A Little Taiko Withdrawl

I think this could be a tough week. I'll only get to practice taiko on Tuesday and Saturday. Last week, on the other hand, was pretty intensive from the taiko standpoint. I had group practices on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday (with an extra one on Saturday, then we had the Exstasia campaign performances on Sunday. In addition, Mayumi and I rented studio time on Wednesday and Thursday morning so that we could work on some of our own songs. It was actually the first time in a long time that we were able to sit down and focus on practicing our own songs; songs that we wrote ourselves. We are currently trying to learn three songs. One of them we played last year at a friend's wedding, but the song has been changed quite a bit since then and needs to be re-learned. There is another song that I wrote about a year ago, but we never tried to play it together until last week. It is a fun song and I am looking forward to performing it. And recently I wrote a song for shime taiko, which we began working on together. Although I enjoy playing in the groups at Asano and the guidance we receive from our instructors is invaluable, it does feel really good and exciting to start to seriously focus on some of our own music. We have one, possibly two opportunities to perform our songs in August, so we need to work hard.

Anyhow, I am still a bit down about not having taiko practice very often this week. At least I'll have it tomorrow, and here's something else that will pick up my spirits: Before practice tomorrow I will stop by and pick up our four new Asano Shime Taiko! I'm so excited!

Extasia Campaign #2

At the end of May, Yume Mitai (one of the groups I'm in) participated in a campaign to get the word out and sell tickets for the Exstasia taiko festival coming up in only two weeks! (July 19) Read here about Exstasia Campaign #1.


Yesterday (Sunday) we had Exstasia Campaign #2 for Yume Mitai. This time I played shime taiko instead of Nagado.

For this campaign we traveled down to the southern tip of Ishikawa, to Kaga city, where we gave two performances in the parking lot of a large shopping center. Other teams that performed were Hono Taiko, Hikari, Sasuke and Tedori Koryu Taiko. All of the teams that played yesterday (except for Yume Mitai) will also be performing at Exstasia.

We also did this same campaign last year. Last year, the bus broke down on the way there and in the afternoon, we had to deal with rain. The year before that (I wasn't there at that time) I hear that it poured rain the whole time. This year, everyone made it to the shopping center without any car trouble, the weather, although slightly hot, was sunny all day (I even got a slight sunburn) and we were able to set a record for number of tickets sold during this campaign. Compared with years past, everything went very smoothly.

The only thing that went wrong was that members of Hikari and Hono Taiko performed in bare feet. (Everyone else was wearing tabi shoes) I think everyone knows how hot an asphalt parking lot can get in 90 degree heat. Imagine having to stand on it barefooted for 20 minutes or so. I was watching their feet while they played and I could see how painful it was. They kept shifting their weight to different parts of their feet so they could lift up different parts to give them a break from the heat. In the end, though, they still burned the bottoms of their feet enough to get blisters there. (Hikari members mentioned it in their blog, if you can read Japanese) Not to worry, though, these girls are tough. The first time I saw them about seven or eight years ago, it was outdoors in freezing rain, barefoot and in tank-tops. I guess they have been used to playing in less than ideal weather for a long time now.
Here we are doing our little "Finale" to remind people that Exstasia is on July 19! (Notice the Hikari members - in bare feet - are all trying their best to stand on the white parking lines.)

How to be More Than a Decorative Shime Taiko Player

Tomorrow is the big day. It's 7 AM now and in about an hour, I'll be heading out to Asano Taiko to load up drums and move them to the concert venue: The Matto Bunka Kaikan Hall. Then, starting after lunch, each performing group has about 20 minutes to figure out how they are going to move the drums on and off the stage, where there going to stand, run through their piece and make any last minute adjustments needed.

On Monday, at practice for Yume Mitai, we ran through the piece once at the end of practice for Yamada sensei. She had general comments for each part, but her harshest comments were for the shime taiko (my part). She said we need to try harder, we are not leading the group, the group is leading us (there are four of us) and the way we played, the only purpose we served being there was decoration.

The way she said it was not quite as harsh as that, but that was the gist of what she said. I understood that the way we played was not good enough, but I wasn't exactly sure "where" we had to try harder. We all know our parts now, we had pretty good energy and expression. What was it, specifically, that we needed to fix?

