Saturday, July 13, 2013

Shamisen Week 15 Lesson

I must be doing okay as to my playing although I think I am doing horrible. The "okayness" condition comes from the fact that we are again moving on to new material. I surmise that if I was really doing badly, we would stay on the material a bit longer. In any case, a long practice song piece is next on the agenda.

One new technique and one new note has been added. A dot under a note indicates that the note should be played one-half beat longer than a normal note. The new additional note is Position 5, ichi no ito.

The long musical practice piece also introduces major and minor themes. The tablature widens to accompany two sets or lines of notes going down the page. The rightmost line is the major theme. Left of that is the minor theme. On this piece, I am learning the minor theme. However, I assume I will learn the major theme as well sometime in the future.

This is once again (deja vu?!) getting much harder. Although the practice music is still in 4/4 time, most of the notes are either koki or combination notes (two notes combining to make one beat). Thus, it is not uncommon in this piece to play eight notes in a single measure. My fingers are flying all over the place and usually are not landing where they should!

I have not reached a skill level so that I can just read the note(s) and play them. At this stage of the game, I see the note(s), I then interpret them as to where my fingers are supposed to be, then I move my finger(s) to the note(s) and play. That is to say, things are speeding up and I am playing catch up most of the time.

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