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#26 2008-03-01 07:23:44

Musgo da Pedra
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From: South of Brazil
Registered: 2007-12-02
Posts: 332
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Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

Hi!!! 
 
Yesterday I tryed to play Kurokami using your tip... I played chi kari as ri meri... I notice that these alteration make the tune sound with a different feeling. Anyway the only reference record I have is from Masayuki Koga and listen to him I think he really play it chi dai kary...Maybe I am making a storm in a glass with water because it just a "passage note". 
 
I'm very beginner my friend... I started to read Kinko notation about a year ago... So I am very new to all this stuff and I take advantage of the forum friends to take my doubts off... So, thank you too... 
 
Peace


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#27 2008-03-01 10:28:19

nyokai
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From: Portland, ME
Registered: 2005-10-09
Posts: 613
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Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

There is only one spot in Kurokami where the "re-chi dai kari-ri" figure comes up, and yes, the chi there (marked "dai ka" in the Chikuyusha score)  should be played as a ri meri (B-flat). That is the ONLY chi in the piece that is played that way. In the Chikuyusha score it's halfway down the third line.

Again, in sankyoku the only way you play a B-flat is with the ri meri fingering, not some out-of-the-ordinary head movement from chi.

Last edited by nyokai (2008-03-01 10:31:39)

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#28 2008-03-01 11:02:32

Musgo da Pedra
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From: South of Brazil
Registered: 2007-12-02
Posts: 332
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Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

Thank you Nyokai. 
 
I will keep this information firmly in my mind, without any doubt now...


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#29 2008-03-02 02:55:00

axolotl
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From: Los Angeles
Registered: 2007-11-16
Posts: 215
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Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

nyokai wrote:

axolotl wrote:

So are there no non-passing dai kari notes that really are 'hyper-kari'?

In sankyoku, I know of no examples where a kari note is played more kari by raising the head higher than the normal kari position. It is too hard to be precise that way.

In Meian honkyoku, there are many examples of notes that are raised, via head movement, beyond the normal kari pitch (to "dai kari") and then lowered back down -- Echigo Sanya comes to mind. This is a special effect, though, not a technique for playing a particular pitch accurately.

Thank you for the clarification, Nyokai!

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#30 2009-01-16 15:00:23

Riley Lee
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From: Manly NSW Australia
Registered: 2005-10-08
Posts: 78
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Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

Jeff Cairns wrote:

...here's a question that I haven't had answered to my satisfaction....  If a note written as dai kari wasn't intended to be played as the note in question raised by playing it in a hyper kari manner, why was it written that way and not simply as the note above it played meri?  Notes being what they are, it seems that there may be something to it other than pitch.  Is it possible that more force is intended behind the the note?

Jeff, in most (all?) cases, when chi kari (A#) is found in scores of shakuhachi sankyoku parts, it is because they are meant to be played as chi kari and not ri meri. As you suggest, it had/has to do with something other than pitch, in this case with the yin/yang symbolism implied by meri and kari.

Takahashi Tone (1990 Tozan-ryu: an innovation of the shakuhachi tradition from Fuke-shu to secularism, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Florida State University) discussed this at length in the context of sankyoku as transmitted in the Tozan tradition. The conclusion I made after reading his thesis was that from a philosophical point of view, it is imperative to differentiate between chi kari (A#) and ri meri (Bb) in one's performance, if one wished to maintain the original symbolism behind the performance.

Takahashi further discusses the ambiguity of pitch as notated in shakuhachi scores, concluding that not much could be said from trans-notating a shakuhachi score without hearing the performance as well. PLEASE NOTE: he was talking about pitch ambiguity in the written notation, not in the performance!!!

BTW, I didn't change my playing (substituting chi-kari with ri-meri) even after reading Takahashi's thesis. I decided that for me, the musicality was more important than the symbolism, but that might be purely personal preference based in large part on my reluctance to change how I played these pieces.

