G'day all,

I have found the information and pictures very interesting but I would offer a caution to Bruce "Utah" Phillips: just having the (relative) spacings and placement of the holes tells you precious little about the scale - and particularly about the individual notes. As I know from making assorted flutes and whistles over the years, the note will depend on placement, size, angle and internal dimensions ... all things that will vary, especially with iregular natural materials like bones.

Given a spacing and placement for the holes, you can still create a wide range of individual tones - certainly enough to create different 'modal' scales on apparently similar instruments.

On another tack, I would like to know more about the 'embouchures' of these instruments ... presumably they are of the 'end-blown' type well-known in modern Chinese music, but do they have 'notched' embouchures and do these notches angle in or out? (The Chinese seem to be unusual in the way that they use an inward notch in bamboo flutes produced by drilling into the node at an angle. This needs a very different playing technique. Either angle is possible with an open end (say, a trimmed bone), but it is easier to grind am outward sloping notch with simple tools.

Thnks kat, for raising this thread - even if it has left me with more questions than answers (that is probably good for my soul!).

Regards,

Bob Bolton