Video clips with caveats and other thoughts

These are videos recordings of the beginning folk, sankyoku, and honkyoku pieces in the both books, Blowing Zen: One Breath One Mind and Blowing Zen: Expanded Edition: One Breath One Mind.

The First Nine Folk Tunes (Playlist)

• • I remember the advantage of sitting across from my teacher, Goro Yamaguchi, watching him and playing along. I feel the lack of video examples has made my “Blowing Zen” book less effective then it could be. These videos are my unpolished attempt to correct that. Now, I haven’t played anything but honkyoku for years so I’m a little rusty at normal music, not that I was ever that competent at it. I try to play these tunes simple and straightforward without embellishment, and breathe through the nose at the ‘proper’ time. I succeed some of the time, but I suppose my honkyoku experience makes falling in line difficult for me.

• • My knees and eyes are not that of the young whippersnapper I used to be. I can’t sit on my heels anymore, so I just sit upright. Years of yoga enables me to sit this way comfortably without back stress. The important thing is to sit upright; it helps I find. People have various workarounds, sitting on a pillow for example. Whatever allows you to be upright without undo back stress would be the way to go.

• • I’m going to play only the final track of the tunes, not the short teaching tracks because the final track incorporates those issues. I’ll have a much more complete coverage of the material in Blowing Zen if/when we finish the Crash Course.

• • You’ll notice that I might bob up and down a little, rather than sway left to right as instructed in the book. This is to prevent confusion, as you’d be seeing the opposite, i.e. my left would appear to be your right. Still, I will do it with swaying also, I’ll just have to read the notation upside down, and you’ll have to forgive me for any errors I make.

• • I know that I “should” get glasses, but personally I’d rather stumble around naturally. Alas, that means I’ll misread the notation at times. “Was that one beat or two?”, “Was that chu meri (flat symbol) or kan (high octave symbol)?”. Nonetheless, these informal and unpolished videos may still be helpful.

Sankyoku  (Playlist)

• • My eyesight being what it is, I’m usually unable to get through a piece without an error — often a blurry symbol or beat dot. Moreover, I don’t know these tunes well enough to play them by heart, nor at tempo. In view of this, when something sounds off don’t assume it’s your mistake; perhaps its mine, or perhaps it is artistic license… yes, that’s it! Just make it all part of the adventure.

Honkyoku  (Playlist)

• • Hifumi is the first honkyoku to tackle. Doing parts A and C first may make it a little less intimidating… if that’s a problem. Once you can get through the complete Hifumi, you can begin working on the other honkyoku. My hope is that offering video of the honkyoku piece “Line by Line” will help make your learning path smoother. Finally, the caveats mentioned above also apply, but by this time become more or less irrelevant. After all, we’re just blowing Zen.

• • There is a difference between honkyoku and normal music. However, that difference is perhaps more social, so to speak, than anything else. Fundamentally, all action benefits from paying attention, so in that way both of these forms of music share the same requirement. Normal music carries with it significant social context. It also has a more precise beat—rhythm. In fact, rhythm really turns sound into music. That is only loosely the case with honkyoku. It’s rhythm is more like the rhythm of the ocean surf. There is a rhythm; its just not precise.

• • I’m not a musician… far from it. Fortunately, in honkyoku, the moment-to-moment execution of a phrase is the most essential thing in my view, so I don’t really miss not being able to remember the honkyoku ‘tune’. If I could, I’m sure I’d ‘like it’ more. Although, ‘liking it’ is not exactly the point in Zen. Although…UPDATE 2019: Wonders of wonder. I actually applied myself to learning some of the shorter honkyoku by heart (under 15 min), and discovered it much easier than I’d found previously. Did I just think I couldn’t and so couldn’t, until I dropped that preconception? However that may be, I discovered a particular approach that I cover in my new book, Blowing Zen Honkyoku, that seems to make it much more doable, even I dare say, easy. Best of all, I discovered how playing some short honkyoku by heart vastly deepens my sense of honkyoku.
    

• • I used to have trouble keeping the rhythm alive, especially with honkyoku… “the rhythm of the ocean surf” would drag. Using a metronome for a few years, set usually around 30 beats, helped with that. Although playing mountain music over the years has also contributed to my improvement. Playing both kinds of music helps each other overall. Now, I suspect that playing by heart may be the ultimate solution to that problem.

• • Not having any particular musical talent, I was especially attracted to honkyoku as a means of playing something music-like. It only requires that essential and innate attribute we all share — attention! Nevertheless, it has taken me decades to know what I’m really doing in honkyoku, or at least to begin knowing. I guess what that means is that honkyoku at its deepest level is music, and as I develop a deeper sense of music, my ‘knowing’ rises to a more conscious surface. In the end, you don’t know what you don’t know. That makes life the adventure it is. Now, I find playing by heart develops that deeper sense like nothing else.