ENGLISH VERSION
 
Enhance your learning of the instrument and understand the shakuhachi from the experience, tips and secrets that this shakuhachi master shares with you. Learn in this book how to give personality and shape to your timbre and create your own tone from zero.
 
Blow your mind, Ride your tone. Conquer the shakuhachi, discover your inner singing! Learn the secrets of the Mumon Ryu system and how to achieve mastery of one of the world's most complex instruments. Zapata sensei shares his own path on how to become a master of the shakuhachi by discovering your own tone. The book offers magnificent inputs and great insights on how to play and understand shakuhachi technique. Learn full of life lessons and Zen Buddhist philosophy and history while gaining enlightened knowledge about this mystical instrument. Contains detailed technical information on precision mouthpiece making, blowing techniques, important shakuhachi specifications, notation, fingering, Japanese grammar and special microtonal fingering techniques.
 
The shakuhachi is a complex instrument to master; imprecise, rustic and full of magic sound. It demands perfection from the artist who plays it, it demands everything from him to show his true inner song, from his breath and through a simple piece of bamboo.
 
This book illustrates, guides and gives solid bases for those who wish to discover and control their own tone and breath, not only in the use of the instrument as a musical tool, but also to face their own character in the search for perfection and self-discovery through practice.  
 
The shakuhachi was employed as a meditative tool by the extinct Komuso Buddhist monks of feudal Japan, it is an intimate vehicle linked to personality development and self-discovery, which can help strengthen patience and the conquest of personal mastery.
 
The masters of the Fuke-shu Buddhist sect, shakuhachi practitioners, understood that Zen could be practiced not only from a cushion (zazen), but from many activities of our life. Zen is not static, Zen is dynamic. Zen is silence and sound through the bamboo.
 
With this book you can begin your studies, learn the basic techniques of using the instrument as well as the best tips on how to achieve your own shakuhachi mastery and meditative discipline through blowing. Explore advanced blowing techniques unique to the Mumon Ryu Shakuhachi system such as the Harmonizer (simultaneous sound and singing) and learn technical details about the precision shakuhachi mouthpieces created by Master Zapata, a great design contribution to the history of this ancient instrument. 
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 
Ricardo Zapata is a martial artist certified by two important Japanese organizations as Shidoshi (Master of the Way), with more than 35 years of experience as a martial artist. Musician, performer and composer of music for shakuhachi, singer and multi-instrumentalist, designer and specialist in educational management.  Zapata has dedicated three important lines of research, contributing from design and luthiery, changing the state of the art of the shakuhachi with a cutting-edge model of precision inlaid mouthpieces, from music with compositions for the instrument, and from education with his gateless study system: Mumon Ryu.
 
Master player, luthier and teacher of the shakuhachi. Author and composer of several musical albums, including exclusive discography for this instrument. Creator of the Mumon Ryu method for the teaching and study of shakuhachi. 
Designer of an innovative proposal in the history of shakuhachi mouthpieces, which identify his own style and school.
Author of the book Ninja Blade Under Heart, written and published in the United States in 2 languages, where he shares his life experience as a certified master in Japanese martial arts (Budo).
Director and founder of Shinken Dojo (1998), a school where he teaches artistic disciplines such as Budo, suizen shakuhachi, guitar and drawing. All from a well structured online platform to assist a worldwide community of students.