Cutting the embouchure hole on a piccolo head today, I was suddenly reminded of a Chinese flute player I had seen 20 odd years back who, apart from being a wonderful performer on the Chinese flute in the traditional orchestra, pulled out a tiny tube for a solo and rather stole the show. The flute was just a tube with no stopper and with an embouchure hole offset from centre. There were no lateral holes, the player just covering the ends of the tube with each thumb. Since the head of this piccolo answered that general description, I tried it. It worked really well, giving a relatively deep note with both holes covered (Helmholtz resonator mode), higher pitched notes when either end hole was uncovered, and a really shrill note with both holes uncovered. Just noodling gave a Chinesey sounding melody, but it would be interesting to know how the instrument is supposed to be tuned and give the principle a serious try. Anyone have a name for such a thing or know how it is supposed to be tuned?
Although one place says that it was invented by Yu Xun Fa in 1971, This site seems to indicate otherwise.
As a side note, I find that on bad embouchure days, if I pop out the cork and play “scales” starting with C trying to play to low D, that when I put the cork back in, I usually can really hit the notes that were problems five minutes before.
Reminds me…last year Doug Tipple sent me an “unfinished” experimental A flute to play around with (unfinished from Doug means you can’t quite shave in the reflection…but I digress)
I complained that while the flute played fine..it seemed to be in Bb not A !
There was…as you probably guessed..no cork in the flute…
Terry, that would be a ‘thumpy’. http://www.thumpy.nl
Very easy to make.Overblowing to the first and second harmonic extends the range quite a bit. Just listen to the samples on the website.
Iwabue, eh? Most kewl. I’ll be keeping my eye out for likely subjects on my next trip to the seaside (lots of these sorts of stones wash up on the beach near where my mother lives).
There’s an archaeological site in the Andes presently called Caral (apparently a very ancient city, possibly one of the earliest anywhere by some estimates) where bone flutes just like the Thumpy have been found.
