Has anyone explored playing chinese or japanese flute (whistle?) music on penny or low whistle? I’ve been trying to figure out if its even possible, but haven’t had much success. Just curious.
Thanks.
p.s.
I hope I haven’t violated any forum rules with this question. I’m a newbie, and it’s hard to keep track of them all.
You’d need to find out what scales are used in this flute music, and then learn to finger those scales on the whistle. If it’s possible to make the notes, then you can probably play the music.
I’ll add that a lot of Chinese flutes use the 6-hole system tuned to a major scale, so the music for those flutes ought to work easily enough.
Pentatonic scales are used a lot in both China and Japan. I leave it to someone more qualified than me to comment further.
A Chinese friend just brought me a couple of bamboo flute CDs from her recent trip home. I was surprised how globally widespread some flute ornaments are.
You MUST try playing a Chinese flute. They are very very cheap. The buzzing sound comes from a hole covered with rice paper. Great fun.
The fingering for Chinese flutes is identical to the whistle. Whenever I am asked for something that “doesn’t sound too Celtic” I often pull out a Chinese flute (especially the non-ricepaper ones). You find yourself playing them in a non-Celtic way simply because they’re not Celtic (Duh?!). You can, if you have a ricepaper flute, tape over the hole and it will play like a normal flute. Top Tip - If you apply the ricepaper and it works for a few minutes then ceases to work, don’t panic. Just set it aside for 20-30 minutes until the ricepaper dries and acclimatises, then it should work fine. (For this reason, if you’re playing them on a session, you need to get there early and get them working before the kick-off, if that’s not stating the bleedin’ obvious!).
Otherwise check in with our own Dan Bingamon – he’ll make you a whistle tuned to ANY type of scale at a reasonable cost.
If the Japanese flute music you’re referring to is shakuhachi, then you’ll have no chance playing it on anything but a shakuhachi.
The Japanese do have transverse flutes though, the accurately tuned diatonic flutes are known as uta, although for some folk music they’re not tuned at all (known as hayashi) as they’re traditionally made by just putting the holes in the bamboo and just playing it as is.
That’s about the little i know anyway. So you should be ok playing Japanese folk music.
You can use Onion skin instead of rice paper, it’s pealed of the inside of a fresh onion “leaf” stretched over the hole wet and left to dry.
John S
This thread has a discussion of pentatonic minor scales. Most traditional Japanese music is written in one of these scales.
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=13375&highlight=japanese
Learn the basic scales and it’s fun to improvise!
I’m an admirer of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s film music, and one of my first tunes to teach myself was from “The Last Emperor.”
Dale
Boo… 
I don’t know anything about japanese music, but here some notes on chinese music:
Japanese music may be, but chinese music is definitive NOT mostly pentatonic. I’m doing some musicologic studies of chinese music at the moment, and I really heard many styles of chinese music and many songs for each style, let it be vocal music or instrumental or peking opera or whatever.
I heard one piece with a real pentatonic scale, the other ~100 of them were diatonic, often more or less Gmaj (or equivalent keys) with a sharp seventh (arabians would call it a “quarter note” since its frequency is located somewhere between the seventh and the octave which is a step of a semitone) and leaving out the first 2, 3 notes of the second octave.
Chinese flutes (they don’t use fipple flutes traditionally by the way, there is a flute called “xiao”, but it’s more related to the japanese shakuhachi) have usually 6 holes (some flutes of specific tribes may have more or less) tuned to the scale I mentioned above, the ones without 7th hole for the ricepaper called uta (as Screech mentioned), the ones with rice paper hole (it’s called “mirliton” by the way and the same principle is used by the kazoo known in modern jazz) are called “dizi”, the ones in Gmaj (I own one) “dizi huang” which more or less means “yellow flute”. No idea why, a chinese friend told me that.
The chinese style of playing is more plain than the irish, they also cut the notes (never heard about pads), but I can’t recall a recording were any more complex ornamentation was used. Instead, notes are mostly tongued and especially for slow pieces VERY much diaphragm vibrato is used.
Chinese music itself often is not devided into parts as we know from ITM. Chinese musicians use to tell stories with their instrument, and so a specific phrase hardly never is repeated. For example, I heard a piece called “the waves of the river taking their way down to the ocean” (if I recall correctly) played on qin, a pentatonic, but fingere zither with five strings tuned to a pentatonic scale beginning on G. And what am I supposed to say, it did not sound like a song or tune, it sounded like a river’s gurgling from the fountain to the ocean, nothing more and nothing less. Not important that a musical instrument was used to tell the story, it also could have been told by a chinese storyteller. You hear the name, then the song, and think, “yes, that’s it”. It’s really fascinating.
