If you can, find a teacher. Whatever your ultimate intention with shakuhachi, you will need a palette of possibilities, otherwise you may meander around the same small pond of note progressions and dynamics forever. The most startling experience you can have as a new student, is utter amazement at how much sound volume, color and pitch stability the teacher can get out of YOUR flute, and the wide variety of musical machinations they can demonstrate!

If you just got your new flute and you are into your first experience of hyperventilating without making any sound at all...DON'T PANIC....you are participating in an illustrious tradition with many fellow light-headed antecedents. Many are the cases where Joe manages to make pretty decent notes on day one, or whilst selecting a flute, then subsequently no sound arises despite HOURS of trying.

You can avoid hyperventilating by taking one deep breath and trying to manipulate your lips and the flute position as you SLOWLY release air. Huffing and puffing with many short breaths in quick succession will lead to frustration. Have a cup of tea and just relax. Long slow breath expulsions are the easier and more productive route.

The back of the flute mouthpiece rests just under your lower lip, in that perfectly formed concavity which we all (hopefully) possess. It doesn't wave about in the air as you try to blow in it. It's anchored softly under your lower lip and held in place there by your two hands holding the flute.

As you begin to explore sound-making, right from the start, be gentle and aware with your body. One extreme is to discover yourself, after hours of efforting, hunched over your flute with white-knuckled hands in a deathgrip, and shoulders knotted like tree roots. Not good. Wander over to the other extreme....holding your flute as though it's a living, breathing creature which could lose its life with one ungentle movement or squeeze of your hands.

Whilst being gentle with the flute, be gentle too, with your body...light, well-oxygenated, well-aligned, shoulders down and relaxed. Head up. If you can do this all your shakuhachi life, you are supporting the intention of a lifetime of playing without injury.

Left hand down? Right hand down? Either is fine. If you are comfortably ambidextrous, then go for right hand down. Long shakuhachi with holes canted for right hand down playing are abundant. A long flute may be in your future. Lefties don't worry.....holes can be moved!

Breathing: when you inhale prior to blowing a note, at the end of the inhalation allow your stomach muscles to relax with an outwards motion, just as though you would loosen your belt after a big meal... You will take in more air that way. Similarly at the end of your exhalation, tension your stomach muscles inwards...you can expel more air that way and make room for fresh air.

At first, your sounds will be short and weak and probably not on pitch. As you develop efficiency with blowing, your sounds will be sustained much longer, with a more powerful tone.

Since the tradition of shakuhachi arose and developed in Japan, the only sophisticated methodology available for its study is Japanese-sourced. Therefore drawing upon the wisdom of centuries of Japanese players and teachers serves any player well, whether their interest is honkyoku, bluegrass or enlightenment-in-one-breath.

Just to confuse you, there are several different shakuhachi notation systems, and also the 5-line staff notation too. Traditional shakuhachi notation is pictorial in nature. A calligraphic symbol (usually Japanese katakana symbols) equals a particular relative pitch (a particular fingering) on the flute, and various lines or dots are used to indicate length of sustain and beats. You read from right to left, top to bottom. It is useful notation since it is applicable to any length of flute without the necessity for transposing. By the way, each Japanese instrument in an ensemble (for instance, koto, shakuhachi and shamisen) all have completely different notation systems, and, just like shakuhachi, each instrument has a variety of notation depending on the genre of music. Western Staff notation is often used to notate modern compositions, read by all the ensemble players.

Perhaps the most useable notation to begin learning is called 'Kinko'. Whatever your shakuhachi interest, you can refer to aspects of shakuhachi technique using Kinko notation and vocabulary, and thus share knowledge with fellow shakuhachi players. Also, once grasped, a whole world of lovely Japanese music will become accessible to you.

There are various ways to finger a given pitch, and different schools of shakuhachi playing will adhere to one or another method, even within the same notation system. It is useful to learn one basic fingering system at first, and do all your early learning within that system. One of the disadvantages of being a player outside of Japan is that players are not always lucky enough to live close by a good teacher. Often a student of shakuhachi will travel to spend time with a teacher, or have occasional lessons with several visiting teachers. That means you'll be exposed to different notation systems and genres that can be confusing to a beginner. Two different teachers will play 'u' or 'ri' (and other notes) in different ways. It requires self-discipline to keep these genres apart in one's mind. Of course, it is also wonderful to be able to freely investigate some of these different genres as a student.

Since you have to start somewhere, try holding the flute at roughly 45 degrees and aim to be breaking your breath equally over the top and underneath of the sharp-edged utaguchi. Not all the air goes in the flute. Most beginners don't have the muscle and breath control to narrow the air-stream correctly with their lips, hence the rather breathy sound and lack of pressure in the bore. No problem. As you become more adept, your mouth muscles around your lips will slowly begin to retain the memory necessary to make a clean strong sound. The extraordinary thing about playing shakuhachi over many years, is that this muscle memory is never totally resolved...it changes constantly (with some frustrating hiccoughs along the way), and becomes ultimately a part of the uniqueness of who you are as a shakuhachi-ist.

Embouchure is a personal thing. However, what a player's mouth looks like is less important than what they are actually doing to make a decent sound. Try this: push the lips forward in a very slight kissing motion and make a 'puh' sound as air gently escapes through your narrowed lips. Your air stream should be expelled just below the horizontal. Not much effort is required to create a small flattened nozzle between the lips. Experiment with drawing down the corners of your mouth simultaneously (sad kissing). This SLIGHT movement downwards can often contribute to a good 'air nozzle' shape. Note also that the air nozzle does not have to be at the center of your lips. Ultimately, having a teacher watch you blow is so helpful, to avoid gross beginner errors, such as adopting an embouchure that is so wacky it might derail you in your future efforts. One such error is overtly pouting your lips to make a sound. This results in a breathy tone with little power or focus. Another is drawing your lips back against the teeth so tightly that you lose some degrees of freedom and the sound can become limited and 'pinched' sounding.

