While it might not have occurred to you, the level of success in both games has been arbitrarily set. Take basketball, suppose I changed to a basket with a ten-foot diameter—I could probably go 100 for 100 any time I wanted. Suppose I made the golf hole 200 feet across—well, you get the picture.

The diameter of a standard basketball is 9.5” and the hoop is 18” (slightly smaller in the Pros). Who decided this? Who set the ball and basket diameters, thereby the percentage of success/failure? Maybe you’d be happier and more engaged with a larger basket. Maybe a smaller one. Maybe you’d be happier with a hoop diameter such that the average hoopster would make a bucket once-in-a-thousand.

The issue of control is central to the shakuhachi. It’s traditionally thought of as a difficult instrument to play or at least learn to play. For some people this is deeply satisfying—to be able to play an instrument that most can’t. For others, it’s endlessly frustrating. What may not be apparent is that the degree of difficulty in playing a shakuhachi has been arbitrarily set for you. It has mostly to do with the geometry of the cut that creates and forms the blowing edge. Yes Bucky, a shak can be made easier or harder to play. The standard edge cut is straight and flat. Making this cut concave gives the player greater control, making it convex results in less control. It’s that simple. A few hundredths of an inch makes all the difference.

Organ pipes often have flanges called ‘ears’ which run parallel to the air stream—placed on either side. They constrain the air stream—box it in a little. The edge in a recorder is usually recessed, having sidewalls that serve the same purpose as ‘ears’ in organs. The point being that when an air stream is constrained along its sides, greater control is achieved and maintained by the player. The standard flat-cut of the shakuhachi provide a certain amount of side constraint just by the fact that there is air there and it has to be pushed aside for the air stream to spread out. A convex-cut lets the air stream spread out quicker—thus the player has less control. A concave-cut forms a groove that tends to hold the air stream together until it’s well past the edge. The geometry of the cut is the subtle part of a shakuhachi and has a direct bearing on the amount and degree of player control.

There have been studies about the failure/success ratio for optimum learning, but they don’t usually allow for the peculiarities of the individual. Do you do better when things are hard in the beginning or easy? Do you respond well to a high failure rate or a low one? Needless to say, people are very different in their response to control. What kind of shakuhachi do you want to present to your children for them to learn on? Easier, average, harder? This is a decision you can now make.

Absolute motor control is not possible. For example, you can’t hold your hand absolutely still. The blood coursing through your veins and your heart pumping will always induce some movement. But we can consider the outer limits of motor control, where it begins to approach physiological limits. And right in that zone where motor control is approaching physiology, right where the central nervous system runs up against the autonomic is where we find the shakuhachi. Control, in the sense of this discussion, has to do with control of the air stream, which is mediated largely by the lips. Thinking of the air stream as a flame puts things in the proper perspective, as by its very nature an airstream is dynamic and chaotic. And we're talking about control of maybe 6-8mm of the first part of this air-flame. To a large extent, what happens in the first 6-8mm of your air-flame determines the quality and consistancy of your play. Much, if not most, of the shaku-drama takes place in the first quarter to third of an inch--right under your nose, as it were.

Tom Deaver passed on the following from Joe Wolfe, the researcher in Australia:

Unfortunately, we shan't be on the shakuhachi again for a while. Partly because of pressing other things (things that we're actually paid to do: the shakuhachi was out of interest) and partly because we're having a lot of trouble dealing with the jet of air itself. It's properties change so much as one changes the length and angle that it's difficult to model other than purely empirically.

The standard shakuhachi is, in essence, a feedback device. Control of the instrument is limited to the extend that states of physiology have a considerable impact on the play and sound. It’s perhaps easier to know the state of a player’s ‘soul’ while listening to shakuhachi than other instruments. It shouldn’t be surprising that the shakuhachi got picked out as a (the?) Zen instrument. Zen really likes things which are near the limit of motor control—they can serve as accurate and instantaneous feedback devices. Want to know your current state of being? Go blow some notes, the flute doesn’t lie.

Anyway, now you know—the degree of difficulty, the level of control, the ratio of success/failure of a shakuhachi can be adjusted. It might make sense to have different flutes for different times. Certainly different flutes for different people.

Often American shak players have a Calvinist streak in them—pain and struggle is good, cleansing and admirable. For them, exploring the convex model makes sense. To try out the concave (more control) model, take your straight-cut shak and with a little wax/modeling clay etc. build up the sides somewhat like the drawing above. What you’re fashioning is a groove or channel for the air. To create a convex model, try PVC or something expendable before filing down your favorite flute. There’s a lot that can be done just by fiddling with the shape of the cut. The point is to get the flute that really serves your purposes and temperment.