Tuesday, I was able to get to Matto Bayashi practice about 30 minutes early and Yamada sensei also happened to be there, so I took the opportunity to ask for some clarification about what was wrong and how to fix it. It was one of those incidents where someone tells you something that, maybe you know it unconsciously, but until someone puts it into words, you don't really understand it, or grasp it. Do you know what I mean? When someone tells you, you feel like, "Well, yeah. Duh, of course!"

So here it is; the "revalation" about the purpose of shime taiko given to me by Hono Taiko's Yamada Mizue sensei!

Shime taiko are like the conductor in an orchestra, or like a metronome. Everyone should be following them, and they do what they can to hold everyone together. More often than not, shime taiko are playing ji-uchi, or a continuous, repetitive beat, like "te ke te ke te ke te ke te ke..." or "don doko don doko don doko don doko..." or "do ko do ko do ko do ko do ko...". The "melody", being played by the nagado drums, or sometimes Odaiko, should be able to easily fit in with that base, ji-uchi beat.

Now, imagine you have an orchestra with two conductors. The chances that their tempos and interpretations of the music would be slightly, or significantly different. How hard would it be for an orchestra to stay together while following two, different conductors? Or how about if you took two metronomes and tried to start them at the same time? Even if you have them set at the same tempo, it is extremely difficult to get them clicking at exactly the same time. Probably you'll get two different beats. Now imagine trying to play your part along with those two, unmatched metronomes. I don't imagine it would be very easy.

This is essentially what Yamada sensei was referring to as our problem. It wasn't that our energy or expression wasn't enough. It wasn't that we didn't know our parts (except for one little section). The problem was that the four of us were not playing together. In order for us to lead the rest of the group, the shime taiko part must be exactly in unison. If we are not together, the only thing they can do is just play their part on their own and we have to follow them. Even though there are four of us, in order to correctly fulfill our role, as leaders, conductors, we must become one conductor, one metronome. Does this make sense to you?

Following the harsh comments after Monday's practice, the four of us had decided to get together Thursday night to get in a little extra practice. I asked Yamada sensei if she had any suggestions as to what would be the most beneficial to us. She suggested that before we begin practicing our parts in the song, that we spend some time just practicing ji-uchi rhythms over and over, focusing on playing in unison. A pattern like I mentioned in this shime taiko practice post. Only after we feel that we have all gotten on the same wave length, should we begin to practice our parts for the piece. And, of course, while practicing the piece, continue to focus on listening to one another and playing in unison.

I've noticed that I've dedicated several post over the past few months to shime taiko playing. Since I took on shime taiko parts for two groups I am in, I have certainly learned a great deal about playing taiko. I am beginning to understand more and more why, both Yamada sensei, and Mr. Asano, himself, told me that if I really want to excel at taiko playing, the best thing to do is to master shime taiko playing, and much of the rest will fall into place.

Well, one more day, and we will see how/if all this practice has paid off. Now I better get ready to go.

Asano Taiko Spring Recital March 8, 2009

I went to get my haircut yesterday. It's nice and short now. My friends and co-workers now know what my short haircut means. As soon as I come to work the next day, they ask me, "So when is your taiko concert?"

This time it is this Sunday afternoon (March 8) I will play in three groups, Mayumi (my wife) will play in two and my daughter will play in one. It will be a busy day. We'll really have to give it our best, though. This time there will be a lot of people coming to see it, including some of my students, co-workers and my parents have even traveled all the way from Michigan to see the performance. (Well, that wasn't the only reason they came.)

So this past week has been filled with taiko practices driven by the thought: "This is our last chance to practice altogether before the big event." Our most challenging group, Jigen, does not feel very well prepared. I am certain that all of us have made improvements since our October debut, but the song we took on to learn for this recital is significantly more challenging, in that for half of it, all 9 of us are playing shime taiko. And if you are a regular reader of this blog, or a taiko player, you will already know that getting 9 shime taiko to play in exact unison is not an easy task.

The other group my wife and I play in together is Shin-Matto Bayashi. This time around it certainly will be "shin" (new) because for the first time in a long time, we will be playing with Shamisen players, which will add a nice melodic element to the piece. The piece also calls for a flute part and is we actually only perform half of it. When played in full, it is maybe more than 20 minutes long and for these recitals, there are so many groups that need to play, each one is limited to 10 minutes. The time restraints, as well as a decline in members in recent years, has led to a stripped down version of Shin-Matto Bayashi. Therefore, it has been quite a while since anyone has seen it performed with the Shamisen players. Maybe next time we can add back the flute parts.

