After finally succeeding in tightening the skin tight enough for the authentic tone of a tsugaru shamisen, I pull it off. Why? Find out all about it on the Bachido Blogcast!
Early showing of the blogcast, as I’m doing kawahari in the morning. Enjoy!
At first I was like, nice sound bro!
Then I was like, nooooooooooooooo!
You really had a great sound! I feel for you man, it’s the kind of thing I’d do.
oh god i feel bad for you :DDD especially at 6:30 when the shamisen looks horrible after ripping the skin 
FFFFFFFFFUUUUUU…
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.
This is pretty close to the best of the worst things that’s happened in the past 5 years, lol. Still annoying though, bro.
OMG YES FOR KEVIN GUEST APPEARANCE.
And your kawa removal technique is actually quite flawless, I must say.
this really hurt watching…
Man that sucks. I’ve totally done similar things though.
I’d love to see segments from Kevin, I think stuff like the one he recently posted would be really helpful. I’m going to return to that one once I progress a bit farther with my playing.
Kyle, I’m so gutted for you! If I could give you an e-hug, I would :(.
On the bright side, it sounded amazing so things can only get better.
Really good episode this week, very funny, loved Kevin’s guest appearance lol!
Thanks for the pity, mates! 
It’s been a while since I had such a “Doh!” (Ala Homer Simpson) moment like that.
I don’t want to shout “VICTORY!!!” yet, but as of today, I did manage to get the skin put on the right way. It still may rupture within a week, for all I know. Fingers crossed!!
Kevin! Looks like they want you! 
Glad everyone liked the episode! Boy, they’re fun to make! Yesterday, Papa said to me, “You should keep making mistakes on your shamisen. It makes for good episodes!” 
I agree, poke it with a knife next time and smile to the camera and say “Damn, this is great TV!”. Yeah, sounds like a good episode
Yeah or play Rokudan like a rockstar(/boss) and at the end smash your shamisen to wall or floor so that it bursts into pieces that would be so epic and would hurt me inside :DDDD
Karl, 'eyy… it’s all about the showbiz. If I got the timing right, that would be great TV. Of course, afterwards I’d probably have to question my sanity, but it could be worth it.
Ortjo: A double neck shamisen gets smashed by the Shamisen Demon (played by Hiroshi Nitta, Masahiro’s father) in the movie Overdrive.
Truth be told, some day I want to try doing this with the shamisen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU90PCZHy_0&feature=player_detailpage#t=124s
James actually tried that with his bass, and the headstock smashed into the ground. :-S That’s my worry about trying it with the shamisen, but fortunately, now I have an extra one to try it out with.
I feel for you Kyle I did the same thing when I first skinned my shamisen. I actually found an easier and safer way to remove my skins, but I don’t know if it would work with the type of glue you use.
With the nori I use if I screw up or am taking off a broken skin I just lay a wet cloth over the skin just enough to cover it. Let it sit for a bit and it just peals right off then you just wipe off the nori.
Ah! I used to remove skin that way, and took a lot of time doing so. but then I noticed Katoh san and Yamaguchi san would just literally rip the whole thing off, so I switched to doing that. It’s more fun too.
It is a good way for taking off nori though.
How many roads can a man walk down…
How many times can a man skin a shamisen…
Happy to hear you’ve got the new skin on with the right side up and still not broken. Keeping my fingers crossed!
I just say: “More Kevin Kmetz!” (and coffee).
How many times can a man skin a shamisen…
Haha!! Actually, it took three tries (in the same day!) to get that skin on successfully. I started at 9am and it took very little time (1~2 hours). When I almost got it to good tension, one of the clamps slipped! I assumed that the wedges in the clamps were the problem (even though they were very tight), so I roughed each wedge for better grip.
The skin was still perfectly good, so I took all the kisen off, cleaned the dou and started over. 1~2 hours later, as I got it to tension, the same exact thing happened! I’ll explain more in the next blogcast, but long story short, I found what the problem was and successfully redid kawahari one last time, and finished at 5pm.
So, as far as we know, a man can skin a shamisen three times consecutively.
Alright!! Kevin and Koffee! That we can do!