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SST Notation Format

Writing your own scores and exercises for the Shakuhachi Sightreading Trainer is quick and easy if you’re already familiar with the concept traditional Kana notation used for Shakuhachi!

All you do is spell-out the note-names in romaji (Roman letters) and add a few “helper particles” where needed!
There are only a hand-full of rules you need to follow!

  • The first line is the song’s title. *
  • Each line is a measure **
  • There must have at least two lines of note-data
  • There must not be empty lines in the file
  • Notes are separated with commas (“,”)
  • Anything you type or paste into the SST is your responsibility -- don't use what you create to hurt anyone else 'cause it'll be on your Karma.
NOTE: Some browsers, like Safari on my iPad, don’t work with this! As sucky as that is, there’s nothing I can do about it. Sometimes I can type my scores into a word-processor on my iPad, then copy/paste that text into the Song Input Paste-Box — but not every time, don’t know what’s up with that.  :(

(Jump to NOTE KANA SPELLINGS)

(Jump to the HELPER-PARTICLE GLOSSARY)

(Example SONGS - opens in new window)

So, with that in mind, let’s write our first score!

Song Input Paste Box

In the Main Menu, click the “Song Input Paste-Box” button.

Shakuhachi Sightreader PasteBox

In the Song Input Paste-Box that opens, type or paste the following:

Quarter Note Test
ro, tsu, re, chi
ri, chi, re, tsu

Song Paste Results

Click on the “OK” button to go back into the Tablature Window, and you should see your first song displayed!

All we did was to enter the romaji spelling of the Shakuhachi Kana notation, separated by commas!

(Jump to NOTE KANA SPELLINGS)

To turn those Quarter Notes into Eighth Notes, just add the line (“pipe”) Helper Kana (often found on the same key on your computer’s keyboard as the “back-slash”).

Paste the following into the Paste-Box:

Eighth Notes
|ro, |tsu, |re, |chi
|ri, |chi, |re, |tsu


Which gives us: 

Eight Notes
(Notice how the measures now only have _two_ beats in them, and the SST is just fine with that. :)
It should be noted that with the notation for the SST, capitalization doesn’t matter. Spacing also doesn’t matter, and the order of a note’s Romaji and it’s Helper Particles doesn’t matter. (That is to say, “|ro” is treated the same as “RO|” and “rO|” and “|Ro”
You may add up to three “pipe” symbols to a note’s data, each one will reduce the duration of that note by half. ( || denotes a 16th note,    ||| denotes a 32nd note.)
Long Note Test

To make a note longer than a quarter note, start with a note for at least the first position in a line, and then just add commas to extend the duration by that of a quarter-note:

Long Note Test
ro, , ,
ro, , tsu, re


NOTE: Notice how there are only three commas yet four beats in each measure? If you’ve got a comma at the end of a measure and nothing else after that comma, the system is going to count that as a quarter-note tied to whatever’s before it! 

Dotted Note Test

And, of course, you can add “pipe” symbols to extend the preceding note by a specific duration other than a quarter-note.

Dotted Note Text
ro, |, |tsu, re
ro, |, |tsu, re



However... the system also understands “dotted notation” as we have in the west, where you add a dot to a note to extend its duration by half of its current value. (The SST uses asterisks “*” for this.)

Dotted Note Text 
ro*, |tsu, re
ro*, |tsu, re

...Yields the Same thing as above, but with slightly less “ink”.    :)

Register Crossing

Songs start in the lower octave unless the system is told otherwise. The system is marginally smart when it comes to crossing between lower octave (Otsu) and the upper octave (Kan).

For example:

Register Crossing Test
ro, tsu, re, chi, ri, ro, tsu
re, tsu, ro, ri, chi, re, tsu

Will yield the above, which starts on Ro in OTSU, crossing over into KAN for a few notes up the scale, then back down into OTSU.

Register Crossing 2

If you need to tell the system to force a note to be in a specific register, just add “OTSU” or “KAN” to the note’s data. ***

Register Crossing Test 2
ro, KAN ro
ro, OTSU ro
Will yield the above, which will start with Ro in Otsu, jump up to Kan for the second Ro in line 1. Which will remain in Kan for the first Ro in line two, then be forced back down to Ro in Otsu for the second one in line two. 

Now... if you’d like to see how this stuff works in action on an actual song, here’s a page with a few more songs in SST-Tab notation for you to copy/paste into the App.

But also... you can also choose a song or exercise from one of the drop-down list-boxes in the App itself, then go back into the Main Menu, and click on the Song Input Paste-Box to see the data that makes that song/exercise do what it does!

Araumi
NOTE: You may be wondering, “Yeah, that’s all nice and stuff, but can it do Honkyoku?” Unfortunately, no. That’s a task for the “big” version of this app that I’m currently developing. So, hopefully this’ll be able to keep you practicing your sight-reading until the bigger, cooler, more fun, more serious, more adventurous thing comes out.

S.S.T. NOTE KANA SPELLINGS

ro
tsu
re
u
chi
ri
i
hi
gonoha

HELPER PARTICLE GLOSSARY

Add these "particles" to your notes to modify them

  • -
    “meri”
    Lowers that note by one half-step.  (You may have up to two per note.)
  • #
    "kari"
    Raises that note by one half-step.  (You may have up to two pernote.)
  • |
    "line" / “pipe symbol”
    Reduces the duration of its note by half its current value. (You may have up to three per note)
  • *
    “dot”
    Adds half its note’s current duration to its note. (May have up to three per note)
  • ^
    “triangle” / "carat"
    SUBTRACTS its note’s duration from the PREVIOUS NOTE’s duration
  • [tempo=100]
    Set the song’s tempo to a specific value between 2-160
  • [tempo%110]
    Set the song’s tempo to a PERCENTAGE of the most recent “hard” setting, either by [tempo=90], or by your actually moving the Tempo Slider.
    (NOTE: If this is done within the song’s LAST BEAT, the resultant tempo will carry over to the next repeat of the song — good for increasing tempo while practicing exercises.)

FOOTNOTES

* Song Titles must between 1-40 characters. They may contain Kanji/Kana, but the web-version of the InputField’s Courier font won’t display 日本語, (that’s why I made the Song Title appear above the InputField. :)

** Measures (ie “breaths”) may have as many beats in them as you’d like, and even end on partial beats (though the metronome won’t like that). Bear in mind that more notes can cause that line to be reaaaaallllllllly small — and though I’ve forced Unity to make a horizontal scroll-bar at the bottom of the InputField, it _will_ word-wrap if the line gets too long, and that’ll make your own reading of pasted text kinda hard.

*** Though capitalization doesn’t matter to the note-data parser, I, myself find it a LOT easier to read my own score-data when I make OTSU and KAN in all-caps. :)

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