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#31 2009-01-17 06:29:03

Justin
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From: Japan
Registered: 2006-08-12
Posts: 540
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Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

Riley Lee wrote:

BTW, I didn't change my playing (substituting chi-kari with ri-meri) even after reading Takahashi's thesis. I decided that for me, the musicality was more important than the symbolism, but that might be purely personal preference based in large part on my reluctance to change how I played these pieces.

Hi Riley
Do you suppose that the early sankyoku players were so concerned with philosophy and symbolism, over musicality? I would like to suggest that such notes spoken of above come from maintaining the original integrated "tone colour-pitch" scale structure, rather than maintaining an abstract philosophy or symbolism. I may be wrong, but that's what I was taught. See what you think:

Here's the regular scale, containing both ascending and decending notes:
ro (bright)
tsu meri (dark)
tsu (bright)
re (bright)
chi (bright)
ri meri (dark)
ri (bright)

If you transpose that to the key starting with ri, preserving the same intervals and the same sequence of light and dark tone colours, you get:
ri (bright)
ro meri (dark)
ro kari (bright)
tsu (bright)
re (bright)
u (dark)
chi kari (bright)

Or if you transpose it to start with chi you get:
chi (bright)
ri meri (dark)
ri (bright)
ro (bright)
tsu chu meri (bright)
re meri (dark)
re (bright)

(There are at least 2 more of these keys for sankyoku but I think you get the idea).
Everyone (mostly) seems to preserve this system for "re meri", rather than opting for the much easier note "tsu" which has the same pitch but bright (therefore out of place) tone colour. Getting the right pitch though for chi kari is difficult. It was easier on late Edo and Meiji shakuhachi, which were being used when the notation was made like this I suppose.

I made another thread earlier about Araki Kodo V's use of chi kari, but I'll repost that here in case it is of interest:

Justin wrote:

A while ago I mentioned about the note chi kari, and Jeff asked for some examples. So now I will share what I have been taught.

Background:
In Kinko-ryu sankyoku, there is often a note written as chi kari (or just chi, referring to chi kari). Nowadays, among the teachers I have met, they all play it as ri meri except for Araki Kodo. Kurahashi Yoshio explained it to me that in the old days, shakuhachi had chi tuned higher, so they had to control the pitch of chi, but the payoff was that they could easily play chi kari (a semitone above regular chi). He says with shakuhachi tuned as they are today, it is impossible to get the correct pitch of chi kari, so we use ri meri instead, but we should try to give it a kari feeling, not as if it were a real meri note.

(If you know any teachers still using chi kari, please say).

Araki Kodo uses both chi kari and ri meri, depending on the situation. Jeff you asked for a specific example of a song using chi kari. On Araki Kodo's box set of sankyoku recordings, the second track Touru is a good example.
[For info on that CD see this thread: http://shakuhachiforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=85&p=2
and this page: http://justinshakuhachi.googlepages.com/arakikodovcd ]

About when to use chi kari or ri meri:
Generally with Yamada-ryu use ri meri.
Generally with Ikuta-ryu koto use ri meri.

With Ikuta-ryu shamisen:
With hon-choshi tuning (ro re ro) and san sagari tuning (ro re ri) use chi kari (but not always).

How to know when to play which:
It always depends on the shamisen player's hand positions. The pitch of chi kari will always be a bit flat. That does not fit with the koto's tuning. That's why we don't play chi kari when we accompany koto. Shamisen players vary. So you have to know what the particular player is playing - what pitch is being used. If the pitch is flatter, use chi kari. If it is sharper, chi kari will sound wrong, so use ri meri. This is noticeable on longer notes. So on shorter notes where the music is fast, use chi kari as much as possible. When the note is slower and the pitch is too sharp for chi kari, then use ri meri. Ri meri is also much easier to sustain that chi kari and so gives a better sound in such longer notes.

