Here's what I think:
1. It's important to be able to produce and adjust pitch very precisely.
Honkyoku contain many passages where a pitch is played first one way (eg
many open holes) followed by a different way (many closed holes) to
emphasize a difference in tone color. An obvious example would be Hi - I
followed by Ha - Ro. If the pitches are not exactly the same the effect
is lost, and the more precise the pitch is the more dramatic the
tone-color effect.
2. Given the lack of a very consistent performing tradition when it
comes to pitch, perhaps it is best first to do exactly what your teacher
says and then work on a piece until you discover its soul for yourself
-- it may eventually reveal the best way for YOU to play those pitches.
Again, though, I think this freedom needs to be allied with an ability
to produce pitches very precisely.
3. Adjustment of pitch is in itself a musical effect -- not all this
discussion of pitch needs to be about scale. Think of the blues, or
great jazz singers, or the melismatic microtonal ornaments of Indian
dhrupad singing, or of Hamza al-Din... Often people are unaware of how
subtle pitch variation translates. A teacher may say "Play that note in
a more [fill in the blank] way" when what he or she really means, for
instance, is "Make the attack of that note a hair sharp before settling
to the usual pitch."
4. Through listening to a lot of very good shakuhachi players you pick
up a pitch vocabulary. It may be a wide vocabulary, including the pitch
deviations of many lineages and individuals. But there will be some
overarching MUSICAL consistency, and an internal consciousness --
perhaps unarticulated -- of what these differences mean. After listening
to a few old blues recordings you'll probably be singing your thirds as
"natural" thirds and your sevenths as 7/4 sevenths without knowing
that's what you're doing -- your pitch vocabulary has broadened without
recourse to theory. I think the same thing can happen with shakuhachi,
as long as you keep working on the technical ability to play any
imaginable pitch and the musical ability to hear small differences.
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