The group I play in by myself, Yume Mitai is playing the same song we have played the past three concerts, but this time around, many people have switched parts. I moved to Shime Taiko, along with two other nagado players and one of the Odaiko players. Two of the original shime taiko players moved to the nagado part, the other one moved to Odaiko. One other nagado player also moved to Odaiko. With so many people moving around to different parts, it is also likely that, although this is the fourth time we have performed this piece, it will probably sound a bit different.

I was going to write about the advice I got from Yamada sensei about playing shime daiko in a group, but I think I will save that for next time, as this has already gotten longer than I had intended.

Advice From Our Teacher

This past Friday evening (Feb. 13), taiko fans in Michigan were likely attending Kodo's performance at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. If you missed it, I believe you have one more chance to see them, in East Lansing at the Wharton Center at MSU (assuming that the performance is not sold out).

Unfortunately we could not attend the concert, since we are in Japan. Still, we had an enjoyable Friday evening. We had invited our teacher, Mizue Yamada (Hono Taiko) and our daughter's taiko teacher, Kazusa Okazaki (Hikari) over for dinner to talk about our plans for taiko in Michigan, get some advice and ask them a lot of questions.

We were very pleased to receive their votes of confidence and full support in our endeavour. We hope that at some point in the future, we will be able to invite both Hono Taiko and Hikari to visit Michigan, perform and hold workshops.

Yamada sensei had lots of advice for us, but I'll just share a couple things with you. As I expected, she told us to practice shime taiko really hard so that we can become really good at shime taiko. She said that, in general, if you are a team that is good at shime taiko, then you are likely a team that is good all around. (That is why I have been practicing shime taiko so hard these past several months. Want some suggestions on practicing shime taiko? shime taiko exercise 1, shime taiko exercise 2)

Another piece of advice she gave us was to practice so that you can keep a tempo, without speeding up or slowing down. My brother (the drummer) has also told me this many times and he says the best way to learn this is with daily metronome practice. (daily is the key here) You really have to internalize the tempos so that you can be consistent like a metronome even when the metronome is not there. Yamada sensei added to this advice, saying that while metronome practice is important, when you are playing with a group, it is more important to play together with each other. Of course, you don't want your tempo to speed up or slow down too much (unless it is part of the music) but were the group to speed up, and only one person notices it, and that one person stubbornly decides to keep the tempo, the group will not be together and the music will slowly just turn indiscriminate banging on drums. So, in a group, listening to one another and staying together is more important than stubbornly keeping a tempo. Hopeful, though, if you have been doing enough metronome practice, everyone in the group will be able to keep the tempo.

Well, just realized we ran out of milk for breakfast, so I must run out and get some before the kids wake up.

How to Practice Shime Taiko - Part 2 - Accents

I think practicing shime taiko every day with a metronome can really help you improve quickly. And not only with shime taiko or taiko playing, but with music in general. In December I pulled out my violin to begin practicing for a Christmas performance at school and I could even see improvements in my violin playing, thanks to the extra shime practice I had been doing.

The last time I posted an entry about practicing shime taiko I had a positive response from several readers, so I thought I would introduce another exercise I use nearly every day to practice shime taiko. This one comes to you thanks to my brother, the drummer for Chicago's Detholz. This exercise was actually taken from a book he showed me called, "The Rudimentary Cookbook", and I believe it is intended for snare drumming, but many of the exercises are easily transferable to shime practice.

Here is a link to a PDF file of the page: Shime Taiko Accent Exercise The exercise I refer to in this post is "EXERCISE NO. 2"

This exercise focuses on accents. If you can't play shime taiko with clean and decisive accents, your shime playing will probably not be all that interesting. This is a good exercise to work on developing accents.

Before giving my own recommendations and comments, here is what the book says about this exercise:

"The purpose of No. 2 is to enable the performer to place accents when and where desired while playing a rhythmically consistent pattern. Care should be taken to be sure that unaccented notes are kept low and even while accented notes are played fairly high. Keep in mind that accent height should always be relative to the overall dynamic level of the exercise."

My personal recommendation is to practice it starting with your non-dominant hand (left in my case), use a metronome and practice it slowly. I usually set the metronome on 16th notes at around 65 or 70. If you are not used to this type of exercise, you will probably not be able to keep up the tempo at a higher speed.

