Lesson Blog #3 - Tanuki (たぬき)

This week, we began a new piece titled "Tanuki" (たぬき). The piece is about a mother tanuki (known in English as a "raccoon dog") who convinces a hunter not to shoot her. To show her gratefulness, she plays a song for him by drumming on her belly. As you can see, this is a pretty lighthearted piece.

During the lesson, we went through the maeuta (beginning singing part) and some of the tegoto (middle instrumental part). Unlike the last piece that I completed, this one is quite challenging. Not only is it fairly fast, but it includes techniques that I haven't done in a while (ura hajiki) and even one new technique (soto hajiki). To explain, the ura hajiki involves flicking the fingers upward (backward from the usual hajiki, which is downward). Ura hajiki is only done on the 3rd string. I have played songs with ura hajiki in the past, but those had a bigger gap for me to prepare my fingers and usually only had one sequence. The soto hajiki was even harder. Soto hajiki is the same idea as the ura hajiki, but it is performed on the 1st string, which involves moving the fingers to the top of the neck. The way that it is played in Tanuki only made it even more difficult because you must swap back and forth between the two quite quickly.

I have a feeling that I will find myself quite frustrated as I work on this piece, but my hope is that I will come out on the other side with more confidence in these kinds of techniques.

Sheet Music (Tanuki)

(click on images to enlarge)