[The Dragon Clan Complex] Koto Lessons with Mother [Basic Koto/Private/Self-mod]

[Ayameko Gicha]

Second Brightening of the First Cycle of Immanis, in the season of Winter, Era I of the Celestine Mandate, Era XV Post Fractum.

Yesterday, Ayameko had gone and purchased her first koto, her first musical instrument actually, and she could not be more thrilled. She always dreamed of being a Keme'dral and one had to be skilled in many arts, she already had basic Ataa, and now if she could get basic Koto under her belt she would be that much closer to actualizing her dream.

She weaved this way and that through the way, natvigating the halls of the Dragon Clan Complex with extreme ease, how could she not she was born and raised here, it was more familiar than the back of her hand. And quickly she was at her mother's quarters, an extremely simple room with just the basics, and a room Ayameko had spent a lot of time in before. She stepped in but realized quickly that her mother was not there yet, no surprise Ayameko had arrived quite early because of her excitement. On the floor was her mother's koto, so Ayameko went over and placed her Koto across from her mother's and kneeled down, studying the instrument while she waited for her mother.

[Ayameko Gicha]

Shizuko walked through the halls of the Dragon Clan Complex slowly and gracefully, like all of her motions. She was a very graceful, and passive, kemite lady with ravishing good looks (a gift she passed on to her daughters), that is how she got noticed by Haido Gicha and became his third wife. This brightening she was dressed in a vivd green kimono, up the left side of which was a dark, brown tree trunk which ended in an explosion of greenry, and at the hem of the kimono was a field of blue flowers. Tied across the waist with an obi that was a deeper green than the kimono, embroidered with maple leaves.

In her arms she carried to embroidered pillows, they were small, only a an inch or two in width, as she walked into the room. THe first thing she saw was her daughter Ayameko, back facing towards her mother as she bent over her new koto. Before Shizuko spoke a word to her daughter she looked over every inch, inspecting to be sure there was not a wrinkle in her clothing nor a smudge on her body. After deciding she was completely satisfied did she speak, "Serale daughter, I see you are already taking great pleasure in your new koto. But please I am going to say this just once, do not touch it until I instruct you to do so, and then only do as I say, this is important because I do not want you to pick up any bad playing habits accidently because you were playing with it." This was very typical of Shizuko, she liked her daughters to do exactly what she said, she liked utter control.

Shizuko walked over to her koto so she was facing the koto and facing her daughter, and she placed one of the pillows underneath the right end of the koto, explaining what she was doing as she acted, "Now Ayameko, when you play the koto you sit on the rightside of the instrument, like I am doing now, and it is typical to lift the right end of the instrument slightly off the ground, a thin pillow does this perfectly." At this point Shizuko passed the second pillow to Ayameko saying, "Please place this under your koto the same way I had done."

Ayameko took the pillow and slid it under her koto as she had seen her mother do, "Mother, is this right?" Ayameko asked it with much sincerity and not at all with the bite of impatience her voice usually had when she spoke to her mother, she was just too excited. Shizuko looked over the pillow carefully and nodded approvingly before going on, "Now the first thing I would like to go over are the strings. A koto has 13 strings, all of which have a name," She pointed to the first string on her koto "The first string closest to you is ichi... then ni... san... shi... go... roku... shichi... hachi... kyu... jyu... to... i... and kin. Did you get all that?" Shizuko looked up at Ayameko expectantly.

Ayameko nodded, and Shizuko went on to quiz her by pointing to a string and having her name it. The first ten were easy becasue they were numbers one through ten, the last three were the ones she had to remember and only learning three names made it easy and she caught on quickly. Shizuko continued to point at strings at random, and pointing more frequently at ones Ayameko missed or hesitated on, until Shizuko was satisfied Ayameko had memorized all the string names.

[Ayameko Gicha]

Shizuko satisfied with the level to which Ayameko had learned the strings of the koto, where to sit, and to place a pillow underneath the right side, now it was time to move on. "Now Ayameko, I know you are eager to play, but there are a few more things I would like to cover before we begin to actually play the instrument. The first is tuning the instrument, now I do not believe that you will acquire this skill instantly, because it takes awhile to learn what each string should sound like. BUt I would like you to learn how to do it." Shizuko pointed to the thirteen strings, "Each of these strings have something called a Zi, which is the same thing as a bridge on a violin or cello or viola. What is different, though, about tuning a koto rather that tuning one of those instruments is that to tune a violin, as an example, one adjusts the tightness of the string. For the koto the tightness of the string is a fixed permanence, instead we adjust the location of the zi, but sliding the forward or backward to adjust the pitch that the string will play. Do you follow me so far?" Ayameko nodded slowly as if in deep concentration, she was following along as best she could to what her mother was saying, but it would take a lot of practice to get it perfect.