What I also found when I first started doing this exercise, was that I had trouble keeping the notes even in measures 9, 10 and 11. So I had to slow down the tempo to a rate where I was able to play them evenly. Now that I am more comfortable with the exercise, I will occasionally bump up the tempo to 80 or 90 (there are weaknesses that faster tempos can bring out also), but most of the time I am still practicing at 65 or 70.

The other big thing to keep in mind with practicing accents like this is to keep the non-accented notes as quiet as possible and the accents as clear as possible. This can be a challenge, especially playing at a faster tempo, but if you are able to do it well, it can make your shime playing 10 times more interesting. I think it is better to focus on keeping the unaccented notes quieter, than to focus on making the accents louder. Otherwise you may fall into the trap of putting too much arm movement into the accented notes. Accents and volume do not come from strength, but rather from the quickness of the stroke. So be careful not to put too much arm into it.

Hope this is helpful to all the taiko players out there.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Wadaiko Yamato - New Year Concert 2009 - Part 2

Before I get into the Yamato concert, I'd just like to announce that we have totally re-worked our website and the new Great Lakes Taiko Center Website is up and running. Don't get too excited, my web design skills are pretty limited, but it is certainly an improvement over what was up before. Please stop by and visit: http://www.michigantaiko.com

Now back to Yamato. I have now been studying taiko at Asano for 1 year and about 5 months. After nearly a year and a half of high quality instruction from Ms. Yamada, I am certain that I understand a great deal more about taiko, on a much deeper level than I did back in the summer of 2007. As they say, however, "Ignorance is Bliss" and my increased knowledge of taiko has the side effect of an awareness that some of the taiko groups I used to be impressed with are not quite as impressive as I once thought. I'm not going to put down any names here, but I will say that, after watching some old videos, I would include myself in that statement.

Anyway, Yamato is definitely not on that list. In fact, my deeper understanding of taiko has only made me more impressed with what Yamato does. For example, since October, I have been dedicating a lot of time to practicing shime taiko, since I will be playing it for two pieces in March. I have written in the past about how difficult it is to play these small, high-pitched drums, and how any little mistake you make on them is magnified. (I also posted an exercise to help improve shime taiko playing and will post another one soon.) So, shime taiko is not easy to play, but Yamato performs their highly technical shime piece, "Kizashi" flawlessly, in perfect unison. My own knowledge and experience of practicing and playing shime taiko makes me all the more impressed with the way Yamato can play this piece.

Performing in unison is another aspect of Yamato's program which impressed me on a new level this year. One of the groups I play in (Yume Mitai) has between 16 and 20 members. Last year we had the honor of playing at a fairly major concert and worked very hard to really polish up our performance. At that time, I began to realize how hard it can be to get 16 people to all play, and move in perfect unison. Again, at the Yamato concert, for two or three songs, Yamato will put 15 or 20 people on the stage and their playing, their movement, the music, everything is so precise and tight. Being able to perform in such a precise manner with that many people is very impressive.

Oops, I've run out of time for today, but I still have more to say about the Yamato concert. I'll write more soon.

A Small Concert

For those of you looking forward to the report on the Yamato concert we attended last weekend, I apologize for the delay. I caught the flu these past few days and have been in bed recovering. I also want to take the time to give a proper review, so please, just wait a bit longer.

Yesterday, however, Mayumi and I (in spite of a slightly lingering fever) were able to make a brief taiko performance at our church. The church decided to put on a "New Year Concert" featuring members of the congregation performing everything from ventriloquism to...well, taiko. We played a shortened, simplified version of Raijin (来人) using only shime taiko. It was well received and several people told us afterwards that it was their favorite performance of the evening.

Of course, being the people who created the piece, and having your own image of how it is supposed to sound, we know it wasn't performed perfectly and are aware of many mistakes and areas that need to be improved upon. That being said, I did notice an improvement in our playing. We seemed to be more crisp and together, which I account to all the extra shime practice we have been doing since last fall. We even received applause at two points in the middle of the piece, which caught me off guard the first time it happened. I was confused for a moment until I realized they were clapping because they were impressed. Wow. It's a nice feeling. We won't let it go to our heads, though. We are well aware that we still have a long way to go and we'll keep practicing.

Since we were performing, I don't have any pictures to post, but I am sure there are people who took some. Maybe someone even took video. If I get my hands on any of them, I promise to post them later.

