"One and Two and Three and Four and..."

The little circles and tick-marks along the side of the columns indicate the measure’s beats: Down-beats are on the right (“1, 2, 3 4” etc), up-beats (“and, and, and, and”) on the left.

A circle indicates that its note is held for a whole beat, (like a quarter-note [eg: “1 and”]). Two circles means that that note is held for two beats, etc.

A tick-mark indicates a half-beat, (like an eighth-note [eg: “1” ...or... “and” if we were to be counting “one and two and…”]

Lines through the center of notes indicate their base duration:

A note without a line indicates a quarter note, one full beat; unless extra circles/ticks extend it (see above).

A single-line marks an 8th note (half the duration of a quarter-note).

A double-line marks a 16th note (half the duration of an 8th note).

And three lines mark a 32nd note (half the duration of a 16th note).

A triangle just below and to the left of a note is kind-of like a “dotted-note” in western notation — I’m treating it as extending that note by half of that note’s current duration (yep, some notes can have two or even three of ’em.)

NOTE:
(I know that some songs break my code for these little triangle things — I’ll have to completely rebuild a couple of systems from scratch to totally fix them. And even so, I’ve gotten some conflicting information about what the triangles indicate, so I’m not 100% sure I’m getting them right anyway! As I learn more from my teachers, I’ll work on correcting whatever I may be getting wrong in the program. :)

Each column/measure ends with a horizontal bar. Play each measure in a single breath — no “tonguing”! If you need to play the same note twice in a row, (indicated by the “>” sign,) just jump up-and-back-down quickly to the next completely open hole above your current note.

Measures of shakuhachi notation are pretty fluid in terms of how many beats each one has — they last as long as they need-to. So don’t freak-out when in some of the songs you see some lines having like 20 beats, and others having only two.

For songs and exercises, the end is marked with a double horizontal bar and the “了” character which means “finish/completion.”