Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Let us applaud Bruce's elegant and clear interval practice study.

This is based on Steve Lacy's concept. He suggests just going through on interval at a time and playing it over and over until you "own" the interval. On his sax that must have been a good concept because soprano is notoriously difficult to play in tune. But he didn't have to grapple with meri notes! So this is equally important for us.

The first half are ascending intervals and the second half are descending. So even if you just stick to the ascending that is comprehensive.

I'm going to print it out and carry it around with me.

Thanks Bruce.

Hey Everybody,
   So, let me see.25852016738884976640000 possible intervals. This is the kind of thing that happens when you rely too much on intellectual approaches to performing. I suggest a more organic approach to interval study. How about looking at any piece your currently working on and get deeply in to the the intervals in that piece? You can pick the difficult intervals or just work on the entire piece one interval at a time. That'll give you plenty to do and it will all be very relevant.
                                   Cheers
                                          Jim

Hi Everyone - That large number is for all the possible "combinations" of 23 notes not necessarily all the combinations of intervals.  I should have clarified that.  If your interested I'll email you the possible combinations as stated in the previous email and from that you can see how it works for 3,4,& 5 notes and how it expands form there. For 23 notes it is a very large number. For 7 notes alone it's 5040(1*2*3*4*5*6*7), which can easily(although very time consuming) be extrapolated from the chart I have if your willing to take the time. It just expands from there.   This is nothing new.  North Indian Classical musicians work on at least the possible combinations of four notes as stated in Ram Narayan's book.  I've played over the years (jazz bass,not shakuhaci) with a bunch of Lennie Tristano's Disciples and they worked on all the combinations of 5 notes.  It's also mentioned in the Doctoral Thesis someone had written on Lennie.  Granted a lot of the Tristanoites are very dry and mechanical in they're playing but one thing can't be taken away from them is they're incredible mastery of their instrument. Like anything else if not overdone can be a very effective way to explore the instrument as long as you don't step into the pitfall of becoming over intelectualized in your playing,balanced being the key. I find playing these patterns as just another way to open up to new sounds and ideas I wouldn't have necessarily thought of.  It's also a nice way to break out of a rut, or if your just want something new to tackle. It's especailly interesting when applied to the South Indian Scales. It's something I found very helpful when applied to the other instruments I play, so why not apply it to shakuhachi? Sorry for any confusion.
Be well, Bob.

hi Bob,
I study with Charlie Banakos. He talks often about Lennie Tristano. They were the first start to teach jazz.