During my weekly time-wasting (well, “brain-resting”) on youtube, imagine my surprise (and delight!) when I happened upon an interview with Bachido member Liam Morgan!!
Super cool stuff, buddy! That was a nice interview. 
Anywho, just thought I’d share that.
Nice work Liam! What kind of temperature changes destroyed the skin?
Thanks guys!!
Kyle - thank you, you gotta let me know though, is my wrist/bachi technique anygood??? Feel free to be harsh 
Karl - thanks Karl! well I was living in this really horrible house that got very very cold. I cam home one day and played the shamisen and thought “hey thats sounds kool, it sounds deep and tsugaru-esque”, then I turned it over and the back skin had split and was moist (it pains me to type that gross word). About a week later the same thing happened to the front, but this time it was really wet and felt very very cold :(.
L
awesome! 
good interview and really good playing! thanks for sharing Kyle
and theres a japanese version of the interview if you want to hear Liam speak japanese :DD and crap for the broken shamisen Liam
How did the skin become moist?
Your bachi hand looks quite decent. In the interview, you said that it’s hard on your wrist. If it’s getting tired or hurting, try relaxing it more. It should be so relaxed that the bachi almost falls out of your hand (but doesn’t)
One way to “train” yourself to relax is to shake out your hand and try to make it limp as possible. Then, pick up the bachi and start playing, keeping that loose feeling as much as you can.
When you relax more, you’ll notice the tone change. (I did, at least)
Kyle - Phew! That’s good to know. Thank you very much for the kind words :). I did say it was hard on my wrist, Basically it does if I try to speed up. However, recently I have been actually practicing instead of playing, if you know what I mean. I’ve been taking in what you guys have been saying about Shamisen players focusing on their tone and bachi strike rather than playing scales etc. It’s such a loud instrument that you do always feel a little bit like you have an audience. Patience is definitely the key, I just get paranoid about my wrist due to the obvious hazards of having it in that position.
Orto - Thank you very much! Sorry about my terrible Japanese though.
Karl - I’m not really sure to be honest. I wiped the skin like always, put it in the case, The next day I came home and it was really cold and small drops of water where dripping from the hole in the skin. I knew it was going to happen but it happened after a month. I remember thinking “I wish I could have at least tore it myself, like with some sort of ultra hard bachi strike”
Sorry Ortjo I spelt your name wrong!
haha no probs Liam. And your japanese is always gonna be better than mine :DD
Hello Liam,
Nice interview.
As for your skin breaking, the moisture sounds like the biggest problem. I was warned by my teacher never to get to skin wet or even moist. I would suggest that you buy things that remove moisture from the air in your shamisen case. You can buy the ones for clothes or shoes and put a few in your case. That should really improve the life span of your skin. If you have some in your case already, it wouldn’t hurt to put more in. If you had a little money available, I would suggest a dehumidifier for the room where you keep your instrument. Another suggestion is to try to keep your shamisen at a relative temperature. i.e. Don’t store it in a cold place and then practice in a warm place, keep it in the room you practice in as long as the room itself isn’t affected by big temperature changes. I hope this helps you and any others who might be worried about the care of their skin.
Thanks for the tip Jeremiah, it will come in handy when I have a properly skinned shamisen! The skin on it now could never rip, its nowhere near tight enough
Just going to jump right in here~
As for your bachi/wrist technique, I don’t want to be the one to contradict, but the bachi should be a little more parallel to the skin, and the wrist should move less.
How do I know? I literally had the same thing corrected on me about a week ago lol. it starts to become habitual to go with what’s more comfortable.
When swinging the bachi down for a hard note, it should be lifted to the point where you can see the bottom of the bachi before the down-swing.
Anyway, that’s what I was taught. I was told it is the most accurate, gives the clearest sound, and shows the spirit of the Tsugaru shamisen.
As for putting moisture absorbing products in your case, that’s a BIG NO.
Many of those are very strong, and can oppositely create an environment that is too dry.
I was told to go with something much more gentle - in fact I was told to go with the mini moisture absorbing packs from bags of senbei crackers!
They stop the moisture from getting out of hand without overdoing it.
Don’t know what its worth, but there’s my 2 cents (^-^)
Ps, awesome interview!
Thanks Norm! I will try that out when I get home!
Much appreciated
Hey Liam!
GREAT!!! I watched this clip a long time ago once and regretted not commenting. It`s really Great and exciting to watch this! Liam is a man who is embracing a path of artistic expression! Awesome!
Norm has offered some very valuable advice here regarding the bachi hand. I would like to add something to his statement which is that there are quite a few variations in bachi technique floating around out there in Tsugaru Shamisen land. Every teacher will tell you that their method produces the clearest and most authentic tsugaru sound. I even remember hearing a story about a teacher who was violently opposed to a certain curve in the wrist and would go as far as to scold and humiliate his students if efforts were not made to form the right wrist shape. Many years later it was found out that a different school who used that exact same wrist shape was run by the teachers bitter enemy from his youth and so apparently the personal fued between these two men had resulted in two distictly different style of bachi strike technique.
The most crutially important thing is just to find an angle that will not produce any kind of tendon damage or wrist strain. You can accomplish this by observation mostly but obviously dont be afraid to experiment like crazy. Dont get too stuck in any one shape of bachi strike during your development time. After a while, by comparing the levels of comfort and clarity of tone produced by different postionings you can intuitively hear and feel what works best for you.
About your overall performances on the show.
One thing that could be developed 100 times more
in the way you play Shamisen is your appraoch to dynamics.
All of us can relate to what I might call the “Monotone trap!”
