[Shaku] regarding meri pitch

From: Brian Ritchie (brianritchie@mac.com)
Date: Wed Oct 05 2005 - 07:13:58 PDT


Vibrato is traditionally introduced midstream on open hole pitches.
Meri notes are almost always produced using vibrato from the inception
of the note on the other hand. So there should be a wavering of pitch
on the meri notes if you're measuring them on a tuner. If you compare
the pitches of many different traditional players you will find that
there is a wide range of acceptable pitch on the meri notes, albeit
it's always less than a western half step between ro and tsu no meri or
re and u for example. However there are some modern players who use the
western pitches, particularly for shinkyoku. A lot of teachers just
instruct their students to play the meri notes as low as they can and
leave it at that. One of the best ways to find out if your meri notes
are low enough is to play with a good koto player. They'll tell you!

Tairaku


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