double damn
Triple damn. :o
And actually… After watching this thing again… i have to say Damnos Quatros
Atlast i got my browser working and watched all of the newer videos and gotta say that this thread is so awesome…
Takemi Hirohara, another personal friend of Kevin’s. He was here in California back in 2005 and was one of my first teachers along with Mr. Kmetz.
I really appreciate his style. Where he places his dynamics and changes the tempo - it’s absolutely fabulous!
Whow that guy is some serious shiet :o
wish i had a teacher like him here in finland 
hehe
Grant, your two Nikata Bushi posts made me tune into Honchoushi for the first time in a year and I made an attempt on playing the song.
It’s really a very nice song to play when you progress a bit, but it’s very technically challenging. It is great to be able to practice that ending phrase that you, Kevin and I talked about way back which comes from this song at the end in an actual song so that you really get a feel for what needs to be produces.
Does anyone have a slow version of this song for practice?
I was searching for Nikata Bushi on Spotify.
I didn’t know Mike Penny’s Shamalamachord was on there! If you don’t have Spotify it’s time to get it, as it’s free.
This song is really cool: http://open.spotify.com/track/6ytyw0YPRiWhxmLeJ9PXpX
Also I found a minyo album with shamisen tracks:
Nice thanks Karl. Hadn’t noticed them either
hey Karl, the minyo album is quite a little gem! Thanks for posting 
Heard Hibiki and Alika Mochida performing a few of these, made me smile.
Hope your staying warm up there!
Pete.
Yeah we need to work together to track the Spotify albums
Haha we’ve got winds from southwestern Europe so it’s just rainy here and not so cold. Thanks anyway!
Thanks, Karl!!! It has been so long since I missed Se Shami Street performance. They are great in acrobatic, humorous, and shamisen technique.
Above all, I love the Ninin Baori (one in front figure the other from behind stretching arms and play).
Ninin Baori 二人羽織 is traditional Japanese comedy, but never had one with the combination of Shamisen. We usually do it eating banana or something and fail. Banana usually sticks into your nose.
(>_
daaamn so long vid 
can’t watch it right now but later sure
( where do you find all these vids Karl? :DD)
daaamn so long vid
( where do you find all these vids Karl? :DD)
I just search for different song names and then go through related videos on the right Pierre and Ryo seem like really cool guys so when I see a related video of them I usually check it out. In this video the highlight is when Ryo uses the arm of a baby doll as bachi
haha what the??? :DDd
Hey, so this is kind of random, but I was hanging out with a fellow musician friend today, and we ended up talking about the shamisen. I told him a little bit about the history and the different styles, and once I got home I wrote him this long email linking him to some example videos. After I finished it, I realized you guys might find it interesting too, so I’m posting it here. Some of the videos are repeats from above and overall the history’s pretty basic and leaves a lot of stuff out, but that’s what the rest of this site is for, right? You guys probably know most of this stuff already, but I’m also posting it as a digest in case any newbies come along. Anyhoo, email below:
This one of Noriko Tadano is a pretty good representation of the Tsugaru style. She’s playing her version of the regional folk standard Tsugaru Jonkara Bushi at the national Tsugaru Shamisen competition in Hirosaki, Aomori, near where the style originally developed. The sound quality isn’t the best, but the echo-y, assembly hall-ness of it does convey the percussive aspects pretty well:
The solo style developed out of the old folk ensemble of singer, shamisen player and sometimes drummer. Here’s Tsugaru Jonkara Bushi again, this time with the original vocal part. The clip’s a little weird cuz it’s taken from a movie, but it’s still good:
Here’s another example of the folk ensemble, this time playing in major key (this can sometimes seem super rare in Japanese music) and with BONUS DANCERS. The piece is called Tsugaru Aiya Bushi. With this video you can also see how the intro developed into the solo style, so that’s cool:
Tsugaru shamisen has become one of the more popular styles
recently and there’s a lot of new material being created. This is a song called “Raiko” (Lightning) by Shin’ichi Kinoshita featuring Hiroshi Motofuji on taiko. Aside from being a dynamic style, it’s also one of the few traditional Japanese styles that uses meters other than straight or swung 4/4, although sometimes Tsugaru people will claim that although a piece might sound like it’s in 3 it’s really in a swung 2. That last one, Aiya Bushi, one of those. The rhythm’s a little weird, like it could be in 3, but the 2nd beat is delayed ever so slightly. shrugs I can’t decide if I think Raiko is in 3 or 6. Anyway, here’s the piece:
Then there are other people, both Japanese and foreign, who have taken the adaptability of Tsugaru shamisen and used it to experiment with other styles. The Yoshida Brothers do a lot of this, but you also have cool guys like here (from left to right: Grant Reimer (?), Mashiro Nitta, Kevin Kmetz, and Mike Penny):
For some history, this is an older style of shamisen music called nagauta. The name literally means “long song,” and it’s the main style used in kabuki. This version of the instrument is smaller than the Tsugaru, with a shorter, skinner neck and a smaller soundbox. As you’ll probably be able to tell, the musical structure and playing techniques are pretty different, although you can tell they come from the same family:
For a little more context, here are a few scenes from the kabuki play Dojoji. Once the curtain rises you can see the entire orchestra onstage. Technically this is a kabuki take on an earlier noh play, so at times the music is super abstract and alien in order to imitate noh, but… shrugs Whatever, it’s still cool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6x22hOIwjQ
And finally, here’s the sanshin, the Okinawa precursor to the shamisen that was originally a take on the Chinese sanxian. Here’s a fast folk song called “Takoyama”:
And a slow piece called Kagiyadefu, often played at weddings and here in ensemble:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQOR0avjjAs
Aaaaaaaand that’s a lot of links, so I’m gonna stop there. Hope you like them, or at the very least find them interesting!
I didn’t know this song had a music video!!
Love this song so much!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UiZKQkKb_w
Agatsuma is so epic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tigE4NErhak
Damn you youtube i cant stop watching!
Aww yes.
I want to know who played this!
Nice playing by two young boys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTmvQ19FuBo
(seriously i’m sorry for this LONG Long comment (epicness)… Just so much awesome stuff out there!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3skXJTzf7o
Orig song by the vocaloid Hatsune Miku but i LOVE this version so much more
Epic guys, I must have missed the activity! Yesterday I started searching for some various keywords on Spotify.
I hope most of you are aware of what Spotify is. It’s a monthly subscription based music streamer that totally ROCKS. You will find most of the music there. Enough to justify unlimited legal streaming for the fee. It is perfect to use at work as you don’t have to use illegal MP3 files.
Anyway, I updated my shamisen playlist yesterday and wanted to share. If you have any tips of stuff that is on Spotify that I have missed, feel free to inform me. I’ve added whole albums so some songs may not have shamisen in them but have nice Japanese music.