Hi all! I wonder whether any flute enthusiest ever tried playing a traditional eastern instrument? I love the sound of the Chinese bamboo transverse flute call the dizi (spelling?). When played properly, it makes a wonderful, bright sound. If any of you ever seen the 12 Girl Band from China performing, they have a pretty flutist there and she makes it seem so easy!!

Here's my experience, I have some dizi that I collected from various trips inclusing 2 aged bamboo ones from China recently which I tried to play when I got tired of practicing on my silver flute. The problem is that to make a decent sound from it, your embouchure have to be 100% spot on! your fingering have to be precise! For the 2nd and 3rd octave, I have to force the air out hard, my ears hurt! and my eyeballs feel like popping out! My dog howls and runs upstairs under the bed with her paws covering her ears.The silver flute is much easier to play!!!

Has anyone else tried this. I will try an end blown flute (on loan) soon to try, hope this will not torture the dog!

Lol. I have a dizi. I haven't played it in a while because I can't find my ar jiao. Just wondering, but which key is your dizi in?

Also, do you have membrane covering the first hole from the "mouth?" It might be affecting your sound.O:

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Ha ha. After reading your post, I decided to go look for my ar jiao, and I found it! (:

Oh! And for the Xiao... here's a site for reference:

http://www.goamcan.com/imports/How-to-play-xiao.html

Hi Su and thanks for yr feedback, my dizi have the key 'f' and other ones have 'D' and 'G' beside the 3rd tone hole! Yes indeed I have covered the tone hole with the proper rice paper which was given to me when I purchased the flute. I have also tried covering it with newsprint, cake tray liners, cling wrap! plumbers gasket! I like the sound if you cover it with paper cut from da newsweek magazine!!! After 2 years of playing on the silver flute my attempts on dizi have improved but still unacceptable and unpresentable!

The Shanghai Academy have courses including the dizi, but I speak only imperfect Cantonese and can't read or write Chines at all!!

Wow! The only other thing I've tried to glue on my membrane to the dizi is starch+water glue. [It didn't hold very well.] Now I just use ar jiao (donkey hide glue thing) to glue the membrane on.

About the higher 2nd and 3rd octave, I heard that one shouldn't attempt those until he/she could play the 1st and most of the 2nd octave with strong tone. The 3rd octave is almost impossible for me (haha, probably because I just picked up playing dizi again).

Cantonese courses in Shanghai? O: I thought they spoke Mandarin there. Well, my Chinese is rather imperfect, but buying a dizi book helps. It contains 3 different keys of dizi fingering charts and music to play. It also came with a VCD instructional course (in Mandarin). I can barely understand Mandarin, so I just copy what the guy is doing (which helps). If you have a local Chinese music orchestra or an ethnic music program at the nearest university, I think it would help to contact them to learn more about the instrument and ask about music lessons.