Ichi-no-ito pro player observations

Playing/Techniques
#1

I observed two things about the rich ichi-no-ito tone that most pro players manage to get when watching a few videos today.

The first thing is about the normal way to play notes on ichi-no-ito with the ring finger. Now most of of us have heard that the thumb should remain stationary and it is just the ring finger that does the very slight slide to get that nice tone. Personally that has been hard but I just realized the way to make your brain get super tight muscle memory for the perfect pitch. If you watch a pro playing shamisen in slow motion (can be done on YouTube) you will see that the ring finger first does a slide, and then ends with the hand rotating a bit. It almost looks like person running and stopping suddenly and ends up standing straight (Hell of a comparison). At first I thought this was simply because the player’s hand was too small to comfortably move it all the way, but the good thing about doing this is that it is easier for you to stop in the right place and not slide too far. Try it out!

The second thing is that pro players bend the string a bit, and I believe this is one subtle key to a great sound because together with your slide it creates a wavy vibrato both horizontally and vertically. Compare that to a clinically clean slide without any bending. I’m sure you will prefer the bending way. I recently heard that Steve Vai (famous guitar player) is one player who utilizes this on guitar and I think that’s what made me think of this. Try it out!

And final reminder, don’t kill the vibration in the skin by holding the bachi on the skin after the snap unless you go for maebachi!

#2

Great observations! I’m going to try out the vibrato thingy you describe here. I’ve always been strict about not bending a string like a rock/blues guitar but I’m going to try a little subtle touch of it now to see how it feels! Bachi On Karl!

#3

Cool! I just find it inspiring to try to get the same sound as I hear. Perhaps some of it is in the quality of the wood and the skin and maybe even the bachi, but it has always felt like the sound comes from the vibrato and slide so I try anything I observe.

Perhaps I am just mistaken about this but if I think about it, it would theoretically create more unique sounds when doing a slight bend because if you only slide you only get a linear modification of the sound until you stop sliding. At first I thought bending the string would be totally useless because you have access to the whole pitch range with a fretless instrument. But lately I’ve seen the slight bend in many pro players technique and compared to those who do not use it I would say it gives the tone an extra dimension. Or I’m just going completely mad.

The way Steve Vai apparently does this wavy vibrato is to utilize that the strings are elevated on top of the frets. So when you move the finger between the two frets the string gets longer or shorter depending on the direction. It’s cool but hard.

#4

It took me a while to get out of the habit of doing string bends vs. slides. For a while I couldn’t figure out why it always feel flat.

Part of learning a new instrument is understanding its limitations, i.e. the borders of one’s sandbox. To me, that’s the coolest part.

I’m still pretty awful, though.

© 2020 Kyle Abbott