The ney is a flute made of reed, it's an eastern musical instrument, and one of the ancient musical instrument which has retained its original shape.The ney is traditionally played in Arab countries, Turkey(Sufis) and Iran , it is made of hollow reed or plastic and has no mouthpiece,except for the Turkish ney.Both Arab and Turkish ney have 6 holes and one back hole for the thumb.The Persian ney has 5 holes and one back hole for the thumb. The ney is allegedly, a simple flute, yet it's blowing tecnique is very unique, because of the lack of a mouthpiece, also the range of sounds is wide and can reach up to four octaves. We build our ney using a mathematical equation in order to make the holes at the exact same place and at the exact distance from each other. Every ney must have nine segments, and the length of the ney, the distance between each segments and between each hole determines the key of the instrument
Ney types
Note : Length
A 390mm
G 440mm
F# 490mm
F 520mm
E 550mm
D 600mm
C 660mm
B 710mm
*Sizes of ney may change by a few mm due to the thickness of the reed
In order to check the ney's key, one should close all holes except for the lowest hole- we build our ney an eighth of a tone lower than the exact note-because ney is made of natural material, and is influenced by changes in temperature, after few minutes of blowing, the heat of breath makes the reed get wider and the note gets exact.
from forum: Re: amateur ney making
Ney are made from a 1m section of the donax cane just below the flowery plume. In this part of the cane, the
plant grows a series of short nodes, spaced at about 10 cm or less. The last few nodes zig-zag slightly, especially
the couple just before the flower. If you look at professional neys, you will see this pattern. Neys are
up-side down, in that this 1m section is flipped such that the bottom of the ney is the part just before
the flower.
Where I live, its a challenge to find canes with large enough diameter and short enough nodes.
In shady places and with lots of moisture, the canes are too narrow and elongated.
This is typical of Mississippi, where we have a lot of moisture and competing plants.
Wind seems to help, locations more exposed to wind seem to produce better canes.
I've gotten my best canes from clumps on dry, sunny, windy jetties near the sea.
Go into the clump and bend over the tall large diameter canes. By inspecting them by feel, you can choose
the ones of the approximate right diameter and node spacing. You can cut the entire cane or just
the 2m top section that guarantees enough cane to work with. Its a bit of trial and error.