That is when we are sailing through the motions of Jongara bushi
and after a few minutes we seem to just fall into
the hypnotic trance of the beat and lose all awareness of the more subtle
flow patterns that need to be expressed.
A lot of times I heard you change from one section to the next with
almost no obvious difference in tone or mood.
Mostly how to train to develop more control begins with simple awareness.
Record yourself. Listen back critically. Become aware of how your tone feels
and effects you emotionally. Then try to think up and imagine how your
tone would sound if you had complete and utter control over it.
Tsugaru Shamisen is about bursting forth with loud furious energy only to suddenly fade into the softest most tender vibrations.
Shock and violence contrasted with complete and utter peace.
It is the Volcano erupting into the calm lake. The Snow storm ending with the morning dew dripping ever so softly from a gentle leaf.
Each section in a Tsugaru peice has its own life and its own soul.
It would be good for you to consider at this time to make a conscious effort
to shroud yourself in this idea.
Next time when you go to practice. Begin by focusing intense attention on the development of dynamics almost as if that is all that matters and try to challenge yourself in extreme and even ridiculous ways.
for example, try to bring yourself to tears with your soft tone. If your soft tone isnt moving you emotionally, it isnt soft or gentle enough.
Then try to play a lud section REALLY REALLY loud and again try to feel some kind of emotion as you strike the notes.
Yeah!!!
Hi Kevin,
First of all, thank you for taking the time to give me such in depth advice, it really is appreciated! Yes my wrist is a major concern and it’s really getting me down to be honest, would you mind if I made a video in that next few days, showing a few techniques? Basically, I cannot tell when I’m playing with my arm or wrist, with guitar I can, but with this I can’t so I think the best way to show you is if I make a video from the side, so you can see what my arm is doing.
As for the feeling behind those songs, I’m really glad you told me. I do change the volume etc when trying to play one of the Tsugaru godai but not with the minyou.
I will change this and put way more emphasis on the emotion so that other people feel it too.
Would you be so kind as to watch such a video showing my bachi strike from the side if I made it? You have done more than enough already but i cannot pass up the opportunity to get more great advice from a master.
Liam,
certainly. Its a very exciting thing for me to meet people from around the world who also share this interest in music and its development.
One thing to know about me is that I can sometimes be misunderstood when I am critical. It seems hard for some people to grasp that its really a measure of how much I dig someones playing (The more possibilities for develpoment I hear,the more critical I tend to sound.)
I just listened back to the above clip again and could definately hear what you mean that you bring out more in one of the godai and probably focus less on dynamics when playing a simple minyo accompaniment part. I would guess this is a product of your observation when listening to others. But one thing to keep in mind is that dynamics mean much more than simply changing the volume.
if I could re phrase what I had said before,
It is not your lack of dynamics that I am critiquing, but rather it is that you are
showing the ultimate blueprint of a master of dynamic expression in the early stages of development. Your Aiya bushi at the end for example (and even the way you execute ringo bushi). You express everything with real feeling. But your dynamic range in these performances is still small compared to what it could be ! My guess is that you have probably been concentrating on other aspects of the music etc.
To put it another way
It is as if you have painted a really great black and white draft of a scene in nature. The details and emotion are all there. It`s just that you have yet to fill in all the colors to achieve that extra dimension .IOW Things are not yet “Popping out” as much as they could be.
I am willing to bet that like the rest of us you have probably logged in your share of youtube hours checking out all the amazing players out there. Next time try to make specific mental notes of the “Musical” tone color and contrasts that the different performers will use for various tunes and sections.
A few things to pay special attention to are…
1.) Dynamic swells as they apply to repeated phrases like the classic 3400 3400
kamashi parts. Also as it applies to standard lead in phrases like 6 4 3400 etc.
2.) Length of contrasting dynamics (crescendo/decresendo) within sections… How long is a phrase repeated over and over compared to another section of the peice? This is imporatant because a lot of very exciting players do the same kind of trick which is to zero in one one trill or lick and take it from almost inaudibaly subtle softness into screaming obnoxious shred volume. The trick is simply that they take their time. They stay repeating the phrase much much longer than what seems logical. What is actually happening is the deliberate enforcement of hypnotic elements (repeating patterns will enduce mild states of hypnotic trance altering the listeners consciouness in such a way as to enable the player to shock them from the inside out when the phrase finally concludes.)
Be sure to listen for and take note of how a player acheives this “Shock” effect.
You will surely start to see that the technique is to come up with the most clever way to shock you at the conclusion points. This also applies to “SUDDEN” contrast. Like when the player unexpectedly moves out of long ichi no ito strike pattern into a soft san no ito and vice versa.
3.) Try to start to become aware of the actual physical techniques involved. With enough observation I think you might start getting the feel for things like when the pinky is touching the koma to mute the entire Shamisen. Also things like stopping the bachi on the skin (as opposed to doing the rock star thing of striking the strings and letting your arm roll of the Shamisen and up into the air in a glorious Rocker stance). By pressing the bachi into the skin after a strike on all three strings you will add a slight increase in the actual volume and resonance. Watch tai kai (competition) clips. Notice the best players have their bachi touching the dou at the very very end.
Dude, we gotta make you a regular contributor in the soon-to-be-coming Bachido Articles. The sage advice shant lost in the forums. 
Yeah so much information and all so important!
Wow, Sorry for not replying sooner. You have given more such a wealth of information, I’m sure you are great teacher. Every word is useful.
Thank you!
I have been taking your advice when playing, I have been working on holding the bachi properly. I used to hold onto it a little bit but now it kinda feels like its just hanging above my fingers.
I will post a video tomorrow, I would really really appreciate it if you could tell me whether or not I look tense lol. That is definately the most important aspect for me right now. Once I’ve done that, I can move on