Ancient Surgical Instruments

I recently received an email asking about koto strings:

I wonder if you can offer some advice. I’d like to buy a koto but don’t have a teacher locally. I’ll probably have to drive about a hundred miles to the Washington, D.C. area for lessons. Meanwhile I’m thinking that I can make a start with Reiko Obata’s “You Can Play Koto” DVD and other materials on the Web, including your note. I’m trying to decide between a traditional koto with strings with knots at the tail bridge, or a koto with tuning pins. I’d prefer the traditional koto. But is it much trouble to tighten the strings or to replace a string on a traditional koto if it breaks? Do the strings tend to loosen with use and with changes in temperature and humidity? Do they need to be tightened frequently?

I’ve yet to string a koto myself, but here’s what I know:

Couple Ways to Do It

The traditional method involves tying knots on the left-hand side, like so:

photo courtesy of Suisui, see wikipedia entry: http://bit.ly/9GlhmV

I’m sure there’s a very specific method to tying those knots, but I don’t know anything about it.

The second way is use a wooden attachment with tuning pegs, like at the head of a guitar. Again, I haven’t examined one of these in detail, but I know there are some advantages to both:

Traditional Knot Method

• Enables you to pluck the strings on either side of the bridge, which can be important depending on what style you play. (It’s still quite hard to get stable pitches on both sides, but sometimes you can use that out-of-tune sound to your advantage.)
• Looks nicer.

Tuning Peg Method

• Easier to replace broken strings.
• Easier to tighten or loosen strings (rarely necessary in my experience).

String Breakage and Moodiness

I’ve seen them break from time to time, but if you leave your bridges out when you aren’t playing, you’re probably fine. As of this writing, I’ve had my current strings in for nine or ten months now (a complete restringing cost me $200), and so far nothing has broken – and I’ve been bowing them, drumming on them, grinding them with motorized espresso-stirring machines, etc. No problems so far, fingers crossed. That’s with a practice schedule of 30-60 minutes, 5-6 days a week.

Strings are pretty moody in general. They detune much easier than guitar strings. I’ll usually retune in the middle of a practice session, especially if I’m working on a piece that involves a lot of bends. If I have to retune in the middle of a performance, I’ll mark the bridge locations on the strings using a black crayon. These marks are pretty much only accurate for a day. If I use them the next day, they’ll get me most of the way to a note, but will usually be off by some quarter-tone amount.

That said, I’ve never had to tighten or loosen the strings after the initial stringing. I’ll sometimes run into a situation where one bridge is physically obstructing another, preventing me from getting a minor 2nd interval between them. There are small bridges that are made for these cases. You can put them up behind (to the left of) the obstructing bridge, thereby raising the pitch of that string. This allows you to lower the obstructing bridge (move it to the left), allowing room for the other bridge.

Apart from that scenario, which is quite common, I haven’t had a lot of trouble with strings.

Weather and humidity doesn’t affect things too greatly in my experience. I’m in Berkeley right now, so there isn’t much weather here to speak of, but while I was in Boston I found that my instrument would warp a little bit from time to time – just enough for the two wood pieces to move around a bit. No biggie, I still tuned it the same every night.