A custom bamboo flute design by Thomas Richardson Music, directly inspired by the bamboo flute that David Carradine plays in scenes from Kill Bill. The flute featured in the Kill Bill film is a David Carradine flute design.

David was a unique flute builder! He grew his own bamboo, he harvested it, and designed beautiful bamboo flutes for himself. He tended to set the emboucher, the breath hole, several cells down the bamboo towards the center depending on what kind of bamboo he was making his flute out of. The flute he designed for "the Silent Flute" film is a great example of his creative flute building perspective. If you view his Tai Chi AM / PM DVD in the special features you get a good look at his flutes, especially the flute he made for Bruce Lee's film. The flutes builds are like the flutes Carradine made for Kill Bill, Kung Fu and for the Silent Flute.

On this Kill Bill flute replica, the emboucher is located after the third or fourth node of the bamboo, which creates a sound chamber above the emboucher. This flute can be rested on the left shoulder when playing like a violin. Tuned to the Oriental minor scale. Features 5 tone holes with a thumb hole like a Shakuhachi flute. Melodic minor tuning. 1-3 octaves. This flute is precisely tuned at A 440 concert pitch. Comfortable to finger and to hold. Made from tan cured Chinese tonkin bamboo.

The length of this flute is inspired by the flutes of the ancient Shaolin KUNG FU masters who used their instruments as walking sticks, weapons and as instruments of meditative music.

You can play some very interesting sounding musical lines with simple ascending and descending the scale. My forest bamboo flutes are sound tools to explore NADA YOGA, "sound meditation".

In my workshop, I cure different species of bamboo all year long. When I build your flute order I drill the emboucher and the tone holes first, then I finish the tone holes with a quick burn from a selection of burning rods. I use a nice custom mix of dark and red stain finish, an eco-flow natural water based stain color embellishing application other stains and colors and a final treatment of orange oil and bee's wax balm.

From professional musician Raymond Robinson's of Ireland on his website, a review of my flute building work: "Sometimes when you are researching flutes you come across wonderful makers who are quietly making facinating flutes. They deserve a wider audience and one of those makers is Thomas Richardson. I now own a unique one off design Middle Eastern Forest flute from Thomas' wide range. These are not expensive instruments but are made with the highest care and quality. This is a four holed flute with thumb hole and has a great scale. Take the opportunity to visit Thomas flute building work online. He has a large range of flutes and other instruments. Just brilliant."

Head out into special nature spots to play near streams or rivers. Walk to great acoustical spots in your neighborhood which feature natural reverberation. Head out into your garage anywhere with a long hall or tall arche and play your bamboo flute. I find the interesting spots can help you to tune in and deeply explore the meditative sounds of your new flute.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY AN MP3 OF THE Kill BIll FLUTE REPLICA