastating. Good to know that there's a cure at last... pics tomorrow. --r.
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