Welcome to Chords Canada. Chords is the only stocking distributor specializing in traditional Japanese musical instruments and accessories outside of Japan. We carry a varied selection of products. Most items are in stock in our warehouse in Toronto, and others are available by special order. If you don't see what you're looking for in our online catalogue, just ask us and we'll be happy to try to source it for you. Our staff will be pleased to answer your phone calls, faxes and emails in English or French. (NOTE: We answer your emails within three business days or less. If you have not received a reply from us in that time frame, it means that your email was probably intercepted by our firewall or perhaps not received at all. So please try re-sending it. )

We ship globally and will be happy to ship to street addresses in most countries. Shipping to post office boxes is not available.

Chords does not offer e-commerce or online shopping at the moment. We prefer the old-fashioned way of doing business, namely two-way communication with our customers. So if you're interested in any of our products, let us know what you're looking for and we'll be happy to give you pricing by phone, fax or email. For your convenience, we accept payment by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, bank draft, bank wire, money order, cheque (drawn on Canadian or US banks only) and cash.

Chords' website is intended to serve both novice and expert musicians. We hope you'll find some interesting items here to add to your own Japanese music collection. We look forward to hearing from you soon. Until then, have a look at Chords Canada's YouTube channel. In our playlists, you'll find some interesting and instructive videos, conveniently sorted by instrument or topic. You can watch high-quality performances on most of the traditional Japanese instruments, or check out the how-to-play videos we've selected to get you started yourself. Enjoy!

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NEW at Chords

Finally - Shamisen of Japan, the first English how-to book for shamisen, by Kyle Abbott.

The focus of the book is Tsugaru shamisen. Its first part is a step-by-step construction guide for building your own instrument, complete with pictures, measurements and traceable templates. The second section contains photos and explanations of basic Tsugaru playing techniques, plus sheet music for sixteen min'yo (folk) and Tsugaru pieces.

Although some Tsugaru techniques differ from other shamisen styles, a number of techniques are common to all shamisen genres. Also, Tsugaru sheet music is written in the "bunka-fu" (3-line staff notation) style. So while this book is geared towards Tsugaru shamisen music, in the absence of a teacher, it may also be helpful to get you started in nagauta, kouta, min'yo, and any shamisen style that uses bunka-fu music.