Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi Bas,
     This question gets asked in many different forms. One example: Will my classical playing hurt my jazz playing or vice versa? The answer is that one does not hurt the other. It just requires twice as much practice. Playing the sax won't hurt your shakuhachi embouchure. Playing the sax and not practicing the shakuhachi will. If you want to sound good on both you have to practice both.
                           Happy doubling
                               Jim

Last edited by Jim Thompson (2008-12-02 18:49:38)

Hi Bas, I played the silver flute on a theater production on and off of a few years. On the later productions, I replaced the silver flute with the shakuhachi for some specific scenes in the show. I found it extremely difficult at first, playing both instruments back to back in performance. Then I realized that I had to practice the switches, not just the pieces of music.
Here's an old thread that discusses different embouchures - http://www.shakuhachiforum.com/viewtopi … d=699#p699

And yes, it's important to practice both as Jim says. A funny thing though. after I got more serious with shakuhachi, I noticed that it made my silver flute tone much better.

best, Perry

Last edited by Yungflutes (2008-12-02 21:45:28)

The embouchure for silver flute and shakuhachi are differnt, at least for me. When I first started shakuhahchi, my prolonged inability to produce any tone at all on a shakuhachi was due entirely to me trying to play shakuhachi with a flute embouchure, which I found out, when, after a particularly frustrating session, I gave a big sigh, and a note came booming out.

There are a lot of uninformed so-called instrumental instructors out there who insist on the "playing any other instrument" mantra, conveniently forgetting about all those professional pit doublers, triplers, quadruplers, etc.

On my next college band concert I'm doubling on CC Tuba and Bassoon, and it's only a double, so I don't consider it particularly noteworthy. I have had concerts with more instruments and more instrument "families" involved, so it's do-able, you just have to practice the changes and rehearse the choreography, so to speak.

I kind of look forward to visits to the dentist because I rush back to the teaching studio to find out how many different instruments I can play while my mouth is still numb. It's amazing what muscle memory will do for you.

later...

radi0gnome wrote:

Yungflutes wrote:

And yes, it's important to practice both as Jim says. A funny thing though. after I got more serious with shakuhachi, I noticed that it made my silver flute tone much better.

BTW, I don't totally agree with sax and flute that the key is simply to practice both. With sax you're using muscles to clamp down on a mouthpiece but with flute you're using muscles to create a tiny hole. It's two different things and I can easily see where practicing shakuhachi for one hour and then practicing sax for one hour might not give you the same rate of improvement as practicing just shakuhachi one hour day. I'm fairly certain though that there are some amazing musicians out there who can crank out tunes on both a lot better than I'll ever be able to even if I concentrated on just one. Call it talent, or maybe that they just know how to practice better, but I'm amazed at what a lot of musicians accomplish.

One of the other musicians on that production also played shakuhachi,. We needed a trombone player on one production and he could have doubled on trombone but he said that he could not play shakuhachi after playing trombone. Some musician know their limits.

Bas, I have a Mac computer, If I click on the link on my previous thread #5, it will g to the discussion.


best, Perry

Last edited by Yungflutes (2008-12-04 08:42:36)

You come across this "problem" in just playing the shakuhachi itself. You don't need to switch instruments.  The embouchure you develop will depend on the sound you want. The sound you want depends on the type of music are learning (playing) and the flute you are playing.  The embouchure used for making the sound that is used for old school Kinko Kokyoku and Kinko solos is different then what you need for modern koto/shakuhachi, which is different than Yokoyama style Honkyoku, which is different than Meain style honkyoku, which is different than Minyo style, etc.etc.  There is a certain existing sound aesthetic that comes along with these styles, that has been developed over time and is still being preserved through traditions. That's a big part of the transmission and the reason it's so difficult to study more than one style at a time.  The transmission of sound creates the embouchure not the other way around. This is natural.  That's why it's not only important to have the appropriate flute to play the style, it's important to develop the appropriate embouchure that produces the sound that's being transmitted.  Because of these differences, you can understand that if you are testing a flute and you play a flute made for Meian style honkyoku but you blow it with a Kinko style embouchure the flute will not respond well. So, if you try to blow a shakuhachi with an embouchure created by playing flute or saxaphone, you're blowing up the wrong tree, so to speak. You'll have to play shakuhachi a long time and be very aware of the differences in embouchure. This is hard to do as the differences appear consciously only after the embouchures are developed, which happens after you know what kind of shakuhachi sound you want to produce and then produce it.

Chikuzen, you speak directly to my heart.
I have reached the same conclusions (and I am sure many other long time shakuhachi players listening with an open heart would agree as well). It is very hard to speak about 'a good sound' on shakuhachi because there are so many 'good sounds' - depending on, as you say, what style of music and flute you play.
It is very interesting to notice this timbre difference depending on style. For people who are newer to shakuhachi than us 'oldies'.... try to listen out for this when listening to especially live performances (but also recordings) of different ryuha or genres of shakuhachi music. There is a whole world out there to explore and it is fascinating!
Transmission is indeed very important. Sometimes I meet people who have studied Watazumi style from recordings. No matter how 'perfectly' they play the recorded phrases and phrasing, they never sound like Watzumi to me because of... timbre and blowing technique. To me it is especially the blowing technique and timbre that reveals the belonging to a particular group through the transmission from teachers. This is not to dismiss studying Watazumi or others from recordings. There is a lot to learn from recordings, so we all do it.

Another camelion-like instrument like the shakuhachi is the saxophone. There is a world's difference in timbre when the sax is used in bebop, swing, classical etc.

Good night!

Last edited by Kiku Day (2008-12-04 17:24:19)

Looky here:

Bas Nijenhuis wrote:

The players in the foto's seem to be doing what I am doing...(but are miles better in doing it ) but it doesn't seem to be a relaxed embouchure, more of 'a stretched' and tensed one in my view. Well maybe my teacher is right to not to pay too much attention to it and just play the flute (with good breathing and posture) until it sounds good.

Yup.