Re: [Shaku] Pitch

From: charlesturner9 (charlesturner9@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Apr 18 2005 - 21:51:00 PDT


Justin wrote:

> Actually, I noticed
> also the great contrast between clarinet and
> shakuhachi when I heard them together in Japan. The
> clarinet sounded so clumsy.. no maybe not clumsy, but,
> so unmanoeverable.

I had the opposite experience recently. I heard a clarinettist play a solo
piece by Christian Wolff at the New England Conservatory, and thought to
myself - boy, he can play tones of piercing shrillness right down to
whispers of nothing, and in a pitch ambit that my shakuhachi can't come
close to. At the time it almost made me wonder whether I should be studying
a Western instrument instead, but then I remembered the honkyoku and the
other repertoire that I am studying, and I felt good about shak again.

> This brings questions:
> On those occasions when I thought like that, was it
> because I was thinking in Japanese pitch? Was it that
> in most of my shakuhachi peices that note would be a
> slightly different pitch, and because of that I
> noticed the difference?

I think that there is a real emotive effect when a shak player crescendos on
a note and the pitch slightly rises at the same time that the timbre and
dynamic changes. I love that, subtle or not.

> Or, do they simply always play that
> note at that pitch - just a standard recipe of 12
> fixed pitches?

The equal-tempered scale is a compromise made so that keyboards can play in
all keys (sorta). Non-keyboard instruments are a different ballgame.
Stringed instruments make subtle adjustments in pitch to escape the tempered
scale and make the chords better in tune (if they are good players). Of
course the harpsichord can't do that...

> Had OTHERS actually heard it at another
> pitch comportable to me, would they have been okay? I
> don't know. Perhaps my ears have gone crazy!

Hey, crazy ears are good!

> I'd love to hear feedback on this. From anyone! And
> also from any people into classical western music. Is
> there really this choice?

I'm a classical music person, and I sing in a lot of small vocal ensembles
in which tuning is a huge issue. Yes, I think there are choices that
sensitive singers and players make to make things sound better. We may not
be doing microtones intentionally, but we make pitch adjustments all the
time - sometimes deliberately and sometimes it just seems natural.

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