Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Review

I recently bought this book and the CD that comes with it. I have roughly year and half worth of practice behind me with minimal amount of formal teaching.

First of all, this title isn't necessarily the best one if you are only starting out. Although the book does start from the very basics of how to assemble a flute and how to get a sound, the advice gets very complicated very quickly. To give an example, the "how to make a sound" chapter casually suggests that once the player can play the lower octave notes he should move to practice the notes in the upper octave. I simply don't see how this would be possible for anyone who has only recently managed to get a sound. For someone with a bit of prior experience this is not a problem because they know that one is not supposed to be able to do it all at once. Yet, if you are a complete beginner, odds are that you end up spending lots of time doing something you think should be easy. The book rarely talks about how hard or easy a particular technique is and thus leaves a beginner to guess if he is doing something wrong or if he simply isn't supposed to get it right the first time.

The timing and notation section is one of the better ones I've seen. Reading through the explanations for ensemble music notation explained various things to me even though I was already familiar with it to some extent. If you plan to play ensemble music or anything other than the traditional buddhist music, this section alone makes the book worth reading. The instructions go from very basic timing notation all the way to various special cases. By reading this book you should have a fairly solid understanding of the traditional notation used in shakuhachi music with the exception of buddhist pieces.

The pieces included in the book are a rather mixed bag. You have few western melodies, quite a few old japanese lullabies, couple of old honkyoku (buddhist music) pieces and then some. The notations are generally very good and easy to read. Some choices made are rather strange but overally it's an interesting collection. All the japanese pieces (but none of the western ones) are also on the CD that comes with the book. Many of them contain elements that aren't shown in the notation and this can confuse a beginner somewhat when he notices that the way he plays doesn't sound quite the same.

Word of warning regarding the pieces. They aren't arranged in any sort of difficulty order. Some pieces are painfully hard, others a bit easier. This is not mentioned anywhere and thus your only option is to read through the notation and figure out things by yourself. In fact, some of the first pieces listed are the hardest ones included. Also, there aren't any pieces I would call easy for a beginner. Thankfully the book includes some notation for playing scales and such which are more accessible to newcomers than the listed pieces. If you are starting with this book, go for the scales first and try the pieces after maybe a month or so.

The honkyoku pieces exist only as rough notations. There are two pieces in the book and two more on the CD that have no notation. It would seem unlikely that anyone could learn the pieces simply by reading the book since almost none of the techniques required are covered anywhere. There are certainly books that cover honkyoku playing in length and are preferable if that is the sort of thing one is looking for.

I cannot recommend this book to those who are only just starting with no prior knowledge. This book is more like an encyclopedia that contains all sorts of information but doesn't go into details on what you should learn, when and how long you should spend on things. This will very likely confuse a beginner. For people who have been playing for at least six months this book can be a fairly useful tool. If you are aiming towards learning honkyoku pieces I would advice you to look for another book.

Includes notation for:

Honkyoku (buddhist pieces):
Hon Shirabe
Tamuke

Non-japanese pieces (not played on the CD):
Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
Auld Lang Syne
The Old Folks At Home
Happy Birthday to You
When It's Lamp-lightning Time In The Vally
Dream of Home And Mother
Danny Boy
Oh! Susanna
A Spring Wind
Seven Daffodils (with lyrics)
The Sound Of Silence (with lyrics)
Home on the Range
Silent Night
Joy to the World

Traditional japanese pieces:
Chugoku Chihoo no Komoriuta
Itsuki no Komoriuta (with lyrics)
Edo no Komoriuta
Takeda no Komoriuta
Shimabara no Komoriuta
Hanagasa Ondo
Tankoo Bushi
Kuroda Bushi
Sakura (with lyrics)
Goeika (version 1)
Jyun Reika
Goeika (version 2)
Ouma (with lyrics)

Conclusion:

I would recommend this book to people who have been playing shakuhachi for some time and who are interested primarily in traditional japanese music. Complete beginners will most likely not enjoy this book and there is most likely very little in it for anyone with many years of experience. This book is also clearly not for people who are only interested in buddhist music.

nyokai wrote:

If you're talking about honkyoku, it is very difficult to leap into that without the firm grasp of the basics you get from first playing all kinds of music such as minyo. In this sense, I think Taniguchi-sensei's approach makes sense.

