Japanese intonation

I played with two excellent koto players a few years ago, about a year with each one. We rehearsed regularly, and did a number of gigs together. I learned a number of traditional Japanese tunes, and we also worked on a few pieces of mine in 19 and 34. What's interesting is that with the first lady, Junko, we rarely chatted about tunings; she didn't seem to know much about the subject. I did notice that her 3rd was quite sharp to my 12 tone 3rd, but overall my guitar and the koto sounded pretty good together. Since her 3rd was sharp, I'm thinking that she was tuning by 5ths, but don't know for sure. But, since 5ths based tuning and 12 eq are so similar, it makes sense. But, with both ladies I didn't feel like a musicologist as much as just a musician trying to play some music with someone, so I never really quizzed them on tuning theory.

The other woman, Yoko, was familiar with tunings to some degree, and once remarked that she would sometimes tune her 1/2 step to 85 cents; don't know why, but our instruments also blended well. She tuned her koto to 34 to play my tune "34 Steps," and it sounded killer. What was also interesting to me was that some of the Japanese tunes had quite a few notes in the structure; it was definitely not just a pentatonic scale, one had 10 notes out of 12. Learning the music of any culture can be a long process, and I really enjoyed the experience, and it made an impression on my own phrasing. Junko once remarked to me, "You understand my music very well." Just listening, and trying to match the phrasing, goes a long way, and I really enjoyed the experience...best...Hstick
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