Hello everyone!
Today I'm going to be posting about two collabs - this is the first!
It comes from one of our composers - Henry Liang. He's a flute & piccolo player in the Royal Australian Navy Band, and has been a freelance shō artist for a number of years. In 2015, Henry was offered by Columbia University in New York to attend a 7-week residency in Japan to learn the shō, which is the focus of this collab. I recommend you check out his website henryliang.com.au to read a bit more about his experiences in studying the instrument, but suffice it to say it was highly immersive.
The shō is an extremely interesting instrument. It's a bamboo instrument with 17 pipes, sounded by free reeds. It's played by breathing in and out through the instrument, and is capable of some pretty incredible dynamic range. Be sure to check your chords against a fingering chart, as notes are assigned per finger and humans have these limitations. Also, it's one of the only instruments I can think of that actually requires periodic heating (check out videos of traditional players and the charcoal bbq's they sit beside).
It's a pretty ancient instrument and features in prominent place within Japanese culture, and composers including Takemitsu, Maki Ishii, Minoru Miki and Yoshimatsu have brought a contemporary aesthetic to those traditions. The 20th century expansion of Japanese musical culture throughout Europe saw the likes of Cage, Hovhaness and Lachenmann compose for it as well.
There's some good reference material out there on how to write for it, and I'll be popping back in with a good one later today, but please don't feel intimidated by it - this is a judgement free zone to get some experience with a truly unique instrument.
Henry's parameters are:
- duration of up to 2-3 minutes
- you're welcome to use woodwind techniques such as flutter tongue and singing whilst playing.
- Due date: Monday, 30th of March
Please write any questions you might have in the comments below, I'm sure Henry will be happy to answer them or point you towards a resource or two!
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to have a look at document in the following link to find out a bit more about the range and possible chord combinations for this unique instrument. Really looking forward to some new material for the shō!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yO4FDD_uf-irBxSTzg_jl2Lur603MZhm/view?usp=sharing
Hi Henry!! Super useful document! Thank you! I also watched a YT demo (which I've posted to the blog), in which she uses a beautiful vibrato effect, here: https://youtu.be/yUpr1F1dZt0?t=289 This effect wasn't in the document you sent, but I hope you don't mind it, as I used it a lot!! I also want to use the double-tongue color she demonstrated, and I wonder if I should be notating that with many small note values or just marking a long not "double-tongue" as though it were a flutter? It wasn't clear to me from the video demo. Thank you! Super excited!!
ReplyDeleteoops, typo "marking a long note" is what I meant
ReplyDelete