Mountain cherries or Somei-Yoshino: Microtonality in the shinobue flute

The shinobue is a very simple instrument used for folk music, not meant as something transcendent or intellectual like the shakuhachi or ryūteki. The other day I got the 5€ booklet Yamada Kaishi and Fukuhara Kan, distributed by Suzuki along with plastic instruments, often intended for children.

I was surprised to find, already at this level, a discussion of how the cross-fingering known as 0—nominally the same as a flattened 7—is actually not exactly the same pitch as 7♭, and that the difference should be used mindfully for emotional expression. Moreover the nuances are specifically noted as relevant for what I've been obsessing with for over a year, which is to play a good rendition of Sakura, Sakura in particular.

A side-by-side comparison of two Japanese cherry blossom varieties, mountain cherry/yamazakura and somei-yoshino. Many details differ, but overall the cultivar looks softer and more delicate. Wild mountain cherries (left) and the elegant Somei-Yoshino cultivar (right). Image from Siezarrei's blog.

In the shakuhachi world, meri (noted as ﾒ or ×) is the gesture of tilting the head to shade the blowing hole and flatten the note. But a note can also be flattened in the usual flute way, by half-fingering the note’s tone hole, and this can also be called, broadly, meri; the word is used much like “flat”. In the shinobue world, head-meri isn't common because the notes get too breathy or disappear, and meri usually refers to half-fingerings. Due to mechanics and anatomy, the way you shade each hole is different; usually much more of the hole is covered than what the name “half-fingering” may suggest.

In the base registers, higher notes are created just by lifting one more finger, effectively shortening the length of the tube; so that fingering 1, 2, 3… is when you open one, two, three… holes, which on a size 8 (8-hon chōshi) will do a C, D, E… Therefore for fingering 6 (A) you close only one hole, and for 7 (B) no holes at all. And for 7× (7-meri) you half-close the topmost hole.

Now fingering 0 is a strange cross-fingering. You close all holes but 6, the next-to-last one (●○●●●●●). This produces something nominally in the same pitch as 7×, but there's nuances. Even the basic booklet remarks that 0 tends to be sharper than 7×, though still flatter than 7. We could maybe distinguish those as A♯ and B♭ and clarify there's a microtonal difference between them. But it gets deeper:

7× and 3× are actually played lower than 7♭/3♭ to create a tense, beautifully delicate nuance of expression [不安定な美しい繊細な表現].

Meanwhile 0 is considered to not have the same anxiety/instability/tension (不安). This is interesting because you can control the pitch to an extent by covering the hole more or less with your finger—in fact I find it easier to play a 7× tuned to A♯/B♭ than to do the same with 0, so I was surprised to learn 0 is supposed to be the sharper one—but no, it's 7× and 3× that are used for extra-deep microtonal nuance, which means they're played lower than a flat on purpose.

(With 3 this is easy because I find it hard to play a regular E in tune in my shino anyway, my flute in 3 seems to be naturally a bit flatter than the nominal chromatic, and 3× follows suit for E♭).

Using microtonal notation rather imprecisely, we could say that the shinobue nuanced notes are (again, on size 8):

Where B♭ and A♯ may be more or less the same note, potentially with a difference in colour, but B♭ often hits lower, and B♭♭ lower still.

Then there are even more alternative fingerings for a note “between 6 and 7”. Treat this tentatively since it’s subjected to my amateur technique as well as varying with the instrument (I’m told). But on my Rakusui sudake 8-hon I’m getting, in the low register:

The first example is the widespread “0” fingering. Second one is given as an alternative fingering (替え指) for 0 by Tomomi Yoshino, who gives the caveat that it doesn’t work well on every instrument. The third is noted as ⑦ (or really as circled-七) in this chart by Sugiura Neo. I got the results in cents in the low register (ryō), by finding an angle and air speed that plays a 6/7 in tune with equal-temperament A and B, then doing my best to change the fingerings without altering the position or angle or breath speed or anything. Since 0 is supposed to be sharper than 7×, I don't know if I'm doing something wrong that mine is so flat.

Unlike the finger-shadowing gradations and the choice of 0 vs. 7×, I don't think nuances of the other alternate fingerings are used in the traditional shinobue repertoire (in so far as that's a thing, given that folk shinobue weren't even tuned to a reference scale to begin with). But that may be just ignorance on my part.

And then back in the Yamada/Fukuhara booklet, they give an example of how to use these gradations with nothing else than Sakura, Sakura:

In Sakura, try to deliberately establish a different atmosphere by varying the pitch of the 7×. I believe with a higher tone you make it like a Somei-Yoshino, while a lowered position gives you wild mountain blossoms.

This is delightful.

The version of Sakura I've been doing starts on kan register at like A-A-B…, which on a C-keyed instrument requires no half-fingerings. But then you stay very high on the upper registers, so it requires super good tone control to hit those extra-high-pitched notes without sounding too loud and strident (in the shinobue the high notes have to be loud and strident, but there's a degree of dynamic control with practice). This is the reason why I've been struggling so much with trying to get a pleasant tone and timbre out of the highest notes.

But to do that microtonal modulation effect, we need the notes to fall to either B♭ (7×) or E♭ (3×). The version of Sakura in the book is transposed to start on D, like, D-D-E, D-E-F-E-D… which will fall down into the ryō register on either B♭ or B♭♭ or A♯ , according to how you want to perform it (the spicy note will hit on the “wa” of yayoi-no-so-ra-a-wa…).

I'm thinking I can perform by doing both—first the low-register version, then the high-pitched version—which amounts to a change of key, or more precisely of tetrachord nuclei. The higher Sakura I've been trying is on tetrachord E·A, but the version in the book is A·D, meaning the miyako-bushi colour note transposes from F to precisely that spicy A♯/B♭. And happily, the fact that these tetrachords share a nucleus gives me a jumping point to transition (the melody of the one version ends on the start of the other).