Hey everyone, I hope you can help me.
I have a nagauta shamisen that i bought second hand, it seems fine when playing lower notes, but when i want to play higher notes e.g. 9 on the 3rd string, the tone is way off and often sounds quite unpleasant.
Is this because one of the skins isnt quite as taught as it should be?
Hi Jude,
Are you using your finger nail/very tip of your finger when you play the 3rd string?
Because it can sound muddy otherwise, especially with the nagauta neck being so thin. The skin would make a difference but I have managed to get the right note out of a shamisen with a bad skin.
Hey Liam,
thanks for your reply, yep maybe im not pressing down hard enough on the 3rd string, but i think i didnt tune it very well either 
The skin on the front is perfectly fine, but the one on the back is very springy 
So it might be a combo of the two. I might have to get the back reskinned
Hey Jude
I know that Nagauta shamisen doesn’t sound the same as Tsugaru shamisen when playing higher notes because i play the Nagauta too. So my point is that are you sure that it really isn’t supposed to sound like it does?
before reskinning you should check some vids or something
Oh ok maybe thats it, thanks, I knew nagauta and tsugaru shamisens had slightly different sounds, but i didnt realise that it was that different
I only bought this nagauta because it was cheap and i wanted a way to get a feel for the instrument and i certainly have, i think ive caught the shamisen bug!
So I might carry on with this one for the time being, and try to find a way around the slightly different sound.
Sometime soon i might think about getting a new tsugaru shamisen from this website, now i know the basic techiques and feel for the instrument