This from David Wheeler:
Hope the following helps.
debido
In classical music, pitch and tuning is usually indicated as follows:
eg. Koto's 1st string = 1.6 Shakuhachi's RO, or RI, or whatever,
OR
eg. Shamisen's 1st string = 1.8 Shakuhachi's Ro, or Ri, or whatever,
ETC.
These are absolutes; i. e. "Make the real pitches match."
These instruments and their notations usually deal in actual pitch.
An exceptions could be when a modern koto piece (or part) is written
in western notation, and the tuning's range covers the stave best
when it is transposed up or down. Still, in a case like this, the
koto player just assigns a pitch to each string, with accidental
sharps indicating oshi (press-raised pitches).
Dale may have found (in a Miyagi piece, notated for shaku by Seibi
SATO, for example) a notated koto part different from what he is
hearing, and was led astray by this. But that whole deal of having a
b flat trumpet, an e flat alto sax, etc. does not exist in Japan
(thankfully!). Hey, with any of those instruments, you can read and
play in concert pitch, anyway (if you so desire and learn how). What
a waste of time!
The problem with Japanese music notation (which makes non-concert
pitch notation look like small potatoes) is the fact of dedicated
notation, which has three musicians (eg. koto, shami, shaku) reading
completely different notation systems, despite the fact that they are
talking about the same pitches. This is the problem with
instrument-specific prescriptive notation systems which tell the
performers to, for example: blow "all holes closed (Ro)", now blow "2
holes open (Re)", etc., as the shami player is being told pluck "1st
string 1st postion", now play 2nd string 1st position", etc. as the
koto player is reading "pluck 5th string, now pluck 7th string, which
has the three playing in unison (assuming they have tuned in a
particular way), but unable to know that until they learn each
other's notation systems.
Regards,
eB
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