BANSURI

The transverse flute comes originally from India and the far East. Certain species of bamboo, with its thin walls and long, perfectly cylindrical sections, is suitable for the transverse technique with a mouth-hole in the wall of the instrument. Other types of flute are either end-blown (ney, kaval, quena etc.) or sounded by a fipple. The transverse flute eventually developed into the western orchestral flute.

    The bansuri is the Indian flute and is renowned for its pure sound. The large bore favoured by Indian players creates a smooth rounded sound unlike the narrower bore Chinese and western flutes which are designed to project.

An alap (improvisation) using my Florida bamboo C flute pictured above. The backing synth sounds are from Eric Persing's unequalled 1996 Distorted Reality collection

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia