Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hello mattrn, pick it up every morning and blow warm air into it.  With all holes closed, blow in a focused way across the blowing edge.  When you get a consistent sound, increase and decrease the force of blowing alternately for a few minutes. Then blow with as much steadiness as possible can at what you consider a medium force until you run out of breath.  Refill your lungs in such a way as your abdomen extends then blow again trying to maintain a steady sound to the end of your breath.  Do this for a few minutes at first.  Make that a daily regimen and you will soon become quite ready for a teacher.  In the mean time, you will begin to develop a relationship between you and your instrument.  All the best.

I will recommend to take at least one lession with a teacher asap.....
Skype or whatever.

I bought (almost) all the beginners books out there, flute, cds etc
Most of it is not being used the first 6 months, or at least only rarely, and it is not really needed....
Now I begin to use the books more, for reference or clarifications.


If you take one class with a teacher, you should expect help to be able to make a tone, one or two songs to play with and also a few simple excercises, like scales etc.

Maybe  the teacher will recommend you to get the shakuhachiYuu 1.8 as it is a good, cheap instrument, with standard length. I don't know but I think I have heard the shorter shakuhachi is more difficult to play.

Whatever you do, I reccomend to keep the shaku always with you, whenever you take a break, wait for someone etc, play the flute, if you do that you will end up with a lot of short sweet practices even if your days are busy.  The plastic Yuu is even with me in the car, as changes in temperature, humidity etc. will not hurt it.

A few minutes of blowing long tones makes me happy also :-)

Good luck!

J

mattrn wrote:

My name is Matt, and I just got a small (1.5 or 1.6 I think) shakuhachi from Ken.
I don't have a teacher yet, and plan to wait a couple of months before I start looking for one because of some prior commitments. I don't want to start going to a teacher until I can really commit to practicing daily. Any advice I can get here will be gladly accepted, and I'm happy to have this forum as a resource.

Hi Mattrn,
Welcome to the Forum!

All good advice so far.

Jeff's advice about starting a relationship is Key.

Jivanmukta's advise on carrying it everywhere can help start the relationship.


Enjoy! Perry

wendyts7 wrote:

hello,im a new here in this forum.how are you guys?

Well, welcome to you too! Tell us about your shakuhachi story!

I suppose we are fine here.. no online catastrophes lately.