This is the record of my fourth private Noh flute lesson

This is the record of my fourth private Noh flute lesson.

On that day, I learned the remainder of “Chu-no-mai”.

I was barely able to play my Noh flute.

But, I couldn’t control the pitch.

I always played my Noh flute by following a Noh musical score, but the pitch was different every time.

I asked my teacher about that,

“How can I make a steady sound? Firstly, I don’t feel like I quite understand the right pitch because the Noh musical score doesn’t have a description of the pitch”.

My teacher’s answer surprised me.

My teacher said to me, “There is no such thing as the right pitch. You have to get a sense of what pitch is right yourself”.

He continued and said, “In the first place, the sound isn’t important with the Noh flute. The rhythm is more important”.

I couldn’t believe my ears.

As you know, a Noh flute is a wind instrument, not a percussion instrument.

Maybe, I lacked the experience to understand what he said.

My teacher is a first-rate Noh flute player, so I want to learn a lot of things from him somehow.

I feel that the Noh flute is a very esoteric musical instrument.

There seems to be no concept of tuning in the field of the Noh flute. So, each Noh flute has a different pitch.

Strangely enough, the sound is different depending on the player.

For example, if you played my Noh flute, you wouldn’t be able to make the same sound as me and vice versa.

My teacher never gives me a demonstration of the Noh flute. He said that copying other players is meaningless.

Three months have passed since I started to learn the Noh flute.

I will keep learning from now on.