Shakuhachi club meeting

 I packed some things to mail last night plus found and packed up the pieces of ivory I'm giving to Monty Levinson. So, 9 things. I was so tired out by things in general that although I had 20 things all ready to list, I didn't list them. I did practice though, tired as I was. 

I woke up at 2:30 or so. Maybe closer to 3. The laundry I'd done last night - with no wringing due to the cut on my finger which is covered by a Band-Aid but wringing would be hard on it - was dry enough for me to not only wash head/hair and shave but to clean the rest of me a bit and change into clean clothes. Warm comfy sweat pants and t-shirt, two light sweatshirts, and then my jacket on top. It's cold out there! 

Getting everything done took some time and I left here at 4. I went straight to the bank and deposited my check, then went over to Whole Foods. I got my usual buffet food and a light beer (4.2% alcohol) and relaxed and ate and drank. 

I was going to go to Wal-Mart but I looked at the time: 5:37. Did the shakuhachi club meeting start at 6 or at 7? I didn't know! I figured I'd better get over there. 

I rode over to J-town and got some things in Nijiya, including one of those milk carton type packages of sake and some diet soda to mix it down to 5%. 

I was feeling twitchy and as I put things away in the bike bags I realized I'd look pretty stupid trying to drink some of that sake from the carton, so I went back in and got a "One Cup Ozeki" and than sat on the long bench thing up on the corner, behind the memorial thing I call "the spike" and had my coffee and sake. 

I went over to the temple and tried the door. Locked. So they start at 7, not 6. I sat in front and practiced Nori No Miyama and after a while Rinban Sakamoto came by and said something like "Approved" and unlocked the doors and we went in. 

It was pretty much the same group of students. Me, the saxophone guy who's name seems to be Kevin and who knows a lot about the various Buddhist temples scattered around the US, two little old ladies who are very good study-ers, and another guy who turned out to be a reverend over at the Jodo Shinshu temple in Palo Alto. He had an actual bamboo shakuhachi. 

So we did our scales over two octaves, up and down, a couple of times, and then played Nori No Miyama which I did well at, then we jumped into a bunch of other things. Keven really struggled to even get sounds at all. He kept pushing things too hard. I think you can just "wing it" on sax once you've played it at all but you can't get away with that on the shakuhachi. You have to practice consistently. 

We got into trying to play other songs and really, we sounded awful. I did my best, everyone did their best, but it was so bad it was funny. But at least we did our best. Who cares if we sounded like that scene in The Music Man? 

It was pretty interesting because we got into whether to meri, which is to lower the note by changing the angle of the shakuhachi, or to "shade" which is hold a finger near the hole to lower it, or to half-hole which is just what it sounds like, etc. 

After we were done with playing, we had a great time talking about shakuhachis and what's best for a student etc. Rinban and I both talked up the Shakuhachi Yuu, and he said it's actually modeled after "a famous shakuhachi". He knew all about Monty Levinson's enhanced model, and had even been to Monty's place, up on the top of a mountain. We talked about how super-intelligent Monty is, and Rinban told us how Monty had originally gone where he is to study solar power under a National Science Foundation grant, and then asked himself "What am I doing here?" and got into making shakuhachi. And how it was only because of the Whole Earth catalog that he was able to make a go of it. 

The reverend from Palo Alto had two bamboo shakuhachi in fact, both given to him. He's a pretty good player. He'd learned from Rinban on the old PVC pipe model and a teacher in Palo Alto had felt sorry for him blowing into a plumbing pipe and given him a bamboo shakuhachi "Worth about 2500 dollars", said Rinban. I smiled a little, knowing I have a trumpet that sells for about $3500 new sitting at home. 

But Kevin is probably going  to get a Shakuhachi Yuu, and he's going to find that it won't magically solve his problems if he doesn't practice. 

I'd also gotten a chance to tell the group about the Twin Cities Buddhist Sangha that have put up a ton of these Jodo Shinshu songs on YouTube so you can hear them even if they're not done on shakuhachi, you can get the tune. 

Interestingly, I also suggested I make a flyer for the club and get some of the local stores to put it in their windows just like I see for spaghetti dinners and so on, and Rinban was not keen on that at all. He wants the club to be word-of-mouth. Considering how bad we sound, I guess the idea of even more students this raw is daunting. 

Rinban really loves the shakuhachi and in fact the whole group does, with the possible exception of Kevin. I got to pass mine around, and the reverend from Palo Alto even tooted on it a bit as I encouraged him to try it. I feel honored. 

When it was time to go, it was really cold out there! I was glad I'd layered up and had my hat and gloves with me. I took a little ride around Japantown just to see what was open and what's going on, and then rode home. 

I'll have to work on those actual songs, a lot. No more just grinding through that page of exercises in the Koga book and calling it a good practice. 

Rinban Sakamoto is a wonderful person who, if I can say I love anyone, it's him. It's due to him I learned about the shakuhachi. He's good at so many things, makes the PVC shakuhachis and our music stands and all kinds of crafty things, he's a decent shakuhachi player and a good singer, and they trust him with being the head guy (which is what rinban means) of a very large and important temple. 

But he is not a band teacher. We really ought to be doing things the way they're done in a school band where you have a method book and you learn some notes and then here's a song you can play with them, and then some more, and here are some more songs using and reinforcing them, and so on. Sure, "Hot Cross Buns" and "The Old Grey Goose" are pretty simple and boring but to a new student it's a kick to take that instrument you're learning and play a recognizable song with it. 

Maybe someday I'll have to write a book like that. 

Instead we're jumping all over the place. I'd love to see a method book or series of method books for the shakuhachi the way there are ones for trumpet and flute and clarinet and so on. I would like the shakuhachi to become popular as it's so simple, takes nearly no maintenance, is pretty easy to make yourself out of PVC, a quite good student instrument, the Yuu, is about $200 and a very good one might be $2500. This is cheap compared to almost all instruments. It's about on a par with the ukulele except it's darned hard to make your own ukulele. 

It's very healthy to play it, too. Trumpet might be kind of healthy, but I never got the impression it's helping my body the way the shakuhachi does.