Lesson Notes

My most recent lesson was a heap of fun and I had a musical score defaced by hastily written notes in my unique sloppy handwritting to prove it. My handwriting, which was never neat, is now at its all time worst as a result of the neglect brought on by excessive keyboard activity...digital tools are threatening to obliterate the last hint of readability from my script. My fresh new copy of Sanya didn't look much better than the score for Banshiki which you can see in the photo above.

As I sat back after my lesson and enjoyed the thrill of having taken a hearty bite out of Sanya, I had learnt so much about each of the first nine lines, I started to wonder whether I would be able to remember all the little nuances and additional notes and embellishments that I had just been taught. Not if I couldn't make sense of my notes! The page was crowded with information. How would I ever fit more notes on the page when we continued with the next lesson? It was then that I recalled a tip shared by Harald, another student of Michael Gould's, on the Chikuzen forum.

I got out scissors, glue and some fresh sheets of paper and proceeded to cut up my Sanya score. Snip, snip, glue, paste...add carefully printed notes...and voila, I had an expanded version of the score with easy to read notes in spacious columns between the lines of the music.

Thanks to Harald for this tip on shakuhachi lesson notemaking.