Sanya (Mountain Valley)

Please forgive me for this poor excuse for Sanya. Pitch problems, not finishing phrases smoothly, etc... :( but i'll put it up, warts and all - and it will really serve to give me incentive to do better.

Ralf, a friend who also plays shakuhachi, made some recordings at the Aus. Shakuhachi Festival back in October 2004 as part of some research he was doing. He sent me this. Its a recording of me playing a piece called Honte Choshi (the Chikuho school's version of Hon Shirabe).

It blows my mind listening to that, and comparing it to what I play like now. Im pretty hard on myself when assessing my performance - so its pretty cool to have a recording like that as a yardstick for progress.

Another interesting coincidence - today was the first time I heard that recording, and its been about 2 years since ive played any Chikuho-ryu pieces, but I noticed that in the last few days, a few interesting changes had crept into my Hon Shirabe. On listening to Honte Choshi - those things are present in it! Spooky! ;) Listening to Honte Choshi has also revealed where certain distinct features that are present in my Hon Shirabe originate from - it seems they were part of Honte Choshi, and some bit of me remebered them and felt they worked well enough to keep.