Shizuko nodded in approval and moved on, "Each string has a standard sound that it produces when plucked, the note it is supposed to play, and before you start playing you want to make sure that each string sounds like the note it is supposed to sound like." With this Shizuko leaned forward with her right hand, and used her forefinger, middle finger, and thumb to strike each string, one after the other starting with ichi and ending with kin and then looked back up with Ayameko, "Now that is what each string should sound like, I tuned it this morning and my ear is quite trained to the sound of a koto. So you may not recognize a slight variation but you will with practice. Like I said earlier tuning is very important and must be done before every time you play your koto." Shizuko stressed the importance of every.

"Now," Shizuko continued, "To actually play the koto you strike the strings with tsume." She raised her right hand and extended her fingers, on her fore finger, middle finger, and thumb was a square ivory comb tied around the end of the finger, "Now when you play you sit so you sit to a 45 degree angle to the instrument, like this," Shizuko adjusted her sitting so she sat 45 degrees to the instrument and facing down the instrument, then she waited for her daughter to copy her, satisfied she continued, "Now when you play like this it angles your hand so the corners of your tsume will pluck the strings." Shizuko plucked the strings, demonstrating how the corner of the square, ivory tsume piece hit the string.

Shizuko know reached down to her side and came back with three more tsume, looking at Ayameko she said, "Please take these and put them on your fingers, like you saw me. Then there is just one more thing I would like to cover before we begin." Ayameko did as she was told, attaching the tsume, a little clumsily at first, and was excited to actually start playing.

[Ayameko Gicha]

(OoC: As a heads up this post will be my weakest, because it pertains to reading music and I have never read sheet music for a koto, well here it goes)

Shizuko once again turned to her side and pulled out a sheet of paper, on which were lines and notes, it was very basic Koto music, scales actually. Shizuko gently patted her perfectly done hair while she caught her breathe, then glanced down at the sheet music before passing it over to Ayameko, "Now the first piece on the sheet I just passed you is the basic scale for koto playing. As you will notice there are thirteen notes on there, moving from the bottom of the bar to the top, each of those notes corresponds to one of the strings on the koto, so naturally when you read it you pluck that string. That is the easy part." Ayameko did not think that memorizing what note was what sounded like the easy part to her.

Shizuko went on, "Now the harder thing to learn is how long to hold each note and how to play it. In basic koto I am going to teach you four different types of notes. There are quarter notes, which are the most common and easiest, half notes, whole notes, and eighth notes." Shizuko pulled out a closed fan from her obi and started to tap it on the floor, keeping an even beat, "Each time I tap is the equivalent to a quarter note, its the most basic unit. Please pull out your fan and tap along with me." Ayameko pulled out her fan and kept the beat with her mother, it was quite easy and very natural to tap like this, and to do so with someone else meant she did not lose beat at all.

Her mother smiled and nodded approvingly, "Good! That was very good, but also the easiest so naturally I expected nothing less than perfect. Now lets move on to half notes, half notes is one note for every two quarter notes. So I would like you to tap out half notes, so every other time I tap you should tap." Ayameko understood this and tried it, it was more difficult that the quarter notes, and she did not get the pleasure of listening to her mother first so it was a bit awkward, but she soon synced up nicely and was tapping out nice half-notes, her mother nodding approvingly again.

"Very good now a whole-note is a note that is played once for every quarter note, now it would be a waste of time for me to have you play it, it is very easy, once every four, its a long note. The hardest note you are going to learn is the eighth note, which is tapped twice for every quarter note, so four times for every half note, and eight times for every half note. So this note is naturally very quick and most be placed accurately and precisely or even the most untrained ear will notice. Please try." Ayameko tried tapping the eighth notes, but she was either always too slow or too fast at first, and she was getting a bit flustered, especially since her mom did not look pleased, but as she played she got it and tapped out decent eighth notes.

"Well that took you long enough, but I guess at least you got it. Now let me show you what all these notes look like." She leaned over and pointed to different notes on the sheet music, explaining to Ayameko which each one was. "Now I think that is enough for this brightening, we need a break and I want to let you practice on your own to let things sink in. We will meet again tomorrow, and I will quiz you on stance, strings, notes, and types of notes. So please study hard tomorrow, the faster you pick up on this the faster you will be on your way to being great at the koto." Shizuko smiled at her daughter, a smile the glowed with pride and affection, and stood up and started to head to the door, walking with tiny, perfect steps, "I have business for your father that I must attend to, please practice hard Ayameko."

