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Hi All,
I recently picked up my first shakuhachi, a wooden one from David Brown, and I'm making my way through some beginner pieces via Carl Abbott's manual. Many thanks to Bruce Jones for getting me in touch with Jim Thompson, one of Masakazu Yoshizawa's students. I will have my first lesson with Jim on Saturday. With luck, I'll be able to make a sound out of my shakuhachi at the lesson...
My road to the shakuhachi took a little time. I'm starting out in film composing, and one of the best pieces of advice that my good pal Paul Buckley gave me is to play as many things live as possible, because in the current era of film composing, one is usually stuck in front of a computer playing instrumental samples on a keyboard. Flute in particular seemed doable for me, and sampled flute sucks. I wandered down to Little India and picked up a few bansuris, which are lovely instruments. The fingering isn't easy on the large bansuris I have, and I found myself wishing for something endblown due to the whole ergonomic debacle of twisting one's neck to play a transverse flute. I got an Irish low whistle, which is also neato, and learned a bit on that, but it didn't have the sound of wood. That led to the shakuhachi.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the shakuhachi's Zen traditions; I have had a, well, a 'strong casual' interest in Zen Buddhism, and my wife practices Tibetan Buddhism. The honkyoku I heard completely blew me away like no other music I had heard as well. To me, it sounded like every note was its own universe.
So, after more thinking and research, here I am, with kinda chapped lips and an inconsistent airflow, but lots of diligence and excitement for the future.
See you all around. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Axo
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Great to have another gaijin shakuhachi enthusiast in the Los Angeles area. Hope to see you around soon.
(Side note: I think I brought back the very first Irish low whistle seen on the West Coast of Amerikay -- from Dublin in the fall of 1976. An Overton "D" which I bought for £15 at Walton's. I had taken lessons with the only low whistle player I saw performing at the time, Thomas Keenan, uillean piper Paddy Keenan's little brother. It's a great instrument and, to me, has a natural affinity with shakuhachi, even though metal and fippled and cylindrical and six-holed... which are a significant number of important differences I suppose).
Last edited by Chris Moran (2007-11-21 18:21:11)
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The low whistle does have a timbre remarkably like the shakuhachi. I sometimes have difficulty identifying which instrument is playing when I hear movie or tv soundtracks. Of course, the shakuhachi is more versatile and distinctive when heard solo.
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Chris Moran wrote:
An Overton "D" which I bought for £15 at Walton's.
AKA: "The Cosmic Drainpipe"
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One derogatory title for the lowly low whistle presently current among the older, wiser Irish traditional musos is "The Seamless Gutter".
Regards,
H.
Last edited by Harry (2007-11-22 05:29:06)
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edosan wrote:
Chris Moran wrote:
An Overton "D" which I bought for £15 at Walton's.
AKA: "The Cosmic Drainpipe"
Harry wrote:
One derogatory title for the lowly low whistle presently current among the older, wiser Irish traditional musos is "The Seamless Gutter".
And I think rightly <winkie winkie>.
Thomas Keenan had a beautiful Low D made in Germany (I believe) with a plastic fipple plug. The rest of the flute, mouthpiece and fipple was a not too polished nickel silver, the insert looked like black acrylic. Very high quality. The plastic insert allowed moisture to drain off more easily from the mouthpiece wind way. My anodized aluminium Overton was always choking due to moisture being trapped between the aluminum insert and the aluminum top of the wind way. I think Davey Spillane used a similar Low D to Thomas's instrument.
Now that we're almost completely off track, welcome again, axolotl! And thanks for the off-forum info. I appreciate it. --cm
Last edited by Chris Moran (2007-11-22 14:37:02)
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Thanks to all for the warm welcomes! Chris, I guess things have changed a bit since the 70's--I just picked my low whistle up at McCabe's on a whim. It's nice to goof around on, especially at the moment when my lips are kinda beaten up from a fit of beginner zeal.
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A guy came through Dublin recently who had made a keyed low whistle (i.e. keys for the half tones). Looked like a futuristic simple system flute.
Did anyone ever try to make anything as strange as a keyed shakuhachi, or even a Bohem systemed one, I wonder?
Welcome, axo.
Regards,
HB
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Harry, I recommend you start a thread in the non-shakuhachi arena and we discuss to our hearts' content! On the same subject, I have been hunting around to see if anyone makes Giorgi-style flutes. This would be an endblown keyed or non-keyed flute with a standard wooden flute mouthpiece--but perpendicular to the flute body. Sounds similar to what you are talking about.
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Harry wrote:
Did anyone ever try to make anything as strange as a keyed shakuhachi, or even a Bohem systemed one, I wonder?
