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...from Kakizakai Kaoru (translation by Zachary Braverman; lots more
available at: http://www.kotodama.net/shakuhachi/tips.html ):
[My apologies in advance to those among us who suffer under the yoke
of a dialup connection for the length of this post--I think it's
worth the wait; and also to those who may be 'against poetic imagery
with respect to sound quality'.--eB]
March 1999
On Breathing
In order to breathe out into the shakuhachi, you first have to take a
breath in. How you breathe in affects how you breathe out.
We often hear that abdominal breathing is good, but it is more
complicated than that. [Translator's note: Abdominal breathing is
when you breathe such that your abdomen/stomach area expands on the
in-breath, whereas chest breathing is where your lungs/chest expand
on the in-breath. Try placing a hand on your tummy to see which you
are doing. If your hand bulges outward when you breathe in, you are
breathing abdominally; if it draws in closer to your body on the
in-breath, you are chest breathing. Abdominal breathing elicits a
relaxation response too, by the way.] The difference between
abdominal or chest breathing is in how your lungs expand and
contract. In abdominal breathing, your lungs expand vertically as
your diaphragm draws them downward. In chest breathing, your lungs
expand in/out - they open up like French doors when you breathe in.
The crucial difference here is how much control you have during
out-breaths. The fact is that you have much more control over
out-breaths in abdominal breathing because you have more muscles in
that area to control the action. This means that abdominal breathing
gives more control for long, soft notes, or sudden loud ones.
So, the question becomes: How do you get better at abdominal
breathing? I mentioned above that more muscles are involved in
abdominal breathing. That means that making it slightly more
difficult to take an in-breath encourages abdominal breathing. For
example, try breathing in with your mouth wide open, then through
your nose. You are likely to find that you naturally do chest
breathing in the first instance and abdominal breathing in the second.
There are many reasons why you should not breathe in through your
mouth playing shakuhachi: losing your optimal angle or drying out
your mouth are just two of these. Now we can add making it more
likely to chest breathe to the list.
This is why you should breathe through your nose. However, sometimes
breathing in through your nose can take too much time. So, one
technique I use is to begin breathing in through my nose
(abdominally), then continue and finish the breath through my mouth.
It is an interesting phenomenon that even if you switch mid-breath
from your nose to your mouth, it will stay an abdominal breath.
Try it yourself, such as in your daily Ro practice. It won't come
immediately, but eventually you will find yourself breathing both
abdominally and quickly if you start the in-breathe from your nose
and then continue it through your mouth.
April 1999
On Breathing, Pt. II
In last month's tip, I talked about abdominal breathing and the
benefits of starting breaths through the nose and continuing through
the mouth.
However, I received many emails opposing this advice, saying that
"you should breathe in through the mouth" or that "breathing through
the nose takes too much time". So, I decided to do some research on
the Internet.
Practically everybody for every instrument advises abdominal
breathing. However, there is much less consensus on exactly where to
breath in from. I found people advising such diverse things as
"breathe through your mouth, except in special circumstances",
"breathe through your mouth as far as you can, then even more through
your nose", "breathe through your nose as though you were smelling a
flower", etc., etc. There were so many disparate opinions, it seems
the only thing that is agreed upon is that it's hard to breathe
through your nose if it's completely stuffed up!
However, it seems that most people use their noses for in-breaths.
Even those who say they breathe in through their mouths talk about
difficulty when their nose is stuffed, which to me indicates that
they are actually using their nose.
However, what is important is that you be able to breathe in quickly,
quietly, and in large volumes. Any method that enables this is fine.
Try different ways of abdominal breathing through your nose until you
hit upon the way that's most natural and efficient for you.
August 2001
A Breath "Nozzle"
I have long suggested that people blow ten minutes of Otsu-no-Ro per
day to develop good sound and good tone. I have also suggested that
increasing the volume of the inside of your mouth can help you gain a
smoother sound.
Everybody possesses different images of what they are doing when they
blow on the shakuhachi, so I have used many such images to describe
suggestions of what to do. Here is one that I think works
particularly well.
Obviously, your breath must pass through your lips to get to the
flute. However, you might have difficulties if you think of your lips
as the place where the breath leaves your body. Instead, try thinking
of the breath leaving your body from a place much further back in
your mouth.
Try imagining the "nozzle" where your breath leaves your body as
lying somewhere farther back in your mouth. If you think this way,
the extra tension you may be holding in your lips will disappear, and
your tone will become smoother.
Thus, my advice is to blow from further back from a "nozzle" inside
your mouth rather from your lips. Try it and see how it works.
October 2000
Breath Control
In my 2/99 column, I talked about playing very quite notes, and how
there was great musical value in playing very small, quiet notes.
This time, I would like to talk about something related from the
point of view of breath control.
I often ask beginners to play quiet notes for me. One thing that is
very interesting is that the length of the notes they play is the
same for small notes as for louder notes (and, since they are
beginners, there is not much difference in volume between their loud
and soft notes). This is because they don't have very good control of
how their breath leaves their lips, and, like air leaving a balloon,
it all goes out at once.
What is required is breath control. The most basic form of breath
control is not letting out any breath at all. For instance, when
blowing long tones of Ro, people often start blowing out immediately
after they have taken an in-breath. This is one chance for exercising
breath control they are wasting.
Here is my advice. After you take your in-breath, pause very briefly
before letting it out. And, when you do begin to breath out, begin
the out-breath very slowly and gradually. Practice making the
beginning of the out-breath ever more slow and ever more gradual.
This will help you make great strides in controlling your breathing.
Large, short bursts of breath and sound are very important, but so
are long, subtle pianissimo's that seem to vanish into nothing.
