To those seeking advice on playing guides to help them in their initial
steps:
My first half year of playing shakuhachi was on my own. I obtained copies
of two playing guides:
Carl Abbott's Blowing Zen
and
Taniguchi's How to Play the Shakuhachi.
Carl's book came with an accompanying tape, and Taniguchi's came with a
disk. (I couldn't imagine trying to learn shakuhachi on my own without at
least examples to listen and compare to - so an accompanying disk or tape is
absolutely essential in my opinion.)
Carl Abbott's book is very, very good for one's first steps. He provides a
dozen or so very short songs - using basic notes, and has clear explanations
on the simple little things that at first seem very daunting. It is a good
first book to pick up. However- once his book moves to the more
sophisticated works, he explanations become a bit more complicated, and at
one point, sort of uncomprehensible. Of course, this is just my humble
opinion. I think this is perhaps more indicitive of the genre of music in
general than just his book. That is - at a certain point, if you wish to
progress in classical shakuhachi study, you will need to receive the
tutelage of a teacher. But from my experience, this is a great first book,
and could easily keep someone busy for half a year. (Also - a sizable
portion of Carl's book is on making shakuhachi. If you don't have
asspirations of making your own bamboo shakuhachi, you might be a bit
annoyed that a large portion of the book is spent on this topic.)
Taniguchi's book has different strengths and weaknessess. If someone was
only picking up this book to start with, I am sure they would be very lost
to figure out the notation and finer nuances of playing basic shakuhachi?
Why? There is no explanatory text in the book - only general diagrams. My
impression is that the book was not really intended to be used on its own,
but as a guide to go along with Taniguchi's class at Oberlin University. If
I hadn't had Carl's book to have given me the very basics, Taniguchi's book
would have been a waste of time and money. But- this book provides some
wonderful folk music, that is fairly easy to play, and the disk itself is a
pleasure to listen to. I have been playing almost for a year now- and I use
this book all the time. (I really enjoy the songs.) Carl's guide got me
going, but I haven't touched it in a while.
Hope this was of help....
And if someone wants to REALLY ambitious with the FAQ page- how about a
compendium of shakuhachi book reveiws in the spirit of Amazon.com?
Stav
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 09:09:51 PST