Hey guys!
Just wanted to share with you my problem with learning songs from sheets!
It’s really easy to learn the songs from Kyle’s videos (kuroishi yosare bushi was great to learn that way!) but learning simply from sheet is incredibly hard 
Should I just keep on trying to learn it from sheet with the help of recorded songs until it works?
What is the best way/strategy to learn new songs?
Any other tips?
Have a nice evening! (or whatever it is in your country 
)
Li.
Hi Libor,
If you can give more details about what is difficult for you when learning from sheetmusic I am sure many of us here can help.
Is it a problem with finding the positions and connecting that to what is written on the sheet or is it somehting else?
Hi Libor,
I hope you have already downloaded sound files ( the songs you are learning from Kyle’s book)?\
Maybe this won’t be the best advice you could expect, but I would like to share my experience.
When I started learning those songs thos Bachido site didn’t exist yet, so had real hard time to learn just from the sheets ( I can easliy imagine your frustration).
But since Kyle uploaded sound files on Bachido, that made me learl the songs miles easier. Personally what I do is, putting those sound files onto your ipods ( or similar divice ) and listen just over and over again - well, whenever you can. Eventually it will stick to your mind - whether you want to remember or not it stays in your mind all the time! - downside of doing this is it still plays when you are in bed, it could disturb your sleep really bad
Whether you realise or not, if you take formal lessons in Japan lots of teachers won’t give you tab until you memorise the whole song - or sometimes you never get a tab! Not because all the pro shamisen players are mean, but learning from sheets is not practical for tsugaru shamisen ( I guess lots of tsugaru shamisen performance is improvisation basis, so there is no need to write down anything.)
For Bachido members like us, we have only limited resources, so sheets can be the big part of reliable resource, but STILL I believe that sheets should’t be the first resource. By listening again and again over time (even subconsciously) eventually you will be confident to play with the help from sheets, because the notes on the sheets are nothing new, they are already in your head.
Hope this will be a little bit of help.
Good luck and enjoy your sound files
Sayuri
Having had the experience of taking formal lessons for Tsugaru Shamisen in Japan I can definately verify that what Sayuri san says is true. I remember my teacher taught me many famous Tsugaru folk songs without even hinting that there would be “Tabs” to go along with them. It was all by ear and by copying his playing.
Much later I began to receive tabs for a variety of different Jongara Bushi interpretations (many of which were the teachers original compositions and handwritten scores)
I would like to add to Sayuri sans post by saying that there is a historical reason for this tendency which is that the tradition itself came out of a time in Japans history when many musicians were blind. Obviously when you cant see at all there is no use for writing down anything on paper.
Even less than 100 years ago if you took a time machine back in time and talked to someone about Shamisen music that was written, they would give you a very confused look.
So I would have to agree that to go in harmony with the history of Tsugaru Shamisen really means “learning by ear” . In a true sort of way when we modern players write something in a tab form or read sheetmusic is really boils down to all of us being rather spoiled in comparsion to the traditional ways!
Gee… I`m very sorry Libor. I know that must not help you one bit with your question (got off the subject a bit. Gomen na sai!)
No Kevin! Both of you have helped me a lot!
Now that I know about the original, “proper” way to learn Shamisen, I feel really encouraged to start learning by ear with the help of tabs and not the other way around like until now!
Also everything fits together. I had a hard time with the tabs, trying to figure out how the song sounds like - without experience and without having the melody in your head it’s quite impossible to reconstruct music from sheet.
The only thing that is really hard for a beginner is the speed of the songs, as it is quite hard to follow and recognize all the details for someone without musical background (like me :P) - I am sure it will work with time but I can imagine that some slower versions would be an incredible help for many beginners.
(maybe someone has the time? =)
Best regards,
Libor
HI Libor,
Glad to know that the piece of advice above helped a bit
Even though I’m Japanese, I’ve never played shamisen in Japan, so i have no formal learning experience. You can definately trust what Kevin san says as I can tell he is a real great player!
Regarding speed issue, I know once someone was talking about some sort of program that slows down the speed of the songs you want to learn. I attempted to download the soft one time without any success ( maybe pc compatible problem???) That program was in Japanese so i cannot really recommend it to you sorry But it will be worth searching maybe?
Anyway, good luck!
Sayuri
Since you brought up the issue Sayuri: If you want to play an audio file slower you can use the free and open source program Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net
It’s really great and I use it for many audio file adjustments.
Open up your audio file, then select the menu Effect->Change Tempo.
Change Speed changes the pitch as well, but Tempo just makes it play slower. Of course it’s not comparable to recording a song slower in real life but it might help you. I know it has when I used to learn stuff for guitar
Thank you Karl!
Yes, definately I will try.
Hope Libor will get some benefit from this program as well.
Thanks again
Sayuri
Hi all =)
Thanks so much for the idea with audacity, I I still had a little bit of a hard time with the quality of the slowed down songs - however suddenly I got used to it and now it works great that way xD
(I also found this minimalistic program here: http://www.rinki.net/pekka/slowmp3/ - just if someone is interested in minimalistic programs =D)
Thanks!!
Libor