Helllllloooo everyone!
Kyle posted a video the other day of a player playing with some chords- I was wondering if anyone could whip up a chord chart like they have for guitar. I always thought the shamisen had some trouble with non-power chords, but I suppose getting further down the neck things get easier. I’m gonna start looking to see what I can pull up, but I was wondering if someone more familiar with the shamisen and digital art would be able to work faster than me.
While I haven’t added a feature for selecting specific chords and getting them mapped on the shamisen, I would recommend checking out my http://shamisen.karlhedlund.se/scaleviewer
There you first select the scale you are playing and then you can create the chords from those notes and they will be marked red.
Oof. I was worried that It would be more helpful to have notes below the 10th position. I just realized that it just repeats, I don’t know what I was thinking.
You the man Karl.
It does indeed. When I worked on it the last time I made one for guitar where it does repeat because you are more often playing there. I find it kinda disturbing though. The idea was to make the shamisen scale viewer better too, but I haven’t come around for it yet. It’s still up there but I focused on making a standardized way for many instruments. The color scheme doesn’t really work for the shamisen part. One improvement with that one is that you can select which note is the key of your song, which means you can say you are starting the scale from a open middle string for example.
http://shamisentest.karlhedlund.se/guitarscaleviewer
http://shamisentest.karlhedlund.se/scaleviewer
I’ll try and do some work on all of my online stuff in the coming weeks.
Here’s a thread on chords from a few years ago:
Gerry, I was reading through your post. The linked page seems to just make two-(different)note chords. Does that sound close enough to a three (different) note chord? I was trying to build 1-3-5 chords but there really isn’t much freedom in trying to build those.
The biggest problem in my opinion when trying to construct the chords is that the distance between the frets are too long because of two strings being tuned the same. I think you will find more luck playing 2 notes from three note chords and maybe adding the same note a second time on one of the strings.
Open strings will help you take 3 note chords since you do not need to place 3 fingers.
If you have chords with more than 3 notes you can choose to leave out one of the middle notes.
Another tip would be to tune into San Sagari as this would make the interval between strings so that you can play all notes if your fingers stretch from the 1 position to the 4 position. Too bad that you lose all that epic resonance by doing that though 
I think Kevin should read this topic and come with his advice considering he actually plays the chords well. I mostly think about the stuff 
I’m going to make a chord demo video for this. But probably not today . Next few days! Unless I get abducted by some strange alternate channel of reality that sweeps me away into other dimensions of space/time (which sometimes happens to me)
But other than that I will try my best to film a little video demonstration to help with Shami-chords!
Here y’all go!
Great video Kevin! Nice rock intro!
It’s really good with videos where you talk about the sound that’s produced.
For those who take a look at the video and aren’t that used to talking music theory you can use my site as a reference to have next to this video. You should then more easily be able to follow what Kevin says.
Go to:
http://shamisen.karlhedlund.se/scaleviewer
Kevin has tuned into A-E-A which is Niagari. That is set up by default so you only need to change the “Ichi no ito key” to A.
In the first part Kevin plays Major chords. All you gotta do is select “Major” from the “Common scales” dropdown.
This will give you all the positions that are used. You can also highlight the notes that are used in the chord by selecting from the “Chord” part.
Later in the video Kevin switches to Minor and you just have to change the Common scale part to Minor and you are set.
Awesome, Karl!
Gods i suck at this theory stuff 
i’m trying hard to play along the video but my fingers don’t even stretch that far…
“let’s put the g here and the c here” Sorry kevin but i’ve got no idea where here is :DDD
And yes i’m trying to use Karl’s scale viewer (and yes it’s “tuned” right)
Oooooh minor… okayy :DD and uh… so at 4:10 the positions are
6 ichi
7 ni
9 san
and this is C major ?..
and the minor being
4 ichi
4 ni
6 san
…?.. i feel a bit stupid :DD
Sorry Ortjo
Basically the root C major has C on position 3 (Ichi no Ito)
G on position 3 (Ni no Ito) and E on position 6 (San no Ito)
I’m flipping the Ichi and San no Ito to create inversions etc.
Yeah that was about the only part i got right but the stretch is crazy…
And when you move it to position 6 (ichi) is it still the same 6(ichi) 6(ni) and 9 (san)?
And the C minor is 4(Ichi) 4(ni) 6 (san)?
CHORDS ! Yeah! Hey! I made a new song tonight with chords. I didn’t write it though. It’s a Japanese song called Koi Koi Koi yup! Please check it out Bachido!!!
https://www.youtube.com/shamikami
Ayo thanks for all the replies! I’ve been busy with school, I’mma check out what you said in your video soon- or rather try it out. Mike Penny had said he was gonna try to publish his chord chart, but I think it may have gotten derailed…
Thanks Anthony and please be sure to check out the Japanese song link in the above comment. I got inspired by this thread and started thinking about chordal arr. of melodies etc. the song is called Koi Koi Koi, it’s a simple tune but I had a lot of fun experimenting with adding chords! Thanks for bringing up the topic ! It’s cool how we all affect each other from long distances through this website ! Anyway talk to you soon!
I was actually trying to view the link above, and I couldn’t load it for some reason- I noticed it’s m.youtube, did you copy a mobile link?