For sankyoku, being in tune with the koto and shamisen is essential.
This is art music with a set score and a fairly determined performance
practice. In the pieces I know, a re-meri is a different "spelling" for
an F pitch, as described by Chris B.
As for honkyoku, it seems there are many honkyoku traditions. If
everybody were learning from a teacher and this list didn't exist, there
would be no perceived discrepancies -- everyone would follow his or her
teacher and do just fine. Then if you changed teacher or lineage at some
point, you'd make the necessary adjustments. At some point -- after many
years of study -- hopefully one ends up a confident musician as well as
a student and can pick and choose what advice to follow.
It is possible to apply theory to any traditional music and come up with
a bunch of shoulds based on scales, tempered tunings, just tunings,
microtonal tunings, etc. etc. Most of this is after-the-fact thinking,
useful for the survival of academia but not particularly important for
our survival as a musical species. More interesting, I think, is to
notice actual practice -- the way the music is played by different
excellent musicians and teachers. The wonderful thing about traditional
music as opposed to art music is that it evolves and branches as a
living organism, and that you can follow a DESCRIPTIVE (actual practice)
grammar rather than a PRESCRIPTIVE (theoretical) grammar.
Justin . wrote:
>Hi all
>I've just come down from the mountains. Glad to see
>such a discussion about re-meri! Well what Chris has
>said is what I thought, there being re chu meri betwen
>re and tsu, and re meri being the same pitch as tsu
>but a different colour. The thing was that from a
>previous teacher I was taught re meri as having it's
>pitch ABOVE tsu, but only just. I.e. a pitch somewhere
>in between tsu chu meri and tsu. I was really curious
>whether anyone else had be taught such, but it seems
>that many people are playing re meri as re chu meri!
> So has anyone ever come across re meri as this
>microtone above tsu? Sounded "mysterious", but I had
>heard that shakuhachi sometimes deals in microtones.
>Just that after that I never heard that again. Maybe
>it was an "old" way? Or maybe just a mistake?
> Best wishes to you all, and so happy to see
>discussion.
> Justin.
>
>--- Christopher Blasdel <yohmei@gol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Dear All,
>>
>>I see there is some confusion concerning the
>>Kinko-style fingering of
>>re-meri. Let me see if I can explain.
>>
>>
>[...]
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