Chiff and Fipple Forums

I myself cannot help you there. But if nothing seems happening, try to contact Sean Folsom or Olle Galmo. I don't know if they are on c+f, but they are on Facebook.

What impressed the man who wrote this down about 16th c. Peru was not the setup, but rather that they played true Spanish polyphony. Which is quite a different kettle of fish from just simple harmonising. And I looked up the side flute in Japan. Well, it's ancient. It was already very firmly establi...

In Japan there are side-blown flutes, but I have no idea how old they are. What with a hell of a lot of Japanese culture having been imported, and then modified from the 7th c. on, you never know. I am not aware of any representation of flutes before that. In China I suspect the idea of side-blown f...

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/charavines/images/chara244.jpg A larger photo. You can clearly see the square aperture. What Jeff is playing doesn't really seem to me the same instrument. For one thing, it's just not done. To use a unique object from so long ago to play. In better type mu...

Roger, that reconstruction is VERY highly suspect. The original is preserved in very good state, and the three fingerholes differ rather noticeably from the soundhole, which is very clearly square. Which puts the whole side-blown idea under very serious strain. Apart from which, while there is just ...

Now, to be of a bit more help. With woodwind instruments generally you need to have a predictable bore to be able to plan for overblowing in tune. (And a lot of experimentation until you get it right over two octaves with a known bore profile.) The fingerholes after all are used for both octaves (Or...

What you have is a typical Medieval pattern. At a guess can be anything from the Dark Ages to the 18th c. (I actually miswrote the 19th c. in the previous comment.) I imagine the final demise of these whistles came about due to the increasing availability and cheapness of more professional instrumen...

The book I mentioned is listed as the second down in the bibliography in the Wiki article. (Christine Brade etc etc). There are scattered articles in various archaeological publications on the British examples, they require some work to hunt up. But if you are desperate, I can find at least some. As...

This is a type that is very typical of the Middle Ages. There are literally hundreds of them across most of Europe, from Britain to Poland, and probably Russia. There was a book published in German with a couple of hundred examples, from all over Northern Europe except Britain, as that was dealt wit...

Peter is perfectly right. I do indeed make pipes myself with cylindrical bore and double reeds... I do mean the un-bag variety. In any case, 10mm cylindrical bore (on average) is something that hasn't been done in Europe for a long time indeed , using double reeds. That really is what I meant. The 4...

Oboe reeds (and, for that matter any other orchestral instrument reed) are highly specific to the instrument they are designed for. An oboe has a sharply conical bore, starting with just a few mm across, and culminating in a large bell. The auloi had invariably cylindrical bores, ranging from some 5...

Well, eating your siblings, while curing the snoring problem, will certainly give you no end of opportunities to try and escape from various prisons.

Why is no-one interested in the "eating one's mother and unhatched siblings"? I mean, come on! Don't be shy!

While waiting, you can start here: http://www.gaitagallega.es/en/tutorial/ ... acion.html

For that matter, the first of the "Romanian" sets is very unlikely to be Romanian. It's indistinguishable from a type of Bulgarian gaida. I cannot guarantee that, but I never heard of this type being played in Romania. And another thing. The "bamboo" that constantly crops up in t...