Masterful Chinese Bamboo Flute

This strikes me as a perfect paradigm for the Chinese economy.

The flute playing is accompanied by a pre-recorded synthesized orchestral track, even though he is performing live. The orchestra chairs on the stage beside him remain empty and unoccupied.

The sound of his flute is heavily re-verbed, making it sound much more smooth than it actually is. There is also the obvious and repeated use of auto-tune on two of the notes in the scale — correcting for likely what is a slight intonation problem with the flute itself. The vibrato used in the playing is also synthetic, as it continues on a perfect regular interval.

So here we are watching a performance which is heavily enhanced by smoke and mirrors. Yes, it appears to be impressive to those who don’t know enough to look beneath the surface.

Much like China herself.

If a violinist did the same thing, there would be guffaws from the international music world. But we don’t expect much from bamboo flute players, and the standards are non-existent.