You are certainly right about that. I wouldn't say that if one wants to eventually play honkyoku he should not play anything else. Unfortunately I am really bad at communicating my thoughts through writing. What I meant to say is that if one wants to get a book about playing honkyoku as opposed to learning the skills to do so, this isn't it. This book certainly has a lot of good material that helps to develop the kind of skills that will prove very useful. What this book doesn't cover is how to actually play honkyoku properly.

To explain the logic better, let us compare this book to another I wrote about a moment ago - Blowing Zen. That book has more than 10 pages on Hi Fu Mi alone. It goes through every single phrase and explains how it should be played along with a picture of how the sound should progress. There is also a fair bit of explanation as to what honkyoku pieces are about and how one should approach them. In comparison, this book has notation for two honkyoku pieces and the CD contains two more that lack notation. Looking at it that way, Blowing Zen would be a better choice for someone who actually wants to read the book to learn to play honkyoku rather than to learn the necessary skills to do so. One is naturally a pre-requisite for doing the other but they are still two different concepts.

I think the confusion comes from my poor choice of terms to use. I should have made a more clear distinction between the two concepts of learning the skills required to play honkyoku and learning to actually play honkyoku pieces. I think this book offers a lot for those who eventually seek to play honkyoku pieces (such as myself) but isn't a honkyoku playing guide per se.

Edit:

I'll improve the wording later today. I'm hoping to make it easier for people to get started so that they don't go through the same problems that I faced for no reason. As such, any comments about inaccuracies in my reviews are very much welcome.

nyokai wrote:

If you're talking about a Buddhist approach to playing music, a great goal is to make everything you play -- in whatever style -- part of your Buddhist practice.

That is a concept I'm still working on. Ever since I started "studying" the principles behind Zen I've found joy in many things that before seemed rather mundane and often downright boring. However, as far as product reviews go, I do my best to keep things simple. I still remember the days when I started all too clearly. Rather than thinking about spirituality, I was just trying to get this strange pipe to work. Odds are that if I started to ramble about such issues while reviewing something the reviews would be even longer than they are now. I know I'm guilty of writing too much and I'm trying to unlearn that habit slowly.

Thank you for taking time to point out my mistakes. I'm hoping to be able to write something about all the material I happen to come across so that people would have a better idea as to what might be suitable for them (apart from finding a teacher, naturally).

Last edited by amokrun (2007-04-16 12:48:39)

edosan wrote:

There ARE no books that will teach one how to play honkyoku. None. Bupkus.

Taniguchi's books are close, and they are very well thought out, but they are almost impossible to decipher without a teacher standing (or sitting) over you. They are almost better as a set of reminders to keep one on track AFTER learning the basic elements of honkyoku (or, in the case of Taniguchi-sensei's books, Dokyoku).

I love honkyoku, but it's a fool's errand to expect to jump right into it and succeed in doing it justice.

eB

Takashi Tokuyama's book/CD is pretty good for teaching honkyoku.

I think Taniguchi Sensei's book is probably designed to accompany actual lessons rather than as a stand alone method.

Taniguchi's book was made so that he would have something to use when he went to teach at Oberlin College. You're right, this is not a stand alone book at all. It was meant to be a reference as much to him for the written English as it was for the students. You can understand why the majority of the non-Japanese tunes were american songs: his students were mostly American. Taniguchi thought that it would make playing easier at the beginning if they could find the notes for melodies they already heard. He never imagined that it would be out in public as it is. After his stint at Oberlin College (1980) he sat on the book never intending for it to be used again.

Michael Chikuzen Gould