Hi,
I came in contact with the kaval for the first time about a year ago and quickly made one in PVC for myself to practice on. I have been playing on and off (off mostly due to breaking/losing my plastic kavals), but I really enjoy the instrument and I feel I have progressed well. I now spent the day to make yet another new PVC kaval and took time to make it as good possible. Shortly after I was ready I went to YouTube to get inspiration to play and try out the instrument. I put on a Blul player and noticed for the first time that the Blul had nine fingerholes instead of eight!
What are your thoughts on this difference between the instruments? How much does the extra hole help for the tonal range? Is there a reason to use eight holes, although there are fingers enough for nine? It seems quite comfortable to use nine fingers.
Necro thread, but I noticed the same thing. I couldn’t get much out of chatGPT either. Does the extra hole give you anymore chromaticism or just a double up of notes over the ‘break’.
Hi Ronaldroy,
The blull fingering has an additional ton
For a C blul you have c, d, d# ,e,f, f#, g, g#, a, b in the lowest kaba register
In my opinion this is great
Afaik this was developed in soviet union times, when Armenia was a part of it
I have build these variants since many years for myself
I used a slightly bigger inner diameter compared to the the original blul, for a stronger kaba register
The original C blul I have has an inner diameter of about 14,5 mm
My selfmade ones has 15,5 to 16mm
There is on downside for using left hand pinky
the 9 hole flutes I m able to play flutes as low as B, maybe Bb
With 8 holes A is working, with 7 (ney) even G (Mansur ney)
Thanks for the info, sorry for the delay, I didn’t see your reply.
I am tinkering with the Bulgarian Kaval so the Blul is also appealing. Do you sell your instruments?
I make frame drums professionally since more than 25 years.
Rim blown flutes like kaval, blul, ney and other had always been quite appealing to me.
But that have been more private.
I ve made some bluls out of plastic pipes
They sound very nice.
The material is quite less important than most people think.
The very smooth surface make them easy to get a sound.
Some month ago I changed the place of my drum building workshop .
Now I’m busy with some backorders of the drums.
But in January and February I ll probably have more time and I m focusing on playing the kaval in the moment.
I plan to make wooden ones as well
Best regards
David