Ayameko bowed as her mother left and called after her, "Yes mother, of course I will practice until my eyes cannot stand it any longer, thank you mother." And as soon as Shizuko left the room Ayameko went about memorizing and studying.

[Ayameko Gicha]

Third Brightening of the First Cycle of Immanis, in the season of Winter, Era I of the Celestine Mandate, Era XV Post Fractum.

Ayameko had been up very late the brightening before, striving for perfection, like always and like her mother demanded, well maybe not quite demanded but expected. Anything less than absolute perfection was seen as failure in Shizuko's eyes, and failure was just not something Ayameko allowed herself to do. She she memorized the strings and everything else she had learned until she felt her eyes were going to fall out.

So she was quite tired this brightening as she waited in the same room as she had been in yesterday. Although she was tired, she did not let it show in her exterior, that would only enrage her mother and risk any chance at a lesson this brightening. When Ayameko heard the footsteps of her mother coming she stooped down to a bow of respect, it was a lot bow but it was elegant, all of her limbs positioned gracefully like a dancer.

Her mother stepped in, using her perfect, precise steps, her beautiful kimono sweeping beautifully behind her. After she had crossed the threshold of the door by a few steps she stopped, and inspected her daughter's bow, but found nothing to critique so she greeted her, "Good morning Ayameko. I hope you practiced a lot last night because I do not want to spend very much time reviewing, and I am sure you are just dying to start playing." After saying this she smiled, she often came off as strict or overbearing but she just wanted the best for her daughter. Shizuko felt a great deal of affection for her oldest child, she had put a lot of training into her and hoped her the best socially and in life.

After exchanging a few pleasantries and brief conversations, they moved to their respective kotos and started the review. Shizuko first stood and asked Ayameko to sit next to the koto as if she were to play, as soon as Ayameko had seated herself properly next to the koto, Shizuko sat down and moved on to the next part. She started quizzing Ayameko on the strings, types of notes, and notes. Ayameko's hard work and studious behavior had paid off and she did not miss a single question. Her mother nodded approvingly, "Very good Ayameko, now shall we start playing?" Ayameko nodded vigorously.

"Alright, I will say a string and I would like you to pluck it please, using the tsume of course," Shizuko dictated to her daughter. And she then proceeded to list of strings, starting off slowly allowing her daughter time to find the strings, but as Ayameko grew more accustomed to where all the strings were she started picking up the pace until she was rattling strings off quite quickly. Ayameko messed up frequently but as her mother continued she hit more and more in a row. Ayameko was indeed making progress.

[Ayameko Gicha]

Her mother stopped her, nodding again, and smiling this time too, "Very good, Ayameko! I am very pleased," She said with true sincerity, "It was a little rough in parts, but over all it was quite good!" She smiled, her smile filled with pride for her daughter, but there was no time for this mother-daughter loving, she had more she needed to teach Ayameko.

"Next I want you to learn how to read sheet music, well rather read and play at the same time. You know which notes correspond to which strings, and you know where the strings lay on the koto, so now we are going to tie those two pieces together. So I want you to play through this sheet music, as you will see it starts off simply, just the notes going up and then down. But then it will get more complicated as it jumps around from note to note, and at the end varying the type of note used, so take your time, and be patient. You will not get it on your first run through. Please begin." Shizuko waited patiently for her daughter to begin.

Ayameko took a deep breathe, gazing at the sheet, before beginning. She was trying to get an idea for the piece but she knew she could not wait too long without making her mother impatient so she began. The first part was extremely easy, just moving up and down. She could play that part without any real difficulties. But it did increase in difficulties, and her mistakes increased infrequency and she was beginning to get flustered.

Suddenly though, after a serious of mistakes, her mother suddenly spoke, her voice very stern, "Ayameko stop." Then she paused as she gazed at her daughter, who stared back at her, slightly uneasy. Her mother continued, still sternly, "Why do you think I stopped you?" Ayameko bowed her head apologetically before answering, "Because I was making so many mistakes, mother."

Shizuko smakced her closed fan on the ground, not out of anger, but to startle her daughter and to get her to look up, which it did. "No Ayameko. Why would I care if you messed up a lot? You have never played from sheet music before, its hard. I stopped you because you are getting flustered after every mistake you make. You have to understand that mistakes are fine, for now, and that if you get flustered after everyone it will make you make many more mistakes. You must be a lacquered parasol in the rain, let the raindrops roll off, if you try to collect them you will break." Shizuko took a deep breathe after her monologue, "Now lets try again, please."