Tuning the Koto

Japanese music uses a pentatonic, a five note scale, excluding the octave scale used by most Western music. Koto tuning is called "hirajoshi" meaning "tranquil tuning" of chords: D Eb G A Bb D, some other common traditional tunings are "gakujoshi," "honkumoijoshi," and "kokinjoshi." Hirajoshi, until the Edo period, was the primary tuning for koto used by Tsukushi-goto musicians derived from gaguku scales (7 tone scales with 5 basic pitches). The performer and master Yatsuhashi Kengyo introduced the hirajoshi scale. Sheet music is read left to right, back to front. Tempo is arranged similar to Western music, beats per measure. Bar reading is different, since letters are used instead of notation, one needs to judge the speed of each note in a phrase. Instead of reading a note scale, since the koto is pre-tuned to a scale, one reads a number scale of 1 to 13, each 13 notes representing a Japanese number. Strings 1 thru 10 are notated by the original Japan number reading notation, but strings 11 thru 13 have special Koto notation, different from Japanese number reading. It is difficult for Japan students of the koto to learn the scale because its different from the regular number reading scale. In order to denote a sharp note, next to the left of the character is a small X symbol.

The first sting, the farthest away from sitting position, tunes to the 'd above the middle' on the piano. When performance calls for more than one koto, there is a dominant melodic and accompanying harmonic melody where both koto sections are tuned to different scales and pitches. When the koto is performed in a sankyoku ensemble the pitch for koto string 1 is taken from shakuhachi, the only instrument with fixed pitches. The shakuhachi pitch name comes from two leading schools Kinko ryo and Tozan (Tsuyama) ryu. The "koto five note scale based on 5 note shakuhachi." Strings 1 and 5 tuned to same pitch, 2, 7, 12, are 3 octaves of same pitch; 3, 8, 13 same; 4, 9 same; 6, 11 same.

It means that the scale of japan is not five-toned, but that there is a diatonic scale, in which the semitones, instead of occurring as they do in the diatonic scale of the west, between the 3rd and 4th, and 7th and 8th fall between the tonic and the 2nd and 7th and 8th. 1st and 5th strings are tuned in unison to be C sharp, the 6th string is D, normal tuning of Hirajoshi. C sharp is the tonic; C sharp, D, E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B sharp, C sharp.

The tunings of the 13 strings of the court koto were derived from the modes of the ryo and ritsu scales of the earlier periods. The tunings used in the Edo koto traditions, reveal new indigenous tonal systems. These concepts were categorized under two scales called yo and in. The hiro-joshi tuning appears in such famous early works as Rokudan (Six Dans) ascribed to Yatsuhashi Kengyo, the "founder" of the modern koto styles. There are some 13 standard tunings for the koto. Koto tunings are based either on the older tradition preserved in part in the yo form or on the more "modern" in scale. 19th century pieces written in previous gagaku mode style as well as use of Holland tuning (oranda-choshi), the Western major scale derived from the Dutch business area on Deshima in Nagasaki.

The earliest printed notations of koto, samisen, and flute pieces from the Tokugawa period are found in Shichiku shoshinshu (1664), the Shichiku taizen (1685), and the Matsu no ha (1703). Collections contain only the texts of songs, but pieces that parallel the line of words with numbers representing strings on the koto or finger positions on the samisen, names of stereotyped koto patterns. In the late 18th century both koto and the samisen traditions developed more visually accurate notations. The koto version (first seen in the Sokyoku taisho, 1779) used various-size dots ot indicate rhythm. In the early 19th century, string numbers were placed in columns of squares representing rhythm, as in the system mentioned earlier in Korea. The numbers and squares eventually were combined with the 2/4 bar-line concept of the West, so that the notations of both schools today. Their modern compositions attempt to do the same as well.

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