April 1998
Blowing High Ro
I hear from lots of players that they don't have a lot of success
with blowing Ro. The fact is, it's hard to get the sound you want.
I'd say there is no one at all who could get a sound they'd be
satisfied with 100 times out of 100 tries. Indeed, if there were
someone who did, that would simply mean that they aren't trying to
improve. At any level you play at, you should always be striving to
improve. This means it's natural not to be satisfied with your sound.
How, then, do you get this better sound? If you can't get a good Ro
until you are fully warmed up, then that's possibly a sign that you
have too much tension in and around your mouth. In other words, you
are using so much muscle to blow at full power that the muscles
around your mouth need to warm up before they are up to the task.
This way of blowing tires you out quickly.
Try to relax as much as possible, so that you will be able to play
for longer stretches. To do this, increase the inner volume of your
mouth. Some images you can try for this are blowing with your mouth
shaped like you are taking an inbreath, or like you are trying to
suppress a yawn.
Something similar can be said for those who have trouble with the
higher octave. One way to produce a high octave note is to increase
the speed of the air coming out of your mouth. If you do this by
tightening up the muscles around your mouth to decrease the size of
your lip opening (particularly the vertical space between your lips),
you will end up with a lot of white noise in your sound. To get a
smoother sound, try using the image of "blowing lots of air farther,
just like trying to blow out a candle beyond arm's reach.
It's also effective to try blowing notes as softly as you can in the
high octave. One important part of the practice of blowing Ro is
learning how to relax your mouth.
November, 2004
Blow Through The Note
The way a note ends can determine the impact of the whole note.
If the note should end with a nice long, clean taper, but at the end
volume, pitch, or color drops off or changes abruptly, then it can
ruin the whole thing. Ending notes smoothly without ruining their
beauty is one of the most important aspects of playing shakuhachi,
and unquestionably one of the hardest.
I once heard a karate expert talk about how he broke wooden bats on
his shin. The secret, he said, was to imagine that the bat was
farther away than it actually was. The reason is that it's a
fundamental human instinct to slow down right before reaching the
bat, and you can only break the bat by keeping maximum speed and
kicking through the bat. Professionals in sports like tennis and golf
say the exact same thing: hit through the ball.
Therefore, when playing, imagine or pretend that the end of the note
is beyond where you actually need it to be. This will dramatically
increase the stability and effect of the end of your notes.
In other words: blow through the note.
March 1998
More on Blowing Ro
It has now been one year since I began this Shakuhachi Tips column. I
hope it is helpful to at least some people. For this month's tip, I
would like to return to the basics and talk about blowing Ro again.
Is there anybody out there who has blown Ro every day for 10 minutes
for this past year? It sounds easy, but is very hard in practice to
accomplish over time, which is why Watazumi said that "Whoever blows
Ro 10 minutes a day can become a master."
I think many people find it difficult to continue this practice
because they see it as merely practicing Ro, which would indeed be
boring. Instead, how fruitful it will be depends on how honestly you
can observe yourself and how inventive and creative you can be in
your investigation of your own playing.
Here are some things to question yourself about:
* Where is your mouth too tense?
* How is the breath stream hitting the blowing edge?
* Why don't your notes start out the way they should?
* Why don't your notes end the way they should?
* Why can't you play with enough volume?
* What happens when you shift the flute just slightly off
kilter on purpose?
* How long can you play one extended note (softly OK)?
* Can you use up all your breath in 3 seconds? How about 2?
* Looking at the mirror, do your arms or hands have excess
tension in them?
* How is your posture?
* How does your individual flute's pitch change as it gets warmed up?
* How does this differ in summer and winter?
* How can you get the tone color of Katsuya Yokoyama? How about
Goro Yamaguchi?
* It's easy to get a good Ro when you're warmed up, but how do
you get one first time you blow through the flute?
* Etc etc etc.........
There's way too much to do in a mere 10 minutes!
By investigating your own playing relentlessly, and by using
creativity and ingenuity, you can become your own best teacher.
I heard that a world-famous baseball team in Cuba is forbidden from
practicing when the coach isn't there, because repeating bad habits
will cause them to become ingrained and incurable. Shakuhahci is the
same way, but it is impossible to have someone looking over our
shoulder all the time. Instead, we must become our own most stern
teacher.
Are we always playing our best? How can we play better? It is this
attitude that blowing Ro cultivates. Never think of it as just
practicing a single note.
March 1997
Mouth Shape
How much thought have you given to the space between your lips when
you blow, the part where the air stream comes out?
Do you experience any of the following?
1. Otsu turns to kan (higher octave) in the middle of playing.
2. You still have breath, but the note dies suddenly.
3. You have a difficult time with meris.
4. You have a difficult time making good yuri (vibrato).
5. Your tone color is "hard" with no expansiveness in your tone.
The cause for these problems can be with the shape of the space
between your lips, which can cause the point of sound production to
be small. It's important to make this point as large as possible.
When the point of sound production is too small, even a slight
variation in your blowing can cause you to miss it. This can cause
1-2 above. You change the angle of blowing when playing meri or yuri,
which can cause you to slide off the sound producing point if it's
too small. This can cause 3-4 above. Also, overtones (notes above a
perfect fifth higher than the note you're playing, or overtones of
the higher octaves) can become "hard" (5 above).
Some absolute beginners are told to pull their lips strongly to the
side to get a note. This can indeed help focus the air to get a note,
but it results in a very small point of sound production, causing the
five problems above. Remember, it's important to make the "sweet
spot" of sound production as large as possible to get a good, robust
sound.
This kind of instruction is always included at Shakuhachi Kenshu-Kan
master classes. Since everybody blows a different way, I can't
describe concrete ways to get a larger sweet spot here without
leading to misunderstanding. This needs to be done by a qualified
teacher.
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