麥浪

"shakuhachitips"
原作者：柿堺香老師
英文翻譯: Zachary Braverman

進階篇7.

November 2000

The Shape of Your Breath 氣息的形狀

This month I would like to talk about breath shape. When I talk about breath shape here, imagine how your breath would look leaving your mouth if you could see it, either from above or on the side.


In the May column I talked about how kari blowing allows more room for meris, a crucial aspect of shakuhachi playing. If the shape of your breath fans out broadly like that of amorning glory, then the force of your breath will die out very quickly as it gets farther away from your lips (the inverse square of the distance, as a matter of fact).


On the other extreme is a breath shape in the form of a tube. In this case, your breath will remain powerful even as it gets farther away from your lips.


For example, try blowing on your hand. Does the pressure on your palm decrease dramatically as you move your hand away? If it does, then I venture to say that you won’t be able to play kari very well.


The secret to blowing so that your breath maintains its effectiveness even far away from your lips is something I have written about before: increasing the volume of space in your mouth.


By increasing the volume inside your mouth, you gain the ability to make your breath stream into more of a tubular shape, which maintains its strength and coherence even as it gets farther away from your lips. Try this again as you blow on your hand, and you should see that the force of your breath doesn't decrease as quickly as you move your hand away.


So, increasing the volume of space inside your mouth can help you not only get better tone color, but also in kari blowing, which will in turn help you with meris and two-step meris.

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