A week ago, I had never heard of Masaake Kishibe. Then I saw a 'for sale' thread on the Acoustic Guitar Forum of someone selling a beautiful Charis acoustic guitar, and on the sale thread, the seller posted a video of himself playing a hauntingly beautiful tune to demonstrate the tone of the guitar.

I was immediately captivated, and found out that the tune was called 'Hana', which means 'Flower' in Japanese, and it was written by Japanese composer Masaaki Kichibe.

Needless to say, I researched Sensei Kishibe thoroughly, and discovered that he is still living and playing in Japan, and wrote some very beautiful and melodic pieces for the guitar.

His pieces are actually quite technically simple, however the difficulty is in reproducing the whimsical melodies contained within the song smoothly. The tempo of his songs are quite slow, yet there is a sense of 'stretching and compressing' the timing to provide the subtle inflections to really bring out the melody and tell a story.

I had only spent a few hours learning 'Hana' before recording it, but I wanted to challenge myself again to see if I could still do what I started last year. I am already learning a second song by Sensei Kishibe, but this one here is one of my all time favourites.