If you have further question, feel free to contact me…
Greetings,
G.
Ah, forgot to say: I can’t remember who exactly was it, but a chinese tribe uses to make a flute with one embouchure hole in the middle of the tube, two open ends and one or two tone holes on each end for fingering notes. Those things sound quite interesting. Dunno how they’re called, if you’re interested, I’ll ask my professor for it.
Check out this Japanese tune on a Gen Bb whistle: http://www.tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/Audio/09-05/kaigarabushiajones.mp3
Pretty nice…
Howdy,
Just a minor bit of nit-picking from someone who imports and sells Japanese flutes. The generic term for flute is fue (foo-eh), which changes to “-bue” in a compound word. “uta” means song, and uta-bue are flutes tuned to a Western diatonic scale. “hayashi” roughly means festival music, and hayashi-bue are flutes in a natural scale. In addition, there are myrid other names for bamboo side-blown flutes in Japan.
There are also some really cool flutes for classical Noh and Gagaku (called the nohkan and ryuteki respectively) that have a very interesting construction technique. They take a foot long section of bamboo, and split it vertically into very thin segments. These long slivers are then turned inside-out and re-assembled into a tube. This puts the hard, shiny skin of the bamboo, normally on the outside, in bore of the instrument which gives it a hard, flat sound. In the case of the Noh-kan, a throat constriction is also inserted which further stresses the sound. The flutes are then lacquered and bound. Amazing craftsmanship (and prices) on the nohkan and ryuteki.
Best,
Dave
Here’s a very nice Chinese tune, Green Island Serenade:
http://www.tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/Audio/ChiffGatheringNov0803/GreenIslandSerenadeKCJiang.mp3
performed by K C Jiang on a Burke Bb.
I heard that someone used wax paper on a militon flute and it supposedly works fine.
Chinese classical music in general has evolved quite a bit over the past 100 years or so, especially with the advent of the Chinese Orchestra. But older pieces would tend to be pentatonic especially the classics played on the Gu Qin for example.
I wouldn’t quite agree that dizi music would necessarily be more plain. In fact there are plenty of techniques and intricate ornamentation if you listen to certain types of Chinese flute music. I remember my friends in the Chinese orchestra having to triple tongue consecutively through pretty long phrases of tunes like Sai Ma (Horse Racing). There are different kinds of tonguing, different kinds of bends and slides, cuts, taps, trills with the fingers, trills are also done with the tongue, etc. These techniques are also used in combinations.
Have you heard this famous Dizi instrumental called Wu Bang Zi? Lots of ornamentation there:
http://www.chinakongzi.com/2550/music/download/dizi/5bangzi.mp3
That would be true for a lot of music on the Gu Qin (which btw is 7 stringed), a lot of those are tone poems and really requires an active listener. Very esoteric stuff usually played by the scholarly and intellectual class of past eras. To an experienced listener even the personal state of mind of the player can be heard through the music. Some of these tone poems are also absorbed into the repetoire of other instruments eg. pipa or gu zheng.
However it would be helpful when thinking of Chinese music, to keep in mind that China is a large landmass compromising of various different regions and peoples, something like Europe is. This results in varied types of music being produced. The music of XinJiang for example, would be very different from Jing opera of the north (where you would hear the above dizi tune as an instrumental interlude) There is also music for dancing, folksongs, etc with different structures (the above piece is composed of variations on a theme) so it would be difficult to describe the music of China generically, just like its hard to say what the music of Europe sounds like.
The currently prevailent Chinese orchestra form is a fairly recent creation of the last century, influenced by the orchestra ensemble style of western art music. Like its western counterpart it integrates music from various sources, eg. folk melodies from different regions, old standards, court music, modern compositions etc into its repetoire, rearranging the music to suit a huge ensemble setting.
Ah, the Gu qin (as I fell in love with it in the movie “Hero”-the old man playing one in the court yard during the sword fight), one of my favorites, along with the Xiao flute in duets. You can hear the duets here, beautiful music!:
http://www.chineseculture.net/wangfei/lxt/cd.html
To me, it’s just another dobro, but a great one!
The dizi is a great flute also, that I discovered on this great CD by Suzanne Teng:
Never hurts to broaden your interests, even if this an ITM board!
Thanks for the music, and the help everyone!
I bought a whistle in China and it has an extra hole for the rice paper buzz. How does that work? How do I attach the paper?
