So I was playing this game on the PS4, 'Ghost of Tsushima'. It's basically a Samurai-turned-ninja sort of thing during the Mongol Invasion back in the day, Set in Tsushima Island, a small place between the mainlands of now China & Japan.
The game is absolutely gorgeous, one of its strongest assets.
But more importantly, as you are gazing out into a golden forest, the sunset slowly settling on the mountaintops, you can choose to play the Japanese flute - the Shakuhachi.
This is basically the woody flute instrument you hear whenever you're engaged in a movie, tv-show, game, performance, or anything else that is trying to represent the mystical far east.
It has always been a beautiful sound to me, so much so that I never minded it being little more than a cheap musical trope in western media. If that gets me to hear the sound more, so be it.
But many years ago I had attempted to play such instruments to no avail. None at all. You see, the shakuhachi, along with other flutes, has no reed (basically, a thin strip of wood you can use to control airflow and pitch).
I have some experience playing clarinet and it's hard enough on its own to control the reed system. But without one, the instrument is literally just a hollowed-out stick of bamboo. How can such a simple thing be so beautifully played??
Well, after playing enough Ghost of Tsushima, I decided to check to buy one. I figured China is a stone's throw away and a famous mass producer so it's probably pretty cheap.
Wrong
It turns out these things are impossible to mass-produce. This is because, being made from bamboo, every stick is slightly different in contour and thus sound and pitch, and unless you can mass-produce bamboo in such identical conditions with an identical clone seed and create identical bamboo reliably, you're SOL there.
Many websites informed me that it takes a Sensei level of skill and artistry to create one, often taking years or decades to treat the bamboo materials correctly and so on. This means typically, they rarely go for under $1,000 and frequently hit $20,000 or so.
Well shit.
Wrong
As it actually turns out, you can also buy plastic ones for under $100, and wood ones for some price in between.
But, as it ACTUALLY turns out, I can buy a mass-produced one in China for $50 regardless. Something tells me that western media still hasn't let go of that 'exotic far East' mysticism, driving up prices as society wonders at how these Master Crafters do what they do.
Take a look!
Now, I'm not saying my $50 shakuhachi is on any level the same as a high-end, master-crafted masterpiece, but I think it's almost patronizing to insist on complexity when the beauty of the instrument seems to be from its simplicity. The complexity comes from the performer focussing on all the right elements.
The engraving, 偷得浮生半日闲，is one I chose - free of charge by the sellers. It's Chinese, not Japanese, but I don't speak Japanese. This is a kind of idiomatic poem which translates roughly to 'Steal a half-day of leisure' - or 'Chill out'.
You may notice it only has four holes at the front, with a thumb hole on the back. This allows for the pentatonic scale to be played - a five-note scale you definitely know the sound of, is universal and ubiquitous, and associated with basically every folk and traditional music you can find, while also used constantly in blues, jazz, heavy metal, pop, and basically all music you listen to.
But that in itself seems limiting (it's not). You can't play the major or minor scales right out the box, for example, nor can you play beyond that octave (A piano has 7 octaves, a guitar has 4, from low to high pitch) without some skills unlocked.
When I had, years ago, played around with these reedless instruments, I never got a sound other than that of my whispy lungs blowing air through a tube. And this was no exception. It took me a good couple of days to get a consistent sound at all.
Since it is just a hole, you have to shape your mouth and position your jaw in such a way that you can reliably vibrate the air around the whole instrument enough to produce sound. Once you figure this out, its a fact of muscle memory to keep it going in the future.
The lower octave (otsu) is pretty easy for me now, but getting to the next octave higher (kan) requires you to change the shape of your mouth by roughly 0.4 nanometres, which I can do on occasion, usually by accident.
The instrument's simplicity allows for more flexibility too. By moving your head up and down, left-to-right, you can alter the pitch higher and lower, and create a wide range of vibrato styles and strengths (make the pitch wobble around).
When you add this to the technique of covering the holes half, or quarter way with your fingers - or any number of divisions - you can actually get the full 12-tones of the traditional western scale... and beyond.
This is, I've found, much easier said than done.
However, although in the olden days only monks were permitted to play this instrument, nowadays the casual player simply just wants to 'Steal a half-day of leisure' and enjoy the relaxing, forest-ey sounds and generally feel at peace with the world.
Thus, there's no need to extend your skillset to beyond the pentatonic, no need to master rhythm and the intricacies that the instrument offers (One sensei once said 'The Shakuhachi takes a lifetime to master; the earlier you start, the longer it takes')
This is no joke; every time I play, without even thinking in this placebo-type way, I genuinely feel calmer and more at peace.
I don't think it's the warm tone of the instrument alone, nor is it the mindset of being a monk, but a combination of those things, along with the physical act of controlled breathing while not being restricted by the tight pressure of reeds. This feels extremely natural and meditative. The smell of the bamboo as you inhale takes you straight to an imaginary forest somewhere in the mountains, and it does make you feel... well, 'zen'.