Shakuhachi and Breath

 This is from an exchange I had with a friend, talking about breathing techniques. Maybe you'll find it useful...

About legato / staccato / vibrato / tremolo, etc.: 

 

With the western flute, you know that we use lots of "tonguing" (staccato), and a tremolo using the breath. These techniques are generally not used in older shakuhachi music. However, some schools use a very extreme tremolo (that is, komi-buki), so there are exceptions. Same with staccato. Shakuhachi basically doesn't use tonguing, but there are some cases where you'll stop the breath and then start it again - for example, ha-u often sounds good this way. Part of this is because this can be a difficult transition, since the breath needs to switch from strong (ha) to a more precise, gentle one (u) when you play ha-u in the higher register.

The general rule, though, is that each phrase is played with a steady breath, and any changes in notes are done with the fingers. It's kind of like meditation here: you want to maintain a smooth, steady, longish out-breath; the notes are kind of a way of decorating and playing with that breath, but the breath is perhaps more important than the notes. So: legato.

Vibrato is sometimes used. You can do so by moving the shakuhachi, or moving your head up and down. When komuso were wearing "tengai" (upside-down baskets) to cover their heads, they couldn't move their heads without jiggling the basket about, so most of this effect was done using the shakuhachi, and probably more sparingly than it is used today. However, we don't have baskets on our heads, so either is fine. Sometimes I like a vibrato, but it's also good to practice a very plain, steady breath. It's easy to hide faults in our playing by using vibrato all the time, so I think it's good to use it only minimally.

As for the "legato" breath:

There are several types. Kinpu-ryu uses "sasabuki." Sasabuki refers to sasa-gusa, or bamboo grass. The shape of the leaf starts in a point, then grows wider, then gets smaller again. So with the breath: it comes out of silence, gets stronger, then leads back into silence again. Seien-ryu pieces originally used "bo-buki," or "stick breath." In this case, there is no amplitude modulation at all; you suddenly start at full volume, maintain it through the breath, and then suddenly stop. When Higuchi Taizan, a major figure in Fuke playing / Myoan-ryu, edited some of the Seien-ryu pieces (including sanya, shizu, etc.), he played them in his own style, which I like better than the original so I follow it. He used "kusabi-buki," or "wedge breath." This breath follows the image of a bell: it starts at full volume, then gradually fades out. For the majority of pieces, this is how I like to play.

With the recent COVID-19 business, at Hon-on Shakuhachi nothing is changing. I know that the same is not true for all of my friends, however, as some are losing jobs, and my own adjunct teaching is a little uncertain as well, since it's not clear whether classes will actually begin on time. It's nice to see everyone cooperating to keep the spread to a minimum, though. Some grocery stores here (I'm currently visiting family in NJ, hoping my return flight doesn't get canceled!) are keeping special early hours for elderly customers. 

There are many other reasons for hope as well. As stock prices fall, and people buy all the toilet paper (what!? why toilet paper? why not rice?) it's easy to get uneasy. In recent days, a few things have been echoing about in my mind:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and theives break in and steal - for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I think this is something close to what Zen people intuited in the heart sutra, that everything is in a sense "empty." Tangible stuff dies. Form is emptiness. Don't set your life on it. On the other hand, there are things that we can't see - God, love, life - that last forever. Set your heart on things that perish, and when they start perishing, you get uneasy, because all that you have is set to go away. Now is a good time to set our hearts on things that last: "treasures in heaven." Jesus is my treasure, and I'm his. You are God's own "treasure in heaven." If you see all the potential and actual evil in you're heart, it's enough. All that is forgiven. You are loved, and you can love. Love invades everything that you do (I wish I could say I was doing this completely!). Now we can begin to say, "emptiness is form." The unseen breaks into the world, and infuses transitory things with eternal meaning. Here's another:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.

A Hebrew poet-prophet wrote this some thousands of years ago. Faith creates a sort of insane endurance in you, where you can be happy even though everything around you says you shouldn't, because your heart, your mind, is set on things that can never be shaken. This is not an attitude reserved only for super-saints and mountain-dwelling masters. It's available to anyone. I don't know if I've attained it myself, but if I do have it, it's not because of anything I've done - it's like getting a present, and then opening it. Easy enough for a child - maybe even easier than for grown-ups! Here's the last one:

Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine. The light of your presence is shining on us, Lord! You have put joy in my heart, more than others have when their grain and new wine abound. In peace I will lie down and sleep, because You alone make me live in safety.

This is from a psalm that I sing most nights just before going to bed. Some look to good things and good circumstances for their joy. When I find my joy fading, it's a sign to me that I need to find something better to pay attention to. Things - food and wine - are very good to enjoy, as long as we can enjoy it with a joy that outlasts them. Things never bring peace. When I set my mind on things, they bring anxiety - the knowledge that I don't have the power to keep them. True joy lets us navigate things freely. When they come, we enjoy them. When they go, we let go. We may have some sadness there, too. In the end, we have to let go of our own lives, and those of people we love, too. We love them, but we know that we can't keep them. Things get uncertain, and we get anxious. It's good, I think, if we can have someone Good to trust our lives with. When it's impossible to believe that God is real and is good, maybe we just need to believe it anyway. Living as if it were true makes it much more believable (because it actually is true).

These are not things that I've attained to completely; they're just things that I set my heart on in the morning and during the day, as I notice my mind wandering to places of fear or worry.