struggling with non-bunka-fu notation

[s_s]

hi all,

i’ve been studying nagauta (both singing and shamisen) since last October. my shisho-san was kind enough to lend me a shamisen to practice on at home, but i’ve been really terrible about actually doing so. (like… probably only twice in this entire time…) while my singing has been on track, my shamisen playing is not really where it should be. my lessons are only twice a month, and the time is split between singing and shamisen playing.

my lack of solo practice is partly because i don’t have much confidence in getting it properly tuned on my own. (it’s an older instrument so doesn’t exactly keep the tuning that long.) i don’t have a tuner, but i have some aptitude for doing things by ear and managed to get it for the most part the few times i have practiced on my own.

however, my biggest issue is that i’m having issues feeling confident reading the sheet music i have on my own. i have no idea of the name of this notation style, but it’s not the three-lined bunka-fu for sure. there are only two lines for notes, one for the vocals and one for the shamisen.

i have had experience with western sheet music in the past (very rudimentary piano, choral singing), but my tendency to rely on what i hear means that i’m crap at actually reading musical theory/notation. that’s one part, the other part is that this notation is entirely in numbers which really get mixed up in my head (minor discalculia??). if it was the bunka-fu three-line notation i see on this site and in other English-language resources, it probably would be a bit easier, but this notation has different number arrangements for each ito it seems?

the song that i’m working on now is a relatively easy one called “Otsukisama” with niagari tuning. in this tuning: open ichi no ito is ・7, open ni no ito is #4, and open san no ito is 7. there is also katakana notation for each note (Japanese equivalent of do-re-mi, presumably, except it’s chin, ton, sha, tsun, etc.)

there is also notation for which finger to use and which ito, but it’s usually quite small and easy to miss. the presence and placement of a dot (eg, “・7”–as in open ichi no ito vs “7”–as in open san no ito) seems to indicate string, but i’m not really sure and can’t always pick up on/process it while playing.

this notation also only seems to go from 1-7. so the tuning for this particular song has, for example open san no ito as 7 as well as another 7 in the lower area of the neck.

below is a photo of the first page of said song:

the series of the books it’s from is 長唄新稽古本, i think.

basically i constantly find myself playing the wrong number if i just look at the music rather than listening and/or having my shisho-san point it out. i can read/understand Japanese reasonably well, but i don’t necessarily catch everything, especially new musical terms. really struggling to keep the numbers straight. just figured it was worth a shot looking in English to see whether anyone had any experience or knowledge related to this type of notation?

[John_Patterson]

Generally speaking, shamisen do not stay in tune for very long. Part of learning to play is to learn to tune constantly even while playing, so I would not get discouraged if it seems difficult, one gets better with time. I believe that this notation is unique to Nagauta. I think there are some well trained Nagauta players on this site that could correct my amateurish attempt to explain this system. This notation uses 1 - 7 to represent the steps in a solfege (do re mi fa so la ti) movable do system. Normally one would tune the exact pitch to the singer’s range. A dot to the left of the number is to represent an octave below, a dot to the right represents an octave above. Sharps and flats are used in the same way that they are in normal western music, to represent a half step higher and lower respectively. This piece is in niagari (二上り) so an open san no ito is indicated with a 7, ichi no ito is an octave below so it is indicated with ・7, an open ni no ito is represented with #4. San no ito at bunkafu position 10 is an octave above so it would be written as 7・. San no ito at bunkafu position 6 is an octave above an open ni no ito and so it is written with #4・. The rest of the positions have to be worked out knowing that each position on the neck is a half step different in pitch. The kanji numbers tell us which fingers we should use when pressing the strings. The katakana writting that we see on the left side is a form of kuchijamisen. It is used to help us memorize how the piece should be played. Each string and way of playing said string has its own sound (open, pressed, hajiki, sukui). The key at the top helps us remember that san no ito is chin, ni no ito is ten if it is played open, but is tsun if played pressed, ichi no ito is ton. There are many different variations of kuchijamisen depending on style/lineage so do not be surprised if you encounter differences here and there. We can use this to know which string should be played as the solfege system can be somewhat vague in this regard, but on this piece of sheet music, we can see that roman numbers indicating which string should be played are written next to notes that we could have possibly played on more than one string. I attempted to convert this piece into bunkafu using Karl’s Shamisen Composer. I apologize for my poor effort, but perhaps it will be of some use as a starting point. I accidentally wrote it in 4/4, but it should really be 2/4 time. Also, I followed the kuchijamisen for which strings to use for which notes, but it would seem based on the writing in pencil, the teacher may have wanted us to play san no ito open instead of ni no ito bunkafu position 4 (position 7 in this notation). I was not sure if the final two notes should be played together, the kuchijamisen does not suggest this is the case, however in the style of shamisen that I study this final set of notes would be played together, so please excuse this artistic liberty.