Hi!
I am Tohru OKUDA.
I hope you can understand my poor english letter.
I learned both Tozan (about 8 years) and Kinko (about 14 years from
Kuniyoshi Sugawara, he is great!) in Japan.
The difference between these shcools is style of notation. Shapes of the
edge of instrument is also different, but instrument is not different
essentially. (Indeed, I use both types of instruments)
On play, decoration of note (Atari) is different.
But, I think that the most important difference is numbers of scores. If
you want to play modern tunes, it is hard to obtain the Kinko style score.
Recent tunes (after period of Miyagi Michio) are almost being written only
in the Tozan style or 5-lined normal western style score.
In the field of the Traditional music, I think Kinko style of play is more
natural. Because most of the traditional shakuhachi players (such as Goro
Yamaguchi, Reibo Aoki, Katsuya Yokoyama, and Kifu Mitsuhashi) belong to
Kinko school, it is easy to obtain CDs of traditional music.
From these points, I recommend to learn both of notations (at least until
you can read scores). If you can read score, you can translate it to
appropriate style that you used to.
To learn how to play a certain tune is very difficult without teacher. But
the most important point is quality of your sounds. You can learn it from
your teacher, but not from SCHOOL. After you become to paly tunes with good
sound, you are able to copy or learn another style of school.
All the best
Tohru OKUDA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 12 2000 - 13:23:57 PST