Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Karmajampa wrote:

It is not wrong at all.
It is probably your natural posture.
It makes no difference to playing well.
You are a left-hander.
If you ever acquire a long flute where holes 1 and 3 may be skewed for comfort, they need to be skewed appropriately for a left-hander.

Kel.

Yes, you are a lefty, like many of the best shakuhachi players. Nothing to worry about.

Depending on the size of your hands you might not have to offset the holes on long flutes. I play inline up to about 3.0 after that I like them offset. However this is different with each person.

However the people who originated long flutes made them with inline holes. Offsetting is a recent development.

Zakarius wrote:

Tairaku wrote:

However the people who originated long flutes made them with inline holes. Offsetting is a recent development.

...and a very good one!

Zak

Infidel!

Jinashi Police have you on their watch list.

I am so used to playing inline long flutes that when I play other ones that are offset I get the creeps.

Tairaku wrote:

I am so used to playing inline long flutes that when I play other ones that are offset I get the creeps.

Brian, the picture you posted a while ago of a long shakuhachi, originally had inline holes, but you got it changed to being offset. Doesn't that mean that you do prefer offset holes on occasion? Enough to change a vintage shakuhachi?

For me, it depends partly on what style I want to play, and partly on how far I have to reach. On the older shakuhachi the chi hole is higher than on modern ones. In that case, the distance to reach to the chi hole is less so it is more comfortable. The down side is it is out of tune for the music I play. Probably the offsetting of holes came about due to both the new trend (historically speaking) of long shakuhachi, and the new trend of a lower pitch for chi, both of which extend the finger reach beyond comfort.

Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/

Hi Brian
Yes I agree with you. I had to re-make a couple of long shakuhachi (2.7 and 2.8) made by a Tozan maker. Both the 1st holes and 3rd holes were offset, but quite drastically. I didn't change the hole positions but remade the inside as they were poor instruments. When the owner collected them, he tried my long shakuhachi, and he was trying to play them as you describe - with fingertips like one does on a 1.8. My way of making is to keep the holes preferably straight, and from there to move them as far as I need to to play the music I will play on them (some of which is fast, so that becomes a factor) without causing harm to my body or my music. For this, I find it unnecessary to move the 1st hole (at least up to 2.7), and only necessary to move the 3rd hole somewhat (less than this Tozan maker had done). As you have mentioned about "long shakuhachi grip", I use different parts of my fingers to cover the holes depending on the length of the shakuhachi.

This person who as I had said was using his fingertips, was really struggling with the straight 1st hole. He said he would prefer it offset. So I asked him, "When you play your long shakuhachi, is it comfortable after playing for 20 or so minutes?" "No" he said. So I encouraged him to try my way of covering the holes. Of course, it is difficult in the beginning, but he realised that it was worth to practice that way as in the end he would be able to play for longer periods of time in comfort. In that case also, better to have the 1st hole straight. I would start offsetting it slightly around 3 shaku.

Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/

Last edited by Justin (2008-10-10 09:21:40)

I am lucky that within 6 months of starting shakuhachi, I went from 1.8 to a really fat 3.0 jinashi. For the first few days it was really difficult, but after that pretty much anything was OK. I continued playing on long jinashi until I started studying other genres, and then I had to start using various lengths and styles. But I never had any problem changing from shakuhachi to shakuhachi of different styles and lengths. I naturally use a variety of grips and embouchures without thinking about it, as it becomes automatic. Perhaps that has something to do with "growing up" on long jinashi?

Furuya Teruo I have noticed is also very adaptable, more so than most players. He grew up on Rampo shakuhachi, which also demand a certain amount of adjusting/adaptability from the player. He says this experience helps him to be able to adjust. So perhaps it is important which shakuhachi you grow up on. I guess if you grew up on super-stable modern shakuhachi, it will be really difficult to play or perhaps appreciate jinashi or certain vintage instruments.

Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/

I do 95% of life left handed- throw, kick,bowl,chopsticks,write. At baseball I can't bat from the so called left side,could never put my left hand on top of the right to swing. I play golf righty, but tennis lefty, hockey left hand on top of the stick & push off the left foot skating.......a pianists right hand is always most developed as a result of the mid to high end of a keyboard containing the most work. Being left handed has had no conscious advantage for me in this respect.  I played a transverse flute first, and you can't make a switcheru there. So in shakuhachi I naturally put my left hand on top of the right. But, I got kicked out elementary school orchestra for playing fiddle with a left handed bow, I kept starting fights by poking  kids with my bow. Handedness is in the way you see things. As regards offset tone holes, I resisted at first but found that it is ergonomically fluid as opposed to interfering with some sense of sequencial symetry relating to pitch etc..my only regret is that "they" never let me be a catcher, as a lefty its hard to make that throw to 2nd with so many right handed batters & hard to find a catchers mit for the right hand. I do have one though, so lefties keep the faith.

I have been throwing pottery on the wheel for 25 years. I started out in the English anti-clockwise direction as that was how I observed it being done, after fifteen years I switched to the Japanese clockwise direction. I think this is a switch from right handed to left handed. I prefer the left.
I have played guitar all my life, mainly rhythm and some classical. I play right handed, not like Jimi Hendrix, though in the case of this kind of instrument each hand is doing a very different action though co-ordinated.
When I make love to my wife.....ok, I won't go there !

Kel.

Yes, I think it is just what one gets used to when you one started - left or right on top. Since we use both hands, I would not assume either way to be "left handed". I believe Yokoyama is right handed (correct me if I'm wrong) and that he himself switched to right hand on top because he wanted his atari (hole hitting) on his top hand to be faster, and he was faster with his right hand.

Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/

I believe that it is totally unrelated and irrelevant whether you are a lefty or righty, when it comes to which hand a Shakuhachi player first decides to use on top.
It can be changed, but I have found that, in almost all cases, however you first pick up a Shakuhachi will determine your forever-preference !

My teacher and his son (Kurahashi YODO, and Kurahashi YOSHIO), as well as AOKI REIBO, all use right-hand on top, while most other players (including myself and most of my students) use left-hand on top.

YuccaBruce wrote:

Its funny there are no left handed built pianos. Imagine how weird it would be if the low end were to the right and high to the left. Maybe  the thing  is top to bottom. I've always been a leg man:)

I remember seeing a tip for keyboard players, to help break out of conventional thinking - turn the keyboard around and play it from the other side.  I think I remember a solo played by someone like Jo Zawinul using this approach.

Some modern (and not so modern) keyboards have alternative tuning options - like quarter tones.  Playing one of these has the same weird feel.

On guitar (something I am more comfortable with), playing in an unfamiliar alternative tuning can have a similar liberating feel - for a while, until you get stuck in the rut of the few workable hand positions that you find by trial and error.

On guitar, the closest to playing a backwards piano is that strange thing that happens when you finger a "harp style" chord that has notes running down the scale as you go across the strings from low to high.