The tongue is quite relaxed, floating in the lower basin of the mouth cavity, but the end of the tongue anchors itself on the gum line below the bottom front teeth. There are variations on this anchor point.

There IS an embouchure for you that will yield a full, focused tone that can be tweaked from it's medial position. Going tighter and with a smaller lip aperture will produce a 'purer, harder' sound. Loosen the embouchure and soften the lips, the sound becomes 'looser', with more breathy overtones. An experienced player will be able to create a solid, perceptible tonal 'core' in either of these cases, around which play beautiful harmonics. There is incredible subtlety in embouchure technique. You only have to ask a cross-section of good players to blow on your own flute, to appreciate how personal it is. The great mystery is: what happens, micro-muscularly, over the years of a relationship with shakuhachi, that produces mature sound...a sound that never stops developing, and which increases in sophistication, seemingly without end? This is largely player-specific, not flute-specific.

Start with an easier note, say chi (only holes 1,2,3 open). Mess around with lip shapes until the sound is reasonably constant for that note. Then try the next note down (re, holes 1, 2 open). Get that one going, and flit between the two for a while. Then try the lower note of tsu (hole 1 open), and develop that sound. If you can cruise between those three notes for a while, the others will become more accessible.

Spend a good amount of time just blowing long tones, each one a complete slow exhalation after a deep inhalation. Don't stab at it with short breaths. Concentrate on maintaining an even pitch as your breath diminishes. One way to do this is to slightly raise your chin (kari) as the sound begins to fade in strength . Thus you can maintain pitch as the breath runs out.

Be aware also of the mouth and throat cavities. Keeping these as open as possible contributes to the control you have over the tone.

Ultimately, it is useful to develop a strong sound. Call it high volume rather than loud. Being able to consistently produce high volume sound will give you a wider dynamic palette, and more control over pitch and tone color. You will discover in the process that LOW volume sound can be produced with as much intensity as high volume sound. One can feel a reserve of power behind experienced low volume sound that gives a sense of confidence to the player and the listener. It's one of the benchmarks of a mature sound.

Here is a refinement 'wish list' for embouchure technique:

1. Aim airstream to just inside of the underlip.

2. Create a 'pingpong' ball space in the mouth/throat.

3. Relax the mouth cavity and shoulders.

4. Start off the sound smoothly without turbulence.

5. Start with lips slightly open and soft, and quickly narrow the blowing nozzle. This gives a smoother start.

6. Playing kari gives more room for meri.

7. Get into the habit of ending sounds with a diminuendo rather than an abrupt cut. This can be shaped for different musical applications.

Meri notes are the lowered pitches achieved in several ways: by slightly dropping the chin inwards towards your neck, so your air-stream changes direction, and/or by partially covering a lower hole. The flute stays at the same position and angle. Try blowing an even tone then slowly tilt your chin inwards. The pitch will slide down. Some notes (tsu meri) require blowing quite softly to get the correct meri pitch. Generally speaking, meri notes are played softly. However, with experience, players can develop their meri technique to play either softly or relatively loudly depending upon the musical application.

There is a certain tonal color or timbre associated with these meri notes that forms a significant part of the sound picture of the shakuhachi. The variations arising from playing notes in a meri position lend character to the aural palette.

Tsu meri is well worth spending time exploring. It is pitched between E flat and D (in most shakuhachi traditions, and on a 1.8 length), and requires careful fingering on the lowest hole (1). Most of that hole will be covered. Blow softly to get the correct pitch. The chin will have to be pulled inwards quite significantly. It is useful to be able to 'roll' your finger over hole one to adjust the tsu-meri pitch. If you move the finger rather than roll it, you are less likely to nail the correct pitch consistently. Pitch accuracy in the meri notes comes from a combination of aural experience and tactile memory of how the fingers are covering the holes.

'Softly' means different things to different people. Blow tsu meri as though you are faintly ruffling the wings of a butterfly. Over time you'll discover that tsu meri, like any note on the flute, has a surprising range of tonal possibilities, including being able to go quite loud!

The opposite of meri, kari technique intends to raise pitch. Either push your chin out (thus opening up the mouthpiece and changing the direction of airflow) or rock your head sideways, blowing to the side of the sharp edge of the utaguchi: achieves the same result.

Again, concentrate on those easier three notes to begin with. The second octave requires an increase in air pressure in the bore of the flute. The interesting thing about this is that one needs almost no effort to make that happen. A combination of slightly narrowed lip opening and slightly closer positioning of the lips to the utaguchi cut edge, will speed the air up sufficiently to kick the sound into the second octave.

The third octave is probably outside the purview of 'Getting started with shakuhachi', but exploring the envelope just simply goes along with the instrument! Third octave fingering charts are only a rough guide to what you might have to finger on YOUR flute to get the right pitches. Fingering inconsistencies amongst instruments tend to show up more here than anywhere else, and mostly in the upper half of the octave. There are also variations in the note names too. San go no re is probably at the upper end of anything in the classical repertoire. Higher notes might be used for some sound effects, and modern compositions occasionally explore the highest range. Some flutes don't perform very well in the upper half octave. This may depend on the style of flute and the particular emphasis of the maker, and is not necessarily a problem.

When a note is repeated, the appropriate finger either taps a closed hole, or strikes/strokes an open hole, depending upon the articulation required. Atari can be quite sophisticated in its subtlety, being combined also with the breath to achieve a sought-for timbral emphasis. In general, ro is repeated on hole 2, Tsu on hole 2, re on hole 3, chi on hole 4, ri on hole 5 etc.