Shakuhachi warm-ups

Sometimes it is important to just blow and play honkyoku. However, if you are unhappy with your sound or want more flexibility and range, try out the exercises below. It is not important to do them in any order or everyday. Pick one thing you noticed during the exercises and try to explore it when playing music.

Exercise	Description	Score and sound file
Whistle tones	Blow very gently across the utaguchi. Focus on the process, not the result. How does the circle of breaths feel? Do you feel a tingling in the lips? Experiment with different fingerings.
Wind tones	Blow over the top of the utaguchi. Experiment with different fingerings. Consider the ideas in Breathing exercises.
Ro-buki	There are many different ways to do ro-buki or blowing ro: Start from and disappear into nothingness. Start loud, get gradually softer then increase volume to muraiki! Play single notes with breaks with no breaths in between in the patterns of the two above.
Chromatic scale	Play up and down using all notes. Play slowly and keep a smooth transition between notes by being aware of breath support and clean fingering. Find some fingering tips here.
Octaves	You can try several patterns: Otsu-kan-otsu. Kan-otsu-kan. Learn more about kan technique.
Miyako scales	You can try several patterns: Up and down. In groups of 4. Playing 4 of each note like in sankyoku.	Download the score.
Breath vibrato	Increase and decrease the number of pulsations on each note.
Intervals	Gradually increase the interval between notes. Going down can be more difficult than going up!	Download the score.
Jazz scales	Play up and down each scale.	Download the score.
Long note stamina	Use the same fingering for ro-otsu and overblow to get the next note. Keep going! This is a test of indurance. The five notes are: Ro-otsu. Ro-kan. Chi-kan using ro-otsu fingering. Ta with all fingers on. Ro-otsu.