Newbie Query

General
#1

Hello!

I’m looking into picking up shamisen, and need some buying advice. While I love the sound and flexibility of the tsugaru, I am both unable to physically play it, and am on a rather tight budget.

As it is, that leaves me with making the decision to either buy the beginner’s nagauta shamisen from the Bachido store, or a jiuta I have fortunately stumbled upon locally.

While I prefer the pitch and sound of a jiuta over nagauta, I’ve also never heard the jiuta being played solo, or at a high speed, both of which I’d like to be able to do.

With that in mind, which one would be a better option?

#2

Hi Jewelle. With a nagauta shamisen you can also play as a jiuta and with a juita shamisen you can easily have a nagauta sound. The difference comes mostly from the bachi and the koma used. Concerning the pitches, I’m not sure there is a difference. With both kind of shamisen, you can easily switch the styles. For other aesthetics as tsugaru or gidayu it’s probably better to have the appropriate shamisen (a lot of members here practice tsugaru with a nagauta or min’yo shamisen though), but jiuta and nagauta are quite close. On those videos the player uses the same shamisen but switches between nagauta an juita only by changing the koma and the bachi.


All I say is obviously under the control of all the sensei here who can share their own opinion !

#3

Seconding Patrick’s advice.

As well, Jiuta and min’you shamisen are really broad categories that tend to define thenselves regionally. (In my experience, anyway).

More to the point, to quote my min’you teacher “It really doesn’t matter, just practice.”

And my tsugaru teacher “As long as it’s chuuzao, it’s fine”

You can get good sound out of most anything!

Especially at the beginning, you should just dive in and start twanging.

#4

Thank you for the advice. I’ll be taking a look at the jiuta set this weekend, and if things look good, I’ll probably be taking it home.

Hopefully the plastic bachi that comes with it doesn’t drive me crazy as I twang away.

#5

Jewelle, as a general statement, the plastic jiuta bachi that comes with a Jiuta shamisen is usually quite serviceable. :slight_smile: (Fyi, it doesn’t seem to have the same issues that the plastic practice Tsugaru bachi does…)

#6

That’s Definitely reassuring, thank you.

Of course that’s also what was said about my high-quality imitation zither picks and I wore them down within two months, which I think won’t be an issue with plastic bachi.

#7

But… what is the koma?

#8

The koma is the bridge. The kamigoma is the nut.

#9

Ah, OK

#10

Linda, thank you for the comment! I actually never tried the tsugaru plastic Bachi and I had a wooden one before I bought a faux bekko later on.

Calvin lend me his first shamisen a year ago when I came back from Shamicamp without my shamisen (long story) and it is still at my place because he uses his tsugaru at home. With his Nagauta shamisen he had a plastic Bachi for Nagauta and when I tried it I didn’t found it was so bad… Thanks to your comment, I understand why now.

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