Beginner's thoughts/questions on the Shamisen

Playing/Techniques
#1

Bought my first shamisen a few months back, but allowed it to collect dust until recently to give it another go.

Firstly, where i’m striking the strings, it feels like a loose rubber band. Sometimes i find myself hitting a string but producing little to no sound. I suppose I should follow through with the bachi but this also tends to bend the string to the skin and again, producing no sound. Is this an issue with my angle of attack and/or striking too far away from the koma?

My second observation is about overtones above the 6-7th position. Playing above these positions brings out this harsh overtone from the other two strings. You can easily mute them and sometimes they’re not too bad. I was wondering if this is something people are aware of and if so, what do you do about it?

anyway, thanks for reading my semi-rant. Best of luck to you guys.

#2

Hi there, welcome.

I’ll do what I can to address your issues.

1 - If your strings feel like a loose rubber band, you need to tighten them. Unless the strings are somewhat tense, you won’t get much sound out of them. They needn’t be tightened as far as say a guitar… but they should be taut.

Here is an older video on tuning your instrument

Without seeing your striking technique, I cannot adequately give advice on it. Generally speaking, you should be playing the instrument with the flat of the bachi parallel to the flat of the dou. Your strikes may vary between fully or only partly making contact with the dou - but the characteristic percussive tic of tataki bachi generally wants you to follow through completely.

Please take a look at this video. The first bit is about using your fingernail, the second part is more about bachi technique.

2 The overtone you’re hearing is likely the sympathetic sawari drone. It’s the characteristic sound of shamisen and functionally similar to what one hears on a Sitar or biwa. If yours is particularly harsh, you can adjust the intensity by raising or lowering your azuma sawari (if present) or adding/subtracting material from the yamasawari

Azuma

Yama

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#3

Hi brown, thanks for responding!

As far as the tuning goes, it’s still tuned for C/G/C. If i tune up an octave i get the feeling like the strings would break. I’m thinking i’m not playing with the bachi parallel to the dou so i will try to work on that more. I’m playing on (what i think is) a nagauta shamisen, I don’t know if this kind of tuning is just a bit low vs a tsugaru (also i believe the strings are specifically for nagauta and not tsugaru. A spare low C string i have is a bit thicker than the current one i have on the shamisen.)

And as for the sawari, it’s not this. The sound is as if you’re hitting ghost notes or a natural harmonic of sort coming from the other strings (i’m not accidentally muting them to cause this effect). I’m thinking it’s more noticeable because my shamisen really isn’t all that loud.

#4

In traditional tuning, C - G - C is 4本 / 2 尺.

This is actually on the lower end of the spectrum. Min’yo tuning fluctuates to match the singer’s key. Tsugaru, a subset of min’yo, does the same. I’ve personally been all over the scale to match my singers. When playing without accompaniment, I usually tune to C (as my ear guides me) or C# (as my teacher prefers).

Other genres (particularly nagauta and jiuta) are comparatively more structured. For examples of tunings and pieces that use them, see the attached link.

http://www.tetsukuro.net/shamisen/3_2.html

As you can see, nagauta uses both higher and lower tunings in difference pieces.

I assume that “low c string” refers to the ichi-no-ito. A thicker string will usually produce a bassier, thicker sound.

Re: Overtones

I see.

Please post a picture of your instrument and, if possible, record yourself playing it. I need more data to address the problem.

© 2020 Kyle Abbott