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The character for koto is 箏, although 琴 is often used. However, 琴 (koto) is the general term for all string instruments in the Japanese language, [2] [3] including instruments such as the kin no koto, sō no koto, yamato-goto, wagon, nanagen-kin, and so on. [3] When read as kin, it indicates the Chinese instrument guqin. [4]
Some pieces make full use of the three octave range of the shamisen, which has led to the development of technically challenging shamisen parts. Few pieces are purely instrumental; most include a vocal part. Some instrumental pieces for the koto, called danmono (段もの, "thing of parts and verses"), are arranged for shamisen. Most pieces in ...
Shamisen are classified according to size and genre. There are three basic sizes: hosozao, chuzao and futozao. Examples of shamisen genres include nagauta, jiuta, min'yo, kouta, hauta, shinnai, tokiwazu, kiyomoto, gidayu and tsugaru. Shamisen used for traditional genres of Japanese music, such as jiuta, kouta, and nagauta, adhere to very strict ...
Popular in Edo's pleasure districts, the shamisen is often used in kabuki theater. Made from red sandalwood and ranging from 1.1 to 1.4 metres (3 ft 7 in to 4 ft 7 in) long, the shamisen has ivory pegs, strings made from twisted silk, and a belly covered in cat or dog skin or a synthetic skin.
In min'yō, three-stringed lute known as the shamisen, taiko drums, and a bamboo flute called shakuhachi typically accompany the singers. [10] Other instruments that could accompany include a transverse flute known as the shinobue, a bell known as kane, a hand drum called the tsuzumi, and/or a 13-stringed zither known as the koto.
More recent theory [2] emphasizes that it is more useful in interpreting Japanese melody to view scales on the basis of "nuclear tones" located a fourth apart and containing notes between them, as in the miyako-bushi scale used in koto and shamisen music and whose pitches are equivalent to the in scale: [3]
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Musicians and dancer, Muromachi period Traditional Japanese music is the folk or traditional music of Japan. Japan's Ministry of Education classifies hōgaku (邦楽, lit. ' Japanese music ') as a category separate from other traditional forms of music, such as gagaku (court music) or shōmyō (Buddhist chanting), but most ethnomusicologists view hōgaku, in a broad sense, as the form from ...