Following the example of Bruce and others:
I live in Mississippi and may be the only shakuhachi player in a 5-state
area. The closest may be in Florida and Texas. I have played Irish music
for years, and bought a cheap shakuhachi several years ago in an ethnic
music shop in Washington DC because it looked like a big, exotic penny
whistle. Needless to say the one I bought was not tuned to any particular
scale, and I had no idea how to play it, but I fooled around on it when the
mood struck me. It was not until a year ago that I really started listening
to music played on the shakuhachi, and I became entranced. I debated
purchasing a good instrument for about a year, trying to decide if I could
learn to play anything on it. I recently threw caution to the wind and
bought a student flute from Monty. It plays very nicely, and I am working
on scales and a couple tunes.
What books and tapes have you found useful learning to play shakuhachi? I
am using books by John Neptune and Carl Abbott. I read western notation and
would prefer to work with that. Neptune's book has both western and eastern
notation. Abbott's only has eastern. Neptune's book is primarily scales,
whereas Abbott's is primarily tunes. Is there a good student grade book
with western notation that has a lot of familiar tunes? I play a number of
stringed instruments, and I find it is easier to learn a new instrument if I
start off playing something I am really familiar with. Abbott has the right
idea by including some tunes like Shenandoah and Amazing Grace, but it is
all written in eastern notation. I dug out an old recorder book of
renaissance tunes and since I knew how the tunes went, I could gauge better
how closely I was coming to the correct notes. Ideally, a teacher would
help with this by giving you the proper feedback, but a shakuhachi
instruction book with tunes familiar to western musicians would help those
of us in the boondocks without access to a teacher.
Hollis Landrum
Regards,
Hollis
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