About Masaaki Kishibe
Masaaki Kishibe of Osaka, Japan is one of the finest and most widely-regarded fingerstyle guitar players in Asia. He tours with a wide variety of artists. A younger Andy McKee toured with him before. An alumnus of Berklee College of Music, Masaaki Kishibe's music is notable in that it is not excessively complex, allowing listeners of all types to enjoy. It is perhaps because of this that many of Masaaki Kishibe's tunes end up being possible for even beginners to play.
Pieces in This Collection
- Drifting Clouds: An excellent first fingerstyle tune, playable with just two chord shapes
- Hana: A beautiful tune approachable for beginners, with progressively challenging sections
- November: A sweet, melancholic piece requested by many YouTube viewers
- Time Travel: Introduces percussive slap technique on the backbeat
- Miracle Mountain: A mysterious-sounding tune for intermediate players
About These Arrangements
Most of Kishibe's pieces use alternate tunings (Open D or CGDGad) with a capo. The tunings and capo positions are specified for each piece.
Copyright Notice
Copyright for these compositions and their notation belongs to Masaaki Kishibe. Used with permission; please do not duplicate. We respect copyright, so if you have any concerns at all, please contact us.
Drifting Clouds
An excellent first fingerstyle tune, Drifting Clouds can be played comfortably once you are familiar with just two chord shapes. A determined beginner can often learn this tune within 2-4 weeks.
Objectives
- Practice the chord shapes, 224000 and 444000 repeatedly until you can form them quickly and effectively.
- Learn how to tune your guitar to the tuning (CGDGad).
- Practice the tune slowly.
- Learn one section at a time, and then proceed to the next.
Tuning
CGDGad; Capo IX
Notation
Hana
A beautiful tune, Hana is approachable even for beginners due to its easy A section. Sections B and C get progressively more challenging, inviting the player into more complicated chord shapes and difficult techniques.
Lesson Video
Objectives
- Learn how to tune your guitar to open D tuning (DADF#ad)
- Use a capo on Fret III. The capo makes it easier to play. Many students skip this step and suffer because of it.
- Practice the tune slowly.
- Learn one section at a time. Get comfortable with section A before moving on to section B.
- Spend many times (100 or more!) practicing the hammer-on and pull-off in m6.
- Identify the chord shapes, especially those which appear two-per-measure in section B; practice them repeatedly.
Tuning
Open D (DADF♯AD); Capo III
Notation
November
Many YouTube viewers requested a lesson on "November", a sweet tune by Masaaki Kishibe.
Tuning
DADF♯ad; capo IV
Notation
Time Travel
Time Travel introduces the idea of adding a percussive slap on the backbeat. This percussive slap appears on beats 2 & 4, but only when there are no other notes to play, making it an easy way to begin learning the technique. A more advanced version is to create a percussive slap on beats 2 & 4 no matter what, but this is somewhat more challenging.
The Percussive Slap Technique
Practice the percussive slap by striking the strings or body of the guitar. Note that you can accomplish this in a myriad of ways, but most players slap the strings. While you can slap all of them, striking the 6th string with the thumb is quite enough, in fact this one string produces most of the sound from a string slap.
The Form
- Play A, first ending: mm1-3 and take first ending at m4
- Play A, second ending: mm1-3 and take second ending at mm5-6. Continue to Section B.
- Play B, first ending. Take mm7-13 and take the first ending to m14. Return to the beginning of B (m7).
- Play B, second ending: Play mm7-13 and take the second ending to m15. Continue to m25 before returning back to the beginning of B.
- Play B, third ending: Play mm7-13 and jump to the third ending at m26. Continue on to C.
- Play C, first ending: mm27-31. Return back to the beginning of C.
- Play C, second ending: mm27-29, then jump to second ending at m32. Play through until the D.S. al Coda at m40. This tells us to jump back to the Del Segno at B (m7)
- Play C, then jump to coda: play mm7-13, then jump to the coda at m41.
- Play from 41 to the end. Note that 47-48 can be repeated a few times if you like.
Objectives
- Practice the two primary chord shapes, 224000 and 444000.
- Slowly practice the percussive slap on beats 2 & 4.
- Take care to practice the double-slide on m23. Practice this around 100 times.
- Section C should be practiced very, very slowly; fortunately, the actual rhythm is completely even, so if you practice very slowly and play each note with the same steady rhythm (as a metronome might), you will eventually master it and hear the counter-rhythm of the melody.
- Learn how to tune your guitar to the tuning (CGDGad).
- Practice the tune slowly.
Tuning
CGDGad; capo III
Notation
Miracle Mountain
This mysterious-sounding tune should be approachable for most intermediate players.
The Form
- Play Section A. Note that this is typically repeated once or twice in the live performance.
- Play Section B.
- Play Section C to the first ending (mm14-29). Return to the beginning repeat at m1.
- Play A, B, and C again. This time take C to the second ending. (Stop at m28 and jump to m30). Now that we see a D.S. al Coda, we must return to the del Segno sign at m14 and look for the next instructions to the coda.
- Play from mm14-20, now we see To Coda, so jump to m31.
- Play from 31 to the end.
Objectives
- Learn how to tune your guitar to open D tuning (DADF#ad)
- Practice the tune slowly
- Pay attention to the unusual or tricky chords such as the barre chord in m2, and the stretchy chord in m10. The faster you can commit these shapes to memory, the easier the tune will be to play.
- Mind the long-distance slide in m14. Close your eyes and practice playing the Vth fret note, and slide your finger up to Fret X, feeling and counting every fret-bump along the way. Repeat this exercise until you can slide from Fret V to Fret X without looking.
Tuning
Open D (DADF♯AD); capo II
