Written on
April 3, 2007.
At our Homeschool “school” (or community), there’s a yearly talent show where the kids of all ages display their . . . talent. Every year since the beginning, we’ve played Bluegrass as our talent (we tried Shakuhachi one year but that was a sinker [if you know what I mean]).Now, Luke has already graduated but this year, I’m graduating so instead of doing the same ol’ thing, we decided to try to go out with a bang.
How bangier can you get than Tuvan Throat Singing and Tsugaru Shamisen!
It went off pretty well. There were some blunders here and there which on those parts, I believe I roll my eyes or smile.
Since Wordpress is a little sucky, I can’t put the video up here but I can give you a link to it on youtube.
Written on
March 19, 2007.
Well, After about two months of practice and one month of making, I have finally, almost finished the Sao (neck) on my new shamisen. It’s taken me three months to practice/make the sao which is about the amount of time it took to make a whole shamisen last time. But, after lots of practice, I got the mortise and tenon skills solid enough to start on the real thing.
Now, if I made a one piece neck, I might’ve gotten it done in a week or so but having a three piece neck took a lot more time and patience. Especially for the second mortise somehow. On the first one, it only took me about 4 days to get it nice and flush but the second took weeks and weeks (all because I went off the mark a little when I sawwed the pieces).
It was a very interesting process. Progress was different, visual wise. Let’s take, for example, when I made the body. At the end of a day of lots pounding and chiseling, after seeing the dou pieces I had carved out, I felt I had made lots of progress. Well, it was different with the sao. With getting the sao pieces to connect flush, “progress” was at a much smaller scale. At the end of the day, I’d get the two pieces closer/flusher by a millimeter and I knew I had made progress but it didn’t have the satisfaction as carving out a lot of wood did. However, two months later, (last week) I finally got the neck rounded and planed. It’s very tight too.
Since all that fine mortise work took lots of concentration, I never got around to blogging for a long time (since there wasn’t that much to blog about either) Hopefully, now that I’ve finished the intense part of the making the neck, I’ll be blogging a lot more.
Written on
February 5, 2007.
Well, there’s a reason why I haven’t been writing much recently, it’s because I’ve been doing the same thing every day for quite a while. Specifically, practicing mortise and tenon for the next shamisen. You see, fancy-shmancy shamisens have necks that can be split into three pieces. They are connected together with mortise/tenon joinery, and that’s what I’ve been practicing. Possibly after another test piece or two, I should be practiced enough to be ready to make the three piece neck.
