Re: OT: Chinese zither

--- Isidora Zamora <isidora@...> wrote:

> How do you hollow out a block
> flute made of wood?
Drills or by burning with heated rods. They could
also cut a length of wood longitudinally, hollow
out a semicircular trench in each half then glue
the edges back together. That's how you
traditionally make cornetts and serpents. There's
no reason it couldn't work for flutes as well.

> I've
> seen it done on TV with Colonial-era drills to
> make a recorder, but I'm not
> certain what sort of drills the Cwendaso have.
Probably none that could easily make a tube,
unless they have gotten one in trade.

> The Trehelish (and
> Nidirino), OTOH, do have a lot of hand-tool up
> to about Western 18th
> century standards.  (Though there are other
> things that Westerners had in
> the 18th century, such as eyeglasses and
> telescopes, that they don't have.)
Such hand tools are certainly good enough to make
any size musical instrument.

> An idea that I just had was a large
> wooden blockflute with heavy
> relief-carving over the entire (exterior)
> surface of it.  (If it's
> Cwendaso, they would almost certainly paint the
> relief carvings.)  That
> would be a neat-looking instrument.  But I
> wonder how the carving would
> affect the tone of the instrument?
Tone is a property of the inside of the tube more
than carvings on the outside. European insturment
makers regularly made highly carved instruments
for quality buyers. While they were certainly
decorative, such buyers did in fact use them, and
would probably not like to skimp too much on
sound.


> (All Orthodox liturgical music is
> acapella,
And beautiful it is, too!

> Serpent?  Is that some sort of horn?
A brass instrument and bass member of the cornett
family. An early ancestor of the modern tuba.

It is traditionally a long, winding piece of wood
that is hollwoed out and has several finger holes
and a tuba-like mouthpiece. Very hard to play
well. They were up til the 19th century the
typical bass support in English church choirs.
Hence the appelation "church serpent".

The cornett is small, about the size of a treble
recorder. It was the virtuoso woodwind instrument
of the 16th century. Also excruciatingly
difficult to play well.

> Any idea what the mouthpiece would be
> made of?
Wood, horn (both of which could simply be
hollowed out of the end of the instrument), bone,
clay, ivory, metal. I've a cornett that came with
a brass a horn and a (I think faux) ivory or
boxwood mouthpiece.

Padraic.


=====
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- A Ddon ten mezer!

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