The sanshin is an instrument similar to the guitar, with three strings. It's made of a stick crossing a serpent skin covered resonance box. Formerly, the strings were made of silk, but now a material called 'tetron' is most used. The strings are played with a kind of thimble made of buffalo horn, in which the right hand's forefinger is inserted. There are many kinds of sanshin, classified according to features like the box, neck angle inclination respect of the box, or the curvature of the neck base, where it joins the box, or the plugs. The most common type is the Makabi, and there are others like the Febaru, Chinen-deku, Kuba Shunden, Kuba-nu-funi, Hiranaka-Chinen, and the Yunagushiku.

Although in the beginning the instrument was available only for the Ryukyuan nobility, the sanshin changed along the time to become popular in 19th century. The lack of the indian phython serpent skin, caused to change the resonance box's cover to paper. At the end of the second World War II sanshins made of cheap materials like cans for the box and parachute fabric in substitution of serpent skin were invented. These were called kankara-sanshin.

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Shakuhachi

The word "shakuhachi" refers to the length of the instrument expressed in a former japanese length unit ("shaku" is the unit and "hachi" is eight), that means one shaku and one eigth (54,5 cm).

There are in addition other instruments shorter and longer than this one. A common feature is that all of them have 5 holes, 4 in the upper part and 1 in the bottom. Blowing it with all holes covered produces a natural D. The instrument has a range of near two octaves. Although the shakuhachi is a very simple instrument (a plain bamboo stick), it allows a great variety of expressions. Tiny motions in the neck, chin, lips and tongue produce slight nuances, microtones, and tonal changes. It's also possible to obtain noise effects by means of sophisticated breath techinques.

It's amazing that such a big number of expressions can be made with a plain shakuhachi; under this point of view, the shakuhachi is one of the most advanced instruments.

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"Taiko" in general is often used to mean the relatively modern art of Japanese drum performances (kumi-daiko), but the word actually refers to the taiko drums themselves. Literally, taiko means "big/fat drum," although there are many shapes and sizes of taiko. People are sometimes confused by the frequent usage of the word "daiko", which is a suffix used to indicate a type of drum, a taiko group, or a style of taiko playing in a compound word. When used in a compound word, the "T" sound in "taiko" changes to a "D" sound. Thus, a taiko in the nagado style is a nagado-daiko, for example.

Although traditionally, taiko have been used in very specific ways and in certain combinations of instruments, modern kumi-daiko groups do not suffer such restrictions. Taiko selection is based on the style of taiko music you are playing as well as personal style. However, the nagado-daiko is overwhelmingly the most common style of taiko used. Most taiko groups will also have one or more shime-daiko as well. Other taiko styles such as hira-daiko , oke-daiko are also freely used.

A variety of other instruments are also used in kumi-daiko to fill out the sound. Small hand cymbols (called chappa or tebyoushi), small hand held gongs (call atarigane or chanchiki), flutes (fue or shakuhachi), gongs, and various clappers and rattles are all used to wonderful effect. The high, bright sounds of these instruments add great contrast to the sound and are easily heard above the roar of the big drums.

As a general rule, all taiko are struck with some sort of stick called bachi. The only hand drums in Japan seems to be the kotsuzumi and ootsuzumi used in Japanese classical music. All other taiko are hit with bachi, and there is a tremendous variety of bachi to choose from. Hard oak bachi are typically used for nagado-daiko. Larger bachi made of softwood are used for odaiko, and smaller, lighter bachi are used for shime-daiko. Beyond that, there are bachi made from bamboo, bachi with shiny decorations and tassels, and bachi with jingles and rattles. The proper selection of bachi can add great aural and visual interest to a performance.

Most taiko are measured in the traditional Japanese measure of shaku and sun. One shaku is 30.3 cm (about twelve inches), and is divided into ten sun. Usually only the diameter of the head is measured.

There are many kinds of Taiko drums in Japan, but they can be broadly divided into two catagories: Taiko with a nailed head ( byou-daiko ), and Taiko with heads stretched over a hoop and tensioned with ropes ( shime-daiko ).

Taiko music from the group Kobushi:

Download "Gift" (2,9 Mb)
Download "Afro-Taiko" (3,5 Mb)
Download "Mai" (3,4 Mb)