I recently went to a nagauta concert here in Tokyo, and for one of the numbers they pulled out the biggest shamisen I have ever seen! At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks, or that the musician must just be an unusually tiny guy, but afterwards my shamisen teacher told me that yes, in fact, it WAS a bass shamisen. That was the first time I had ever seen one in over 10 years of concertgoing, and certainly the first time I had heard a piece which was written to include one. I’ve been searching online, but my Japanese is fairly limited and I’ve come up empty. Anyone know anything? I’m fascinated by both the physical instrument and the sound–love to hear more!
I remember that Bachido member Gerry wrote in some thread way back about a bass shamisen. There were pictures and an explanation to it. Try searching the forums or send him a message: http://bachido.com/community/members/54
Yeah! I think I’ve seen and heard one before. Of course I can’t be sure unless there is a photo available so I can confirm that is what I saw. I remember several years ago at the Kanagi Shamisen tournament there was a guy hanging out playing a Shamisen that was Definately grotesquely large and was probably a Bass Shamisen. He let me try it for a minute and it was Definately a trippy thing! I’m surprised that that is the only time I’ve seen one though. They must be rare. Has anyone else seen/heard one?
I couldn’t find the old thread, but the picture was the first thing to come up when I Googled “bass shamisen”. If I remember, it was first used in the early twentieth century by people like Miyagi Michio who were trying to create a hybrid of Japanese and Western art music.
Here’s a link to the picture:
Great pic! Thanks!
I haven’t seen the large ones myself. When I play Bass in Nagauta, its a normal sized chuzao with thicker strings. There’s also a circular hole cut into the back side of the doh. I’ve played a few pieces and its a blast. Most of our pieces though don’t have a bass part.
Cheers,
Jon
Awesome! I woke up this morning with this question in my head: Does shamisen bass exist?
I open my e-mail and here’s my answer. 笑う
Thank you Dana for this thread! 
The concept of the bass shamisen is super intriguing and as seen in many pictures, super silly looking. From digging around online I found this project on the construction of a nice looking bass shamisen.
The thing I keep coming back to is why is every part bigger? I understand why the dou is larger, but why everything else? Why not use a tsugaru sized sao and a longer nakago to feed through the larger dou? It seems like it would be far more manageable to play and still be strong enough for the heavier strings. You should also be able to keep the thickness/depth of the dou close to the same and retain the low register.
Which brings me to my next question for the shamisen builders and engineers out there. Could you reuse the stronger sao from a tsugaru shamisen and replace the nakago to fit in a larger dou?
It depends on what you want to achieve by having the larger dou. If you just have a bigger boombox you make the sound bounce around more, but you get a muddier tone and not a lower tone pitch wise. To get the bass tone you need to tighten the strings less, but the problem you encounter is that your strings get sloppy and don’t maintain the tone. So you make the strings thicker. But then they get really stiff, so you need to make the string length longer. It’s a balance between string thickness and the length of it, to get a stable tone and how deep in pitch it should be.
As an example, an acoustic guitar has a big sound box, but doesn’t play like a bass guitar. It amplifies the sound, but does not make it lower in pitch.
Thinking over it again, it makes sense that the sao is longer is order to keep the higher notes. If the dou is bigger, you lose a percentage of the string length over the sao and with it the note range.
The bigger dou should allow for a lower tone, similar to how larger drums produce lower pitch. I wonder how much skin thickness would also play into the tone? So many acoustic experiments to try, so little budget.
Here’s two photos of what I play for Nagauta Bass if anyone’s interested. Length is the same, but we play the koma in the middle.
Tuning is different as well. For instance on Echigo Jishi, I’m tuning my first string to the second string for the regular shamisen, just an octave lower. My second string to match everyone else’s first string (and lower as well).
Cool, do you have a recording of how it sounds?
What’s the black thing on the back kawa? Is that a hole (a bass port), or a sticker?
Hi Kyle, it’s a hole on the bottom.
Karl, I’ll post a short clip this weekend. When we play it, we only strum the strings and avoid the drum entirely.
Hi Kari, let me know if you can’t get this file to play.
Nice! I like that low string!
Cool, do you play it while there are other shamisen playing, or is it for solo but with another timbre?
Yes, its always with a larger group. I’ll try and find some recordings of us playing Hanami Odori together.