Hi, you all,
I'm Hans, a flute teacher from Belgium and in love with the shakuhachi. I also manage a website for flutists, you might want to visit it some time, you'll find some shakuhachi links as well. Maybe sometime I'll make me a shakuhachi homepage too?
With a colleague, we bought us a student shakuhachi from Monty. And yes, we are absolute beginners, so forgive me if I ask stupid questions. Frank is not yet on the Net, I'll sometimes write something for him.
Since all of you are probably better than me, I hope to gather very interesting information from this list.
I now only have 3 books: the Blasdel and Koga manual for beginners, plus a collection of pieces from a book entirely in Japanese, so I can't give you the title or writer.
Currently I practise about an hour a day. Mainly breathing exercises and easy pieces to get used to the notation and note-range of the instrument. I still get dizzy when playing which makes me practise in 2 half hour shunks. This prevents me from hitting the ground. This dizziness is peculiar, I never get dizzy when playing the flute. Also I manage about 30 seconds of flute playing, but only some 15 seconds on the shakuhachi. I hope time helps here.
Also, another thing struck me. When beginners play the flute, they encounter a virtual barrier when they reach the middle G and A. I get the same feeling with the shakuhachi. I catch myself playing more stressed when playing the higher kan register from re on.
The shakuhachi makes me sweat, dizzy, .... and I Iove it !
From a beginner,
Kind regards,
Hans Supply,
Email at : Hans.Supply@advalvas.be BELGIAN FLUTE PAGES
Visit us at : http://www.ping.be/flute Professional Flute Playing Resources
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