What this emphasizes to me, is the importance of having a close relationship to and awareness and understanding of the shamisen and koto players, in order to take sankyoku to a higher level.

For an audio example of chi kari, here's Araki Kodo III and IV. There's no timer on the display but looks to be exactly half way through they use chi kari quite a lot:
http://shakuhachi.komusou.jp/kinkoryuu/ … 13359A.mp3

Best wishes

Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/

Last edited by Justin (2009-01-17 22:10:01)

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#32 2009-01-17 07:07:46

Justin
Shihan/Maker
From: Japan
Registered: 2006-08-12
Posts: 540
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Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

Riley Lee wrote:

Takahashi further discusses the ambiguity of pitch as notated in shakuhachi scores, concluding that not much could be said from trans-notating a shakuhachi score without hearing the performance as well. PLEASE NOTE: he was talking about pitch ambiguity in the written notation, not in the performance!!!

Hi again Riley
I'm not meaning to be at all argumentative, and I greatly respect your wisdom. But in case it is of interest to anyone, I would like to add something to this.

About the old sankyoku notation: often they seem ambiguous, because a note may be written as "tsu" but sometimes be played "tsu", sometimes "tsu meri", sometimes "tsu chu meri". "Re" may sometimes be "re meri", "chi" sometimes "chi kari", "chi" or "chi meri", and so on. So this could seem ambiguous. But actually I suggest that it's not ambiguous. The notation follows strict rules, but it requires the reader to be familiar with the sankyoku scales, as I described in my post above. That is not unreasonable, since the only people reading the notation were sankyoku playing shakuhachi players.

If "tsu" is written, if it is ascending, it is played "tsu", if descending, "tsu meri". On the occasion that the pitch desired breaks that rule, it will be written, for example if it would be expected to be "tsu" but is "tsu meri", on that occasion the meri will be written. And so on with the other notes.

If the key changes, it is indicated. Thus there may be for example "chi kari" written, or "re meri". Then the notation continues to follow the rules of that key, so for example further "chi kari" or "re meri" may be written simply as "chi" or "re", until the key changed again.

So if there is a piece one has never studied before, but one knows the rules of how to read the notation, there is no ambiguity and all the pitches are understood.

The difficultly comes when one plays other genres! Since a lot of the music played today does not follow the same scales as sankyoku, modern notation has to be written explicitly, not in this short-hand manner. And since modern players play this modern music, mostly they can not read the old sankyoku scores. Araki Chikuo made sankyoku popular for Kinko-ryu, and his son Araki Kodo III did a lot to notate the pieces. At first he worked with another student of Chikuo, Kawase Junsuke. Later they went their separate ways as Araki Kodo changed the shakuhachi parts making alternative melodies, and Kawase made his own school, so they published their scores seperately. The old Kawase notation uses the system I described above, as did Araki Kodo's. Current Kawase (Chikuyusha) notation has the explicit way of writting, with all meris marked. In Kodo-kai we still use the older system.

Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/

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#33 2009-01-17 22:24:32

Justin
Shihan/Maker
From: Japan
Registered: 2006-08-12
Posts: 540
Website

Re: Correct pitch, how accurate should you be?

Justin wrote:

For an audio example of chi kari, here's Araki Kodo III and IV. There's no timer on the display but looks to be exactly half way through they use chi kari quite a lot:
http://shakuhachi.komusou.jp/kinkoryuu/ … 13359A.mp3

For some reason this direct link doesn't seem to be working. To listen to the sample, go here:
http://shakuhachi.komusou.jp/kinkoryuu/kinkoryuu.html

The track is Shin Musume Dojoji. It's a great piece to play as a duet with 2 shakuhachi. The duet is one part of the original longer piece, with an accompanying part written for it. If anyone is interested in the notation please contact me privately.
For those of you who can't read Japanese, search the page for "Victor 13359" and click on the first track of the 2 on that record.

Justin
http://senryushakuhachi.com/

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