Japan

Japan by Vu Pham

Japanese traditional music have many varieties but they all have a similar sparse rhythm. In Japanese music there is an interval silence that the rhythm is based on. Japanese music flows, in an attempt to reflect the feeling of nature. The tempo usually starts out very slow and gets faster, returns to being slow again, and has a drawn-out ending. Traditional Japanese music is influenced by Chinese music because some of the musical instruments used in it came from China. Japan traditional songs usually have a traditional instrument called Koto. This particular instrument is known throughout Asia but in different forms the Japanese koto which is a distant relative to the Chinese //zheng//, the Korean //gayageum//, and the Vietnamese //dan tranh//. It is unique because of it's number of strings on the instrument. A Koto has 13 strings with a type of string bridge attach to all 13 strings so the player can control each strings pitch. When playing the instrument the player wear a picking tools that's like a long nail to help with the picking. One of the traditional Japanese music that include the Koto is called Gagaku which means elegant music. The Gagaku is performed for the Imperial court in Kyoto in the old days. media type="file" key="Koto Shakuhachi - Japanese Traditional Music.mp3" width="240" height="20" It consists of three primary repertoires: Native Shinto religious music and folk songs and dance, called //kuniburi no utamai,// A Goguryeo and Manchurian form, called //komagaku// (named for Koma, one of the Three Kingdoms), A Chinese and South Asia form (specifically Tang Dynasty), called //togaku//. Gagaku music uses the Yo scale which is a pentatonic scale with ascending intervals of two, three, two, two, and three semitones between the five scale tones. There are three type of instrument involve which are Percussions, Wind and Strings which include the Koto.

media type="file" key="Koto Shakuhachi - Japanese Traditional Music.mp3" width="240" height="20"media type="file" key="japanese song 1.mp3" width="240" height="20"