My hand is much better now, though still the occasional twinge when I forget to keep it relaxed..
I want to learn how to make my own shakuhachis. I'd very much like to work on something physical you do with your hands - which I've not really done since I started down the path of being a computer programmer as a kid. Just, something completely different...
Well, so, my Grandma happens to have bamboo growing on her property, planted by my Grandpa maybe 25 years ago or so! She kindly said I could collect some. I don't know what kind of bamboo it is, or how suitable for shakuhachis it'll be - most of the accessible bits are too narrow. But I took 2 culms, one narrow-ish one from the edge, and one big thick one from in the middle (that took awhile to dig out!).. They're definitely not ideal for shakuhachi, I think the node spacing at the root end is all wrong, but you can make flutes out of pretty much anything cylindrical and hollow, so it'll be fine....
They have to be dried, for months at least (some shakuhachi makers dry/age them for YEARS first). Different people do different things. The Australian guy who made my first shaku says he just leaves his in the sun for a few months, so I'm going to do that.
Anyway, since I had these quite long pieces of bamboo, and the upper ends of it are less-suitable for shakus, I decided to make a test one with some of that "spare" bamboo, without waiting for it to dry. I watched a youtube video of a guy who makes 'em.. pretty simple! I did somewhat cure the bamboo over a fire - heat draws out the oils - but it's still quite green, not at all a proper thing to make a flute out of. Oh well, I wanted to see what it was like. The piece I cut was 71.3cm long, starting and ending at nodes - rather than cutting a specific length to achieve a certain base pitch I'll just go with how the bamboo grew. It's only 4 nodes which is not really enough (aesthetically at least! but also, in a 'jinashi' shakuhachi like this, ie one which is just raw bamboo, no laquer in the bore, the node walls can be shaved down to adjust the tuning of the pockets of air pressure between each node)... but, no matter. 71.3cm means this is a bass shaku, with a low pitch of almost-but-not-quite A.
Here you can see it halfway through heating, see the colour change...
I didn't have a sharp, small handsaw to cut a nice sharp & clean blowing edge, so instead filed it down with a rasp. Blowing the first note through it, before there were finger holes, was magic!! Such a rich sound. Then I drilled finger holes. The ratios for hole spacing (for the usual, current day shaku, aimed to be tuned to a minor pentatonic.. though some are different! I don't yet understand why..) are:
1st hole - (bamboo length / 54.5) * 12.1
space between holes - (bamboo length / 10.0)
space between 4th and thumb hole - (bamboo length / 54.5) * 3.6
I didn't have a drill bit big enough to make the holes the proper size, so after drilling through these really thick bamboo walls, just carved them bigger with a pocket knife and rasped the edges a bit.. but oh no, the pitches were wildly offset! All notes/note ratio too low, completely wrong.. It sounded cool though, like some kind of Middle Eastern scale.
So then I made a mistake and started carving out the node walls, to raise the pitch.. I'm not 100% sure, will need to experiment again next time, but I *think* I should've left the lower node alone and only carved the upper node(s). Or maybe that wouldn't have fixed it either... Anyway, it didn't work... All it did was change the sound and make it less interesting.. though still quite nice.
Then I realised I had to make the finger holes bigger (again, to raise the pitch).. By now I figured the flute was a write-off so I just got on with doing whatever, to see what happened. Made the 1st hole really wide and that brought all the pitches into line, phew! Except, I made it much too wide. My finger can hardly cover it...haha... d'oh. It's almost impossible to play the lowest note. I made all the other holes a bit too big also, though they're playable, but not very quickly or accurately.. but, the tuning is approximately OK sounding to my ears. (Didn't bother using a tuner, just went by ear, this is meant to be a weird meditation flute, not an ensemble instrument. I like sounds which sound slightly flat...)
I guess this flute will be very susceptible to cracking, or it'll go all wrong as it gradually dries out, but that's ok. Interested to see what happens..
So yep, that was fun! I've been playing it today and, the blowing edge is very easy to get a sound with.. shame about the giant finger holes. This thing sounds way bassier and richer than my other flutes, not sure if it's because it has a very wide bore, or the bamboo walls are really thick (probably too thick), or if that's just what 'jinashi' sounds like... Oh, except the upper octave, what I can play of it, sounds terrible.. I think the air pressure is just all wrong in the bore...
Here's a little sound demo, just messing around. (sounds horrid on tiny mobile phone speakers, listen on a phone at your own risk)
I look forward to making a couple proper ones - a higher pitched one next up! - when the rest of this bamboo dries out...hopefully with more success. I'd love to become able to make decent instruments. The green one really did sound amazing and interesting before I opened up the nodes, it had very high pressure inside, lots of breath/finger feedback, responsive and very alive sounding... I couldn't quite believe it.. Thanks for reading :)
Thank you for sharing and there is nothing embarrassing in it!
