[Shaku] RE: dokyoku pitches- Koga Sensei's ideas re tuning

From: Joel Taylor (joel.g.taylor@comcast.net)
Date: Wed Oct 05 2005 - 20:44:53 PDT


Justin,

Thanks for your reply and the tables. Interesting!
I'm not surprised to hear that the variation re Ro dai meri is mostly on the
sharp side rather than the low side, now that I think about it...I may have
been imagining things or just projecting in light of my own attempts to go
super low on Ro dai meri...

In any case, I was thinking more of Watazumido and of Tanaguchi and Okuda
than Yokoyama...
Watazumido's playing seems to me to be all over the map, more so than any
other player.

My ears tell me the degree of variation is fairly broad from one player to
another but I've never tried to do a systematic study of the issue.

Masayuki Koga, "Shakuhachi, Japanese Bamboo Flute", copyright 1978,
Japanese Music Institute, San Francisco, CA

has some interesting
speculations re the honkyoku micro-tuning that run from about pg 125 to 151.

on pg 125 Koga has a diagram for the bottom honkyoku "tetrachord" which
seems to give

ro as 0 cents
tsu no meri as 56 cents
tsu as 238 cents
(!!!This is a wide major second above Ro... I would think 266-294, a narrow
minor 3rd, would be more likely but this is what the diagram seems to show)
re as 498 cents (Perfect 4th)

Koga is apparently interested in using extended just intonation as a
possible rationalization for the honkyoku tunings.
But his prose makes it clear that this is his personal speculation, and that
he considers micro-tuning fluctuations to be a matter of "grasping reality
deeply enough."

It would be interesting to see what he thinks about these issues now that so
much time has passed since this book was written. I would also like to know
what some of the other Japanese master players think about this issue.

You can get the book from Monty, I think.

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