i hope this will be new enough to get some attention …
as a greenhorn in playing the shamisen i started to collect some “easy education literature”. unfortunately there’s no book to get that provides a cd or maybe online media to get a sound sample for the songs in there. it seems to be a matter of luck to find something suitable on youtube for instance. what do you think about starting a collection of samples by experienced players for those who want to learn?
Oh, I’m glad you mentioned that! Actually, I used to have a section called ‘Index of Songs’ on the old site which had recordings of all the songs in Shamisen of Japan, as well as many minyo. Nuts, I’ll have to ask my brother where we can host them now.
thanks a lot, kyle! this “index” would be very helpful in case of your book’s content. unfortunately there is nothing comparable to find for other books. may i post some links to books (and content-lists) i bought?
in the book i’m currently working with there’s a children song called “choocho”. with some small changes it is possible to play the german folk- or children song “hänschen klein”. may be i’ll post a sound sample within the next days. nothing special but interesting for a shamisen-greenhorn like me …
thanks a lot, connor! it is nothing special but i think it funny to play a widely known german folk song on an exotic instrument as the shamisen - or in my case a wooden gottan - is
there’s quite a lot of information about history, technical details, equipment, accesoires and - of course - some scores. unfortunately all is written in japanese language. there’s no index of the songs included but i’ve tried to figure out some of them: kuroda bushi, sakura sakura, akatonbo, yuyake koyake, haru no ogawa, furusato, soran bushi, saitara bushi, kokiriko bushi, shimabara chikou no komori uta. there are some more but i don’t know or cannot read the titles.
if someone’s interested in i can share an index of songs (a long one) but for today i just share the songs i use to play in my exercises: chou chou (with some changes i play it as the german folk song “hänschen klein”), sakura, furusato, takeda no komoriuta, akai kutsu, chatsumi, kojo no tsuki (there are two versions), hanayome ningyou, akatonbo, kasan no uta.
Ah, unfortunately I can’t get them back the way the site is now. I am talking with a professional web designer about doing a full overhaul which will make it easier/possible to have those features back. Hopefully that will be made sometime in 2022.