Check this excerpt from Malm about the Okura Aulos:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Yn3VQb … fdMDFieCbo
If you can get to a copy of Yohmei's The Shakuhachi--a manual for learning, you will find photos on page 9.
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a very bizarre hybrid is the shakulute, right? as in http://www.shakuhachi.com/Q-Models-Headjoint.html
for some reasons not appealing to me
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shakulute is cool. I play one of those. Of course is not a Shakuhachi-but its cool:-)
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Dude, now I'm living in fear for the moment that a moderator shuts down this thread due to all this non-shakuhachi talk.
My first lesson was today, btw, and Jim Thompson is a fine teacher. He studied for about 14 years under Masakazu Yoshizawa. I couldn't believe how horizontal he wanted my shakuhachi to be for meri notes. I have plenty to learn! (including Tozan...)
He had a lovely picture of Watazumi on one wall, and a bunch of pics of Masa, including one of Masa playing a ginormous shakuhachi for the "Jurassic Park" soundtrack. Seems that John Williams wrote the part wayyy too low, or maybe one of John's orchestrators messed up, and rather than complain about it, Masa just whipped up a huge bass shakuhachi and played the part the next day.
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Axo,
Don't sweat it. Herr Moderator is a big dude; when he thwacks you we'll all know about it...
I'm on my 50 or 60th 'fool's pardon' at this stage. :-)
Regards,
Harry.
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horizontal position for meri notes? is he having you move the flute for meri kari technique??/
Interesting...
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Not lift up the flute; but bend the head to a fairly deep chin position, and moving the arms as well, with the shakuhachi 'fulcrum' around the center of the instrument, so the bell lifts up.
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axolotl wrote:
Not lift up the flute; but bend the head to a fairly deep chin position, and moving the arms as well, with the shakuhachi 'fulcrum' around the center of the instrument, so the bell lifts up.
If you move the chin and the arms, you are dealing with 2 variables. This is far more difficult to control and hit precisely than if you are dealing with only one variable such as changing the angle and position only by moving the chin (and of course breath pressure and embouchere changes)
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Are you moving your head down and to the side or just down? Because if you also move it to the side you can get a deeper meri. Treading in dangerous waters here because I'm sure your teacher has the situation under control.
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Haven't done any side motion as of yet, and I may have spoken incorrectly when I mentioned moving the arms. I think it would be more correct to say that the flute's 'fulcrum' was essentially the hands/wrists themselves. Bear in mind I've had one lesson, so my recollections of one demonstration may be a little hazy. In addition, I believe that part point of the demonstration was just to show that my arms should be relaxed. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions, and we'll see what happens this coming Saturday!
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axolotl wrote:
Haven't done any side motion as of yet, and I may have spoken incorrectly when I mentioned moving the arms. I think it would be more correct to say that the flute's 'fulcrum' was essentially the hands/wrists themselves. Bear in mind I've had one lesson, so my recollections of one demonstration may be a little hazy. In addition, I believe that part point of the demonstration was just to show that my arms should be relaxed. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions, and we'll see what happens this coming Saturday!
Without seeing anything in person I would guess that you may have made the same mistake I did early on. When you have just learned the normal blowing position it is easy to try to apply it to everything. When I started to practice meri notes I would lower my chin correctly but I'd also tilt the flute down to compensate. The result was basically more or less the same pitch I started with but the sound was weaker from the bad playing position. Although technically you only need to hold the flute the same way, at least for me it felt like I was actually moving it while I performed a deep meri. Many of these things come down to how you feel. In my current playing position I feel like my head is actually leaning backwards although it's almost straight up. My muscle memory works best when I try to remember the feeling I had when I did something right even if the feeling doesn't really match the reality.
Like others have mentioned, just stick with your teacher and eventually it all makes sense. I have nothing but respect for people who manage to teach the basics to someone as they tend to be very personal and each player ends up doing something differently to get things working with their anatomy. It takes amazing amount of thought to be able to guess what another person is doing wrong and how that can be fixed.
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Tell you what, guys, when I get a few more lessons under my belt, I'll post a few pics of my lovely person blowing the shakuhachi and you can assess further.
By the way, amok, I was initially moving the flute a lot less (erm, by moving my chin only, that is), and I was getting ou okay, but not tsu meri. The more I think about what Jim was showing me, flute-motion-wise, the more I think it was metaphorical than the actual desired mechanics.
Where are you in Finland, by the way? I'm 1/4 Finnish and enjoyed a lovely time in Hirvensalo a few summers ago...it was the time the Tall Ships were floating past.
Last edited by axolotl (2007-11-29 10:01:57)
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