I don’t know the correct term for ‘alternate picking’ on a shamisen, but is there a good way to do it with a plastic bachi? The plastic bachi has 0 flex, so it keeps getting caught in the strings whenever I try, but I thought there might be a better way…
Thanks in advance!
Hi,
In my opinion the flexibility of the bachi has almost nothing to do the alternate picking, called “sukui”. The flexibility helps when striking downwards to get the snap. You just gotta hang in there! If you make a short video where you illustrate the problem we can help you better.
Yes. Please make a video example. It’s quite difficult to know exactly what anyone is experiencing with their Shamisen practice until we can all see it firsthand in a visual example.
But even without one I’ll share a few ideas. Almost everything having to do with playing Shamisen has to do primarily with finding the most relaxed, efficient and natural way to produce any kind of tone. Wether a powerful note or a soft, gentle melody. If your Bachi is getting caught in the strings on an upstroke as you describe, then chances are you are striking from a very awkward angle. The downstroke or tataki should feel like your hand is falling naturally and making contact with minimal effort. The upstroke or Sukui should feel almost like nothing (unless your are playing a loud upstroke with an “accent”) It should be like you simply lifted the edge of your Bachi through the strings and just like that a note was produced. If you are trying to “get” the upstroke and are putting a lot of effort into it and getting awkward results then try taking a break and coming back to it later with a clear mind. Next try to approach the string from a completely different angle. Sooner or later you’ll discover an angle that works in which your string no longer gets caught and you can feel an effortless flow of the Bachi up and down , into the string and up through the string and down into the string again.
Remember you’ll progress a lot faster spending 10 minutes to find the right shape in which to form your Bachi hand then spending a year pounding out a bunch of effort with an inefficient Bachi form.
I am coming from a nagauta perspective, but for this it won’t be much different, I think. Just hold the point of the bachi against the string and look at the angle. If the upstroke presents the flat side of the bachi to the string, it will catch. Lower the tail of the bachi a bit so that only the thin edge of the bachi point hits the string. I agree that a relaxed feel is necessary. And, it is better to under-play the upstroke–I mean getting too far away for the upstroke to sound, than getting in too close, which will cause you to hang up. For a sustained alternation, start too far out and slowly move in. It really doesn’t take much to get it to sound. Once you get used to this, you will be able to find the sweet spot right away. Also, make sure your position for holding the bachi and for your arm on the body of the shami are stable and the same every time. Finally, this might be just a nagauta technique, but some players put the little finger of the bachi hand against the skin–this gives you some reference to always be in the same spot (nagauta only hits one spot, so the ‘moving target’ technique of Tsugaru might make this impossible–I dunno).