what are the different music instruments of japan?
cristian asked: music intruments and their uses.
Robert
Tags: Different Music, Instruments Music, Japan Music
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March 8th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
The 5 most commonly known Japanese instruments are the: shamisen, shakuhachi, taiko, koto, and biwa. Some other traditional Japanese istruments are: chijin, sanshin, mukkuri, binzasora, kotsuzumi, hichiriki, charumera, horagai, ryuteki, sho, and gekkin. A very interesting article (with pictures) can be found at:
March 9th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
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Traditional Japanese Instruments
The koto [KOH-to] (in the Sound Bank of MAKING MUSIC Grades 2 and 3) is a board zither with thirteen or more strings. The sound is mellow and resonant. Koto players place it on the floor when playing. At first the koto was enjoyed only by members of the upper class, but it developed into its present form and became popular with all Japanese people between 1600 and 1867. Since then it has been as popular in Japan as the piano has been in Western cultures.
The shakuhachi [shah-koo-HAH-chee] (in the Sound Bank for Bridges to Asia, Intermediate and Primary grades, and MAKING MUSIC Grades 2, 3, 5, and
is an end-blown bamboo flute. It has four finger holes on the front and one thumbhole in back. The player may move his or her head around to produce bends, shakes, and slides in ornamenting the melody. The shakuhachi is often associated with Buddhist monks, and its breathy tone quality works well in Zen meditation.
The shamisen [SHAH-mee-sen] (in the Sound Bank for Bridges to Asia, Primary level) is a long, narrow, three-string plucked lute. The square resonating box is covered with animal skin, and the strings are plucked with a large triangular pick. Japanese folk and popular songs have been accompanied by the shamisen since the 1600s.
The koto, shakuhachi, and shamisen are played together to perform some styles of traditional music with voice. The voice has an intense, tight sound that is low in pitch and ornamented with quivers, bends, slides, and other techniques.
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The ancient Japanese thought of musical instruments as two distinct categories: percussion and all others. When the gagaku department was set up, the Heian court also set up a percussion department which in the course of the period became a separate guild. The instruments associated with gagaku were stringed instruments and wind instruments similar to the flute; the percussion instruments, however, were seen as lesser instruments.
Principle among the stringed instruments was the biwa , which, like so much else in Japanese music culture, was imported from China (in China the instrument is known as the pi’pa ). It not only seems to have been the most important instrument in court orchestras, the biwa was also a work of fine art as the ancient biwas that come down to us are among the finest crafted works of the Heian period. The biwa is a four-stringed instrument whose tonal range occupies the whole of the European bass clef; it is tuned to six “modes’ of five tones. While it was the premier solo instrument in T’ang China, in gagaku orchestras it was common but tended to be used for the grunt work—the bulk of the musical work was done by the six-stringed wagon and the thirteen-stringed koto with their more complex and rich modes.
Among the wind instruments, the principle instruments seem to have been the shakuhachi , a bamboo flute, and the sho , a mouth organ built of seventeen bamboo pipes arranged in a circle, both of which are derived from either Chinese or Korean musical instruments. The shakuhachi flute is played with the flute dangling down in front of the performer; in the Heian period, transverse flutes (flutes which point out to the side when played by the performer like the Western flute) were all the rage.
Percussion was a standard part of both Chinese and Japanese ensemble music. Three of the tonal categories in Chinese and Japanese musical theory were taken up by percussion: metal, stone, and leather. From Chinese music, the Japanese employed three percussion instruments: a side drum (kakko ), a bronze gong (shoko ), and a large, hanging drum struck by two large, heavy drumsticks (taiko ). In later Japanese music, the taiko would become an important solo instrument in its own right and taiko ensemble music became some of the most spectacular “music alone” performance in Japanese tradition. As with most percussion, taiko music is very close to the origins of music in the movement of the body and a real experience requires seeing as well as hearing the performance. Taiko performance is based on the modulation between the “female” (left hand) and “male” (right hand) strokes of the drumsticks—the female stroke is always soft and the male is always a strong stroke. The modulation between soft and strong is the primary component of taiko performance.