How to Practice Shime Taiko

Today I received an email from Maria of Taiko Drum, Tasmania University Union Taiko Society. She had read my previous post about playing Shime Taiko and asked me if I had any exercises that I could recommend. I thought that maybe there are other people out there who would like to know some techniques for practicing shime taiko as well. So here is the main part of my response to her. By the way, I also noticed that "Taiko Drum" has their own blog, so I will put up a link to it in the side bar. But just in case you can't find that, here is the link: Taiko Drum Blog

Anyway, here is one way of practicing shime taiko:

Shime Exercise
1. Use a metronome. Set it between 60 and 70 to beat eighth notes (slower is probably better). If the metronome does not have an eighth note setting, set it around 130 - 140 and just think of the beats as eighth notes.

2. When practicing, always lead with your non-dominant hand, or the weaker hand (left, in my case). I don't even bother using my right hand for this type of practice. I only use my right hand when practicing performance pieces.

3. play through this pattern:
2 measures each

quarter notes (don don don don)
eighth notes (do ko do ko do ko do ko)
sixteenth notes (doko doko doko doko doko doko doko doko)
1 eighth, two sixteenths (don doko don doko don doko don doko)
2 sixteenths, 1 eighth (doko don doko don doko don doko don)
sixteenth, eighth, sixteenth (do don ko do don ko do don ko do don ko)
2 sixteenths, 1 eighth (doko don doko don doko don doko don)
1 eighth, two sixteenths (don doko don doko don doko don doko)
sixteenth notes (doko doko doko doko doko doko doko doko)
eighth notes (do ko do ko do ko do ko)
quarter notes (don don don don)

repeat endlessly.
I hope that this clear to you.
I usually do the above patterns 10 times: 5 times at Mezzo Forte and 5 times at piano/pianissimo

It is important to be able to play quietly and to practice it slowly. If you practice it slowly and quietly, you'll be able to more easily hear where you are speeding up or slowing down. Be especially careful of the "do don ko" pattern. Also, try to keep all the notes at the same volume, make sure you aren't unintentionally placing accents on certain notes (like the down beats, for example).

This is a combination of practice methods I have learned at Asano Taiko, and advice I received from my brother, who is the drummer for Chicago's best band, The Detholz!

Christmas Presents

It's a bit late to be talking about Christmas presents, but since I got a couple taiko related gifts, I'll do it anyhow. The first thing I got was a practice pad. I had asked for this specifically. Since we live in an apartment building, we cannot really play/practice the drums in our house. I thought that a practice pad would be a good solution. You can't necessarily practice Nagado or Odaiko techniques with it, but it works fine for Shime Taiko practicing. Right now, in two of the three Asano groups I play for, I am playing Shime Taiko anyhow, so it is good timing. Furthermore, in a previous post, I explained how having good Shime Taiko techniques can improve your overall playing techniques for all types of drums.

Upon receiving this gift, I was looking forward to getting in some daily practice. My son, also, was looking forward to it and spent a good part of Christmas day hitting it with taiko sticks. In the evening we got a call from our downstairs neighbors, though. Apparently, even though the sound is much quieter than playing a real drum, they can still hear it. So I am wondering how much I'll even be able to use it. I did get a tip from older brother, though, who has the same pad, only a slightly larger one. He says if I take it off the stand and place it on a cushion or pillow, the neighbors probably will not hear it.

My other gift was a new jogging suit and reflectors. You see, it is winter now, the darkest and coldest time of the year. When I go jogging, it is usually around 5 in the morning. It is still dark then, and although there isn't much traffic, there is some and I would rather not be injured or killed in a freak traffic accident. Up until now, my jogging clothes have been black or dark colored, and fairly light weight. Using them at this time of year makes me cold and hard for cars to see. So, I received a warmer jogging suit, in a bright color (white) and various reflectors.

As you can see from the picture, I should be pretty hard to miss in an outfit like this. So far, I have only been able to use it once, though. Now that I have all the safety gear and warm enough clothes, I just need to find the motivation to get out of bed at 5 am when it is still dark and cold.

How Hard is it to Play Shime-Daiko

We've been practicing taiko at Asano Taiko for nearly 14 months now. Up till now we have mainly been learning to play nagado taiko and/or Odaiko. But this past Saturday, at JIGEN practice, we learned that our next song to learn would be all shime-daiko. All nine of us (possibