hello evryone!
my perents brought me a bamboo flute from china, but i don’t know the fingering of this thing..
i search for all the wep to find a flute like this but i didn’t find any flute that has a metal membrane on the mouth-hole like this flute has (maybe it’s a kind of bansuri?).
if you look in the pictures you can see that there is a third hole in the back of the flute (next to another two holes that i think they are just for tuning),but how the hell shoud i reach this hole while playing???
another thing is that i cant play any note without covering the hole of the left thumb, so i can’t play more than one octave…
the pictures: http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0013kv1.jpg http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0014qr8.jpg http://img209.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0015kd2.jpg
another picture of the back-side: http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0016rn9.jpg
Perhaps you can resubmit the photos using the URL tab at the top of the edit page. The web addresses need to have an and a with the web address in order to be clickable.
I have my suspicions that this is not a flute at all, but that the metal insert is a free reed (like in a harmonica or sheng or squeeze box). I suppose there’s no reason why one could not be used to make a flute/shawm type finger tube sound - and if anyone was going to do it, I’d bet on the Chinese! I suppose that would place it closer to the clarinet/chalumeau family than to anything else. If so, and there is no open embouchure hole and the tube is cylindrical, it probably will only play a one octave scale as, especially with a free reed, it won’t overblow, and anyway, if it could, would do so at the twelfth, not the octave. I suspect the group of three holes together are a thumb hole plus two that may be meant to be covered with a membrane as on some Chinese and Japanese flutes, though it isn’t clear from your photos where they are on the tube in relation to the six finger holes on the top. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Do you put your lips around the opening with the metal in it and blow through that to sound it?
Hunter, the flute in the first link is a vertical one, in my flute the mouth-hole is on the side..
about the dizi (in the second link) is look similar but he don’t have the same metal mouth-hole and my flute don’t have the thin membrane like on the last hole like the dizi…
ant other gusses?
I don’t think it is a xiao or dizi - no sign of a notch in the end or a flute embouchure in the side, unless there’s something not visible in the pics?
yno1, - OK, now I see - the group of three holes is a bottom vent for the fundamental and the other two holes are just “speaker” holes to improve the strength of the bell note - quite common on Far Eastern flutes. The thumb hole may not be an octave hole - I’d expect not given that the tone generator is a free reed if I’m right, (is it? - a metal tongue on a solid metal base plate?) which really wouldn’t want to overblow. The thumb hole is more likely to be either to extend the range a note higher (if it is up-tube of the top finger hole) or to give a flattened seventh if it is between holes 1 and 2. There’s an outside chance that it might be a bit like the octave thumb-hole on a Western recorder, but I doubt it’ll give a full second octave, perhaps just enable two or three notes above the break.
Just to clarify, do you blow sideways throught the hole with the metal bit, or is there another blowhole elsewhere, and what is it like if so?
..the group of three holes is a bottm vent for the fundamental and the other two holes are just "speaker
i didn’t understand, from what you said, what is the purpose of the single bottom hole (there is a single hole next to the “speakers” holes as you named them), can you explain it again?
is it? - a metal tongue on a solid metal base plate?)
yes you are right:) it is exactly as you described.
what do you say about the bawu that Nanohedron has mentioned?
Nanohedron, i don’t know how the hell did you find this but it looks quite the same i think:)
I’d seen the instrument before on some other world instruments site, and yours rang a bell, as they say. And I had to do a LOT of searching (like I’m going to remember “bawu”. Right).
And note on the link’s info that the bawu only plays within the compass of one octave.
ok i searched for more information about bawu and what i have it’s definitely a bawu:-)
tnx you all guys!
btw, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNQzi9CsipU
this is the music from Lord Of The rings (the hobbits)!
the solo is not a bawu but still the music is very cool
tnx again, bye bye!
Yep, that’s it. Well done Nano! It’s the old magpie brain bit again, isn’t it? Don’t know you know something till the right stimulus comes along to pop it out. I’m quite pleased with myself an’all! I seem to pretty much have got it right from observation and application of first principles - just not the name!
yno1, the thing about the speaker holes etc… The single one farthest up-tube is a normal tone-hole to give the lowest note of the scale, but obviously not where it can be closed by a finger. Because there is an extra length of (essentially redundant) tube, it can veil the tone of that bottom (“fundamental”) note, so the extra holes are just to aid it by opening things out. On a Western instrument this is more commonly achieved by not having the extra tube length, just cutting it off at the right position for the bottom note, which is then known (by some) as “the bell note” - probably a term borrowed from instruments that actually have a bell-end, like oboes, clarinets and the brass family.
I’ve never seen one of those flutes, but I did once encounter an
amazing Chinese “flute” that had a harmonica reed fitted into the
embouchure. When I played it, it sounded like a clarinet but was
fingered like a simple-system flute, with six holes. It was a one-
octave instrument, though.
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That sounds like a bawu. I have one with eight holes with one for left-hand
thumb. The sound is pretty cool. I can get just over an octave, but the
scale is not quite like a simple-system flute.
