Shamisen and so on

[Volk'abe]

I wanted to share my recent acquisitions.

[Kano Hiroyoshi]

Beautiful. I need to get me one of them eventually.

[roninpenguin]

Mitsuhide has just recently acquired a Shamisen and has drafted me to help him figure out how to play it. We are using the lessons at www.bachido.com and I'm using my guitar playing experience to help guide us. I must admit that I'm still way more comfortable with a pick than a bachi though...

[Saionji Shonagon]

Options for anyone looking for a shamisen. Bachido is out of stock on their inexpensive "cigar box" shamisen, but there are some up on eBay right now from a couple different sellers at varying prices.

I just ordered a shamisen from eBay seller "vintage_inst_japan" in playable condition with accessories for under $300 including shipping. Read any descriptions and examine photographs to determine whether the instrument has any damage that requires restoration or not, but there are some like the one that I ordered that should be ready to play. The seller also has shakuhachi.

I will report again once my instrument arrives.

[Saionji Shonagon]

The eBay seller is "vintage_inst_japan" and they sent me a very nice instrument and accessories that were exactly as described and were packed with the obsessive care that I've come to expect when I get anything from Japan. I think it took me almost half an hour to get everything unwrapped from their bubble wrap cocoons. 

The peg head popped off in my hand, but I re-glued and clamped it carefully (see photo) and let it sit for 24 hours and acclimate to the fact that it's not in Osaka in June anymore. (Our relative humidity in the Bay Area is lower, for example.)

Stuff you need to know if you don't already:

The white bit is made of either animal or synthetic skin. It can get damaged easily, so if you're buying on eBay, you MUST examine the description and photos carefully.

The neck comes apart into several pieces. It's one of those typically Japanese space-saving solutions, but you'll need to look carefully to make sure you put it together correctly. Mine has some tiny white paint dots along one side of the neck to aid with finger position because.....

.....unlike a guitar, a shamisen has no frets! So I have to learn where my fingers need to go by ear and muscle memory. (The Bachido folks do sell a tape strip with numbers on it that you can put on an instrument, but I'm going to try to see if I can manage without it first.)

The bridge - that thing that holds your strings up away from the body of the instrument so they can resonate - is removable. (See photo below and look for a tiny white thing sitting on the blue striped part of the bachi case.) It's held in place only by string pressure.
DON'T LOSE IT!


The tuning pegs are not machined - they do their job by friction only, and if you're not careful, they will happily pop right out into your hand. They take a little getting used to and require a light touch.

DEFINITELY check out Bachido.com if you're thinking of pursuing shamisen. It's a good resource - in English - for getting started. If you want to go down research rabbit holes for older tunes, that's on you, because their focus is later than ours, but there are plenty of video lessons, a forum and they sell instruments, parts and other gear.

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[Saionji Shonagon]

I logged on to Bachido.com and pulled up the free "Crash Course #1, which includes several sections on how to assemble, string and tune the instrument, how to hold the bachi (plectrum), and a rudimentary introduction to tablature notation before you even begin playing something. I learned how to identify what sort of shamisen I had: mine turns out to be a nagauta shamisen (associated with Edo kabuki), based on the shape of the neck. (It's probably a student model based on the fact that the koma and bachi* are plastic. I honestly can't tell visually what the strings are made of. Could be silk, could be nylon. We'll see how they wear.) Fine with me, nagauta shamisen have narrower necks and I have small hands. Bachido founder Kyle Abbott and his associates favor the tsugaru shamisen, which has a thicker neck, squat, beefy pegs and the skins are glued on with a deeper margin. Tsugaru is a vigorous, lively style that originated with street musicians in northern Japan in the 19th century, and it translates well to modern compositions and covers of Western pop and rock. There is no reason I cannot play what I want on a nagauta - I just may have to be a little gentler with it, which as a beginner, I'm going to be anyway!

I got as far as the first measure of "Kuroishi Yosare Bushi," a traditional folk-song, when I realized that something was not quite right. If my small finger cannot depress the center string without also touching the uppermost string as well, the strings are too close together. So I had to take san no ito (the third string) off its itomaki (peg), re-thread it and then carefully wind it so it would result in more clearance - and of course, that's the peg that likes to slip. I had just retuned it and played the measure again, when my clock chimed 9PM. As I live in an old house that's subdivided into four apartments, I do not want to be That Neighbor, so I slipped the koma (bridge) out from under the strings and knocked off for the night. (Why yes, I am writing down the Japanese names for everything: it's mostly to help me learn and remember new vocabulary.)

First impressions of the course. The video quality is amateur-simple, dude-with-a-laptop cam. However, instructor Kyle Abbott obviously put a lot of thought and effort into how to go about teaching for an instrument that you can't just rent at the local music school. It HAS to be basic, it has to be aimed at a lowest common denominator of someone with zero musical experience who thinks shamisen are cool. So you start with set-up and care of your delicate instrument, then tablature, then rote skill-building with a folk tune.

