Try this from about 1:25
Whaat, is that … legit?
I mean, with two such serious shamisen players, they must know what they are doing! (And I have no clue 
). Which style/school does this come from? Is it a variant of the dreaded uchi (hammer)?
Actually to me it seems like a rhythmic element that is imitated from the biwa. They hit the wooden part of the instrument with bachi time to time - think this particular maneuver would not work easily on the biwa though. Maybe it’s a long shot.
On the other hand, don’t think I’ve about ever seen anyone hit just the skin part of the shamisen, though it works as a drum. Anybody besides Tanaka-sensei that is, she does just anything she wants with the shamisen!
Do shamisen players actually hit the edge of the dou? You know the wooden part under the skin where it is glued? That is almost directly from the biwa I’m sure.
I see Tanaka-sensei do it, but again… =)
There is always the possibility that they are used to playing with a metronome and do it to make sure that they are always in time with one another.
As far as I know, tapping the strings like that is a kind of keshi.
You’re stopping the sustain and continuing the rhythm. My boss’s kouta teacher does it during certain songs.
I suppose it could also qualify as a hammer-on, but… I dunno.
On gakufu it tends to be done on rest beats (the single black circles).
It is moments like these when I feel especially humble and awed, obviously we actually understand far less than we pretend to.
That was a cool performance, thanks for sharing.
I just wrote a song called “Tap your strings”
I just wrote a song called “Tap your strings”
Haha awesome! Mind sharing?
Yatagarasu, Christopher is correct, that is a keshi (or it certainly is in jiuta style). And in jiuta, yes, instead of hitting/playing on the skin, we play only on the wood part, as you described above.
Wow, this is beautiful, there’s so many subtle techniques. It strikes me that we all might be trying to explain the ‘tapping’ by referring to different bits of the performance … I’m taking the original ‘tapping on the string’ question to mean the method first employed at around 1.07, by the left player. This sounds like just a timing signal, to ensure that both interlocking parts start together after an extended rest. When I learnt nagauta, often rests would have random syllables inserted in the rest places (e.g. ‘ha’ or ‘i-ya’), which the player would say, in order to bridge the gap between notes and keep the rhythm. Here the rhythm is maintained by the tap instead of being verbalised, which is different to a keshi, because it is not as if it is a played note that is being stopped. Unless the original question was about the point at about 4.26, where the player on the right dampens the string, (but I think it is still the string that is being played, not the dou, even though it sounds ‘clicky’).
Since nobody’s translated the Japanese yet…
The name of this video is “Drum Song,” and there’s a note that says “Normally this piece has drumming in it, but due to certain circumstances we are performing it without the drum.”
My guess is that the non-keshi tapping is them marking out where the drum would be playing.
Perhaps the drummer had to work that day.
“Whaat, is that … legit?”
Everything one does in music is legit.