Special Guest Lecture: Music Performances

The second lecture was a performance showcasing three traditional Japanese instruments: the koto, shakuhachi, and shamisen. This older man first explained how to play the koto and its history, as well as the different scales that they play on it. There are these bridges on the strings of the koto, and depending on what piece the player plays, the bridges are put in different places to create different intervals between the different strings. And sometimes (oftentimes), they adjust it during the actual performance. It was amazing to watch. Here are pictures of the professor explaining the koto and the woman who did a performance for us:




























After that they explained the shakuhachi, which is a flute. Here is the performer displaying it. There is this one technique where they blow into it and make a sudden burst of sound which is supposed to create tension and be reminiscent of a samurai sword. The guy then imitated being a samurai with the shakuhachi as a sword. It was cute and funny.














Then they explained the shamisen, which is a three-string guitar-like instrument. There are no flecs on the neck though and apparently players aren't allowed to look at their fingers when they play. Sounded impressive. My picture of it is blurry, but here is a picture of a piece in which they played all three instruments together:














It was really awesome. I'm going to try and see if I can upload a sound file that I secretly took of the performance. They also played a piece that was variations on Sakura. It was amazing and I loved it so much. That piece was played on two kotos and this 18-string instrument that is like a koto but called something else.