The teaching approach is pretty straighforward:

- don't worry about understanding what you're doing or why, just observe and imitate what the instructor is doing (i.e., build muscle and ear memory) until you can do it the same way.
- repeat the lessons because there's so much visual information in each video you will probably miss something on the first viewing.
- don't expect to be good right away: proficiency takes time. (There's even a pep talk embedded in Crash Course #1.

There are splashes of nerdy humor here and there. Clearly this guy loves shamisen and has determined to spread the shami joy. Bachido is his baby and I am glad it exists.

*Speaking of which, good bachi are insanely expensive. The best ones were/are made with tortoiseshell, which is flexible and allows for more subtle play - and we're talking in excess of $1k US for a good one. Ivory apparently was used with nagauta. The best modern equivalent that you can get that doesn't involve endangered species are acrylic. Next rung down is wood, which has the disadvantage of chipping. Plastic is at the bottom rung, it doesn't flex and was deemed less pleasant to play with. Of course, I have a plastic bachi, and I am a beginner. It'll be ok. I am not planning on whaling on this like Pete Townsend.

[Saionji Shonagon]

Continuing adventures in shamisen:

You will recall I got very lucky on eBay and acquired a shamisen in playable condition at the beginning of the summer. Then event season cranked up with a vengeance and I didn't really practice. Bad of me, I know.

Having gotten on the mailing list, however, I was notified of a taiko and shamisen workshop through the Bachido.com mailing list that was local to me*, so I registered for it. (*Specifically, the Buddhist temple in Mountain View, California.) jundaiko.com/tataki/

I never did think to get an exact count, but there were probably in the neighborhood of 25 students or so. (I opted not to taiko at all - I've done it and I really preferred to concentrate on getting to grips with my shamisen.)

Kyle Abbott, who is the prime mover of the Bachido website, is as nerdy as he comes off in his videos. He is also knowledgeable, enthusiastic and incredibly patient. Ditto taiko instructor Eien Hunter-Ishikawa and Patrick Oiye (who plays both) who I encountered in the joint shamisen/taiko sessions.

We were given a piece composed for shamisen and taiko by Kyle and Eien specifically for this workshop. The shamisen parts consisted of an eight measure "A" section in 4/4 time: melodic theme, a harmony line and a bass line to accompany it, plus an eight measure bridge, an eight measure "B" section in 6/8 and a four measure coda. The melody lines were pretty simple, as was the harmony line. The bass line was a bit more complicated, and the more advanced students were allowed to improvise "special sauce." I worked on the main melody lines and decided to own the harmony line in the A section because nobody else seemed to want to. (It's like being the alto. Everybody wants the melody line because they are either diva sopranos who think the alto line is boring or they're terrified because they don't sight read well or intuit harmony.)

The Saturday joint session was interesting - I was going to sit in a back row but Kyle made me move up a seat since I was going to be anchoring the harmony line. Kyle and Eien wrote on a white board at the back of the stage which sections were going to be played with which groups, etc. At some point they decided one of the repeats of the A section would be Patrick on fue (flute) accompanied by the harmony line. I didn't mess it up too badly - at least I know how to keep going and find my way back from a stumble, so I sorta got a solo. Then there was a section after the B part where they wanted call-and-response solos between taiko and shamisen (4-bar, 4-bar, 4-bar, 4-bar, 2-bar, 2-bar, 1-bar, 1-bar) and suddenly Kyle's pointing at me and yelling "GO!" and I ended up doing shitty 1-bar strummy things. Talk about getting chucked in the deep end of things! So that's how I also ended up being part of the performance on Saturday night. Small audience consisting of some of the temple community and fellow students. We did a run-through of our piece, Kyle did a couple things on shamisen and he and Eien talked about the workshop, plus there was some "performance art" - Kyle ground artisanal coffee beans and made coffee while accompanied by taiko and fue; Eien sharpened a knife to shamisen played by Kyle and taiko by Patrick. (There was also bento and sake for dinner before the performance, courtesy of Mary from Jun-Daiko, the group associated with the temple. Really nice sitting on picnic tables behind the kitchen.

Sunday up and across the bay for more: the morning beginner session started with a Q&A and we got to work on those little things that improve technique, like using your thumb correctly to strike with the bachi. Suddenly my quiet little shamisen wasn't all that quiet any more! During the second session, Kyle worked with the more advanced students and we were sort of left to our own devices to practice, which was fine, then another joint session at the end of the day, by which time, my left arm felt like overcooked spaghetti.

This was a great experience and I'm hoping I can keep up with things and work on some new pieces on my own. Kyle apparently teaches on Saturday afternoons in San Jose, but my schedule is not going to allow that until maybe November. (Why does it have to be Saturdays?)

Only downside? I have "Emergence" stuck in my head now......