“Articulate: Endowed with the power of speech” —The American Heritage Dictionary Chapter 1 The Basic Sound Dimensions Articulation: Sharp Sound, Round Sound It was during my travels in the Far East and Asia that | met two incredible instruments: the shamisen and the ch‘in. The shamisen, which I met on the island of Okinawa, is a Japanese guitar-like instrument whose body consists of, for resonance purposes, the skin of a habu stretched over a wooden frame (a habu is a deadly snake, a pit viper). The fingerboard is fretless, its three strings are made of silk, and it is plucked with a long plectrum made of ivory. The ch’in, a seven-string Chinese lute, is played with fingers. Both of these instruments amazed me in the richness of their articulation—how the players could “speak” with their instruments through a seemingly endless variety of ways to strike, pluck, pull, and snap the strings. The reper- toire of tone colors produced from the shamisen and the ch’in was remarkable. | discovered later, after some research, that the ch’in has approximately 150 ways of striking the strings, and each has its own name! At first, I wondered why the guitar world didn't have this awareness, this thirst for a variety of articulation and tone color. After more research, | discovered that some of our great nineteenth-century guitar-playing ancestors were deeply exploring the timbral (tone color) possibilities of the uitar. Fernando Sor’s Method for the Spanish Guitar, written in 1830, has detailed descriptions for imitating various orchestral instruments, such as trumpet, flute, French horn, and oboe. In A Modern Method for the Guitar: The School of Francisco Tarrega, written by his student, Pascual Roch, there are descriptions for achieving drum sounds, bell sounds, the hoarse voice of an old man or woman, and even crying sounds. A friend, a classical guitarist, told me of a contemporary work composed for solo guitar that rivals the articulation complexities of the ch’in. The work is titled Las Seis Cuerdas (The Six Strings), composed by Alvaro Company in 1963. In the piece the composer has invented his own pick-hand notation. ‘A line ———— represents the string section from the twelith position (iret) to the bridge of the guitar. Fig. 1.11. Alvaro Company’s Guitar Diagram 25