Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

As mentioned, don't blow. Just sort of let the air come out naturally. In reality you of course do need to do something for the air to come out. The feeling you have, however, is closer to just letting the air flow naturally. I often practice blowing without any flute whatsoever. You'll notice that the more you think about it the worse you actually do. It's not that hard to let air come out for 30 seconds without a flute. Most people with no practice should be able to do it just fine. Once you start to think about blowing you'll notice that it's hard to actually blow for 30 seconds because you waste air in blowing hard to maintain what you think is the required amount of air.

I have just slightly more experience than you do. I can do somewhere around 30-40 seconds at Ro if everything goes right. If I think about it, however, it drops closer to 10-20 seconds. I find it relaxing to focus on some other aspect of the sound. Do a slight vibrato and really focus on making the sound do all sorts of silly patterns. As you forget about breathing you'll most likely notice that you are doing much better at it. It's like riding a bicycle. Less you think about doing it the better you actually do.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the first hour every day is going to be horrible compared to the others. I do roughly 3 hours of practice a day unless something important comes up. The first hour or so rarely works well. Kan is bad, blowing long notes is hard, blowing quietly just won't happen. Give it an hour though and you'll suddenly find that you are doing very well. Everything becomes effortless and you forget to think about what you are doing because you are having so much fun playing. If you want to time your blow length - not that it's any sort of competition - do so after you play for two hours. You may find that the results vary a lot compared to the first attempt you did that day. You might also want to do what I do and keep track of some statistics every day, week or month. Noticing how much you improve on good weeks and how much your skill drops on weeks you didn't practice on may help to keep motivation up. It's surprising how much your skill can improve even during a single week of intensive practice.

Hope this helps. Just some tips from another person working on the same thing.

BrianP wrote:

I have been blowing RO buki for 5-10 minutes a day at a constant volume with no embellishments sitting in Seiza for about 2 months.  I have been playing for just under a year and I play daily.  I can still only blow RO loudly for about 10 seconds before I have to breath again.  It doesn't seem to matter too much if I am blowing softer.  It is about the same length.  I play harmonica and can inhale or exhale for almost 60 seconds with the backpressure from the harp but it seems much more challenging with the shakuhachi. I also play didge and breathing out for longer periods is no problem.  I am figuring it is a matter of backpressure.  I try to keep my embouchure small and proper but it seems like I must be doing something wrong.  Any suggestions?  I have included a pic of my embouchure while I am playing.  Thank you very much!

BrianP


http://www.harpgear.com/embouchure1.jpg

Let's see, I just tried with the 2.5 I have here on hand. What size flute are you using? It looks kind of big. With the 2.2 I was able to get one of the higher notes in the low register to sound for 65 seconds when I was playing around challenging myself a few weeks ago, but the last 5 seconds was wavery and the volume was deliberately low so I could use less air. However, the same note (the thumb and first finger hole covered) on the 2.5 is getting near my limits at 45 seconds. Ro on the 2.5 I can get going for 20 seconds at a somewhat high volume, but not honking. Softly I was able to get 25 seconds.

I agree that the reason you can breath longer on the other instruments is because of backpressure, but despite that the pro players I've seen (a Riley Lee video and a some Japanese players on youtube) seem to use a very tight embouchure, much tighter than yours, I'd say that the solution isn't to create backpressure via the embouchure, but to learn to control the outflow of breath with your diaphragm instead of relying on backpressure to do it for you. I also play didjeridoo. With didjeridoo you have to push with your diaphragm to create a tone, with shakuhachi and many other flutes there's a much finer balance and a lot of the effort is put into not letting the air go out too fast. As an experiment, open you mouth wide, take a deep inhale, relax and let the air come on it's own while keeping the mouth wide open. Don't tighten your throat either, you'll know if your doing that if you make sounds while breathing out. You should find that the air comes out fast, kind of like a sigh (BTW, a good way to make sure you get a good inhale for flute playing is to think of inhaling in preperation for a sigh). That air coming out fast is what you need to work on. Instead of completely relaxing and getting a sigh-like exhale, try to slow down the exhale diaphramatically. It doesn't seem all that difficult until you try to do it with the flute because the flute makes a better feedback device to see how steady the stream of air is rather than just trying to feel it.

You probably do want to learn to play with a tighter embouchure at some point (I need to also, it adds a lot of depth to the tone that I only get when I'm very conscious of how I'm playing), and while it might seem that it would help with the breathing, I think it's probably a better idea to get the breathing right first. Think about it, you won't be able to get a nice tight embouchure if it's fighting against an inconsistent stream of air. Most importantly, don't control the breath by tightening the throat. If you're getting any kind of grunts or hissing from the back of your mouth that is what is happening. Practice without the flute for a while and try again to condition yourself to relax that throat. It's a very common problem with flute playing in general and you'll even hear pros occasionally mess that up.

I would also like to add that the word 'buki' in Japanese comes from the word 'fuku' which means 'blow' if I'm not mistaken.  There are probably different reasons for this practice, but in my school, the purpose is multiple: to develop a consistency of pitch at different volumes, to develop volume control, to expand air capacity, to develop harmonic richness of tone, to develop duration of breath and to develop patience.  Time is the key.  These things  should not be rushed.  Enjoy the process and let the end results take care of themselves.  It may be interesting to note that 'ro buki' is not uniformly practiced across school and guild lines in Japan.  It seems to have sprung into the global practice arena through Yokoyama sensei and his deshi reaching near mantra status, or so it seems.  The Medium is the Massage.

I'm assuming anyone interested in this sort of thing in Vancouver might already know what we're up to, but just in case:  join us!

-Darren.