Shakuhachi

The Shakuhachi is a Japanese and ancient Chinese end-blown flute that is made of bamboo. Its five finger holes are tuned to a minor pentatonic scale with no half-tones, but using techniques called meri and kari in which the blowing angle is adjusted the pitch can be bent downward and upward, respectively.

The shakuhachi’s unique sound is unmistakable, characterized by its emotive breathiness. Two types of vibrato add variety and expression to the long notes. Typical elements are grace notes, bends and a very distinctive attack when playing a note, as well as expressive playing techniques such as dynamic trills and distinctive grace notes.

The shakuhachi was played by multi-instrumentalist, folk instruments expert, and member of the Synchron Stage Orchestra, Veronika Vitazkova. She played in many orchestras, among them the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and Tonkünstler Orchestra, toured Europe as a solo flutist with the late Ennio Morricone, and played at esteemed festivals from Salzburger Festspiele to Hollywood in Vienna. Having performed on countless film scores at Synchron Stage Vienna, Veronika feels very much at home on the large Stage A and marvels at the exceptional acoustics of this scoring stage that contribute substantially to the overall sound of each instrument.

To capture the spectacular ambience of “Stage A” of Synchron Stage, our engineers employed seven phase-coherent microphone configurations to provide a broad range of room options. All signals are available as separate channels in the mixer section of the Vienna Synchron Player. A wide variety of presets offer perfect mixer settings and serve as great starting points for your own sound creations.

Under the Content tab you’ll find a listing of the shakuhachi’s natural sampled notes, which comprise its minor pentatonic tonality. Nonetheless, this software instrument provides a chromatic keyboard mapping of notes. In addition, legatos were sampled chromatically. If you want your composition to be played by a shakuhachi player, please bear in mind that not everything you write and play on the keyboard may be possible to perform for a musician, due to the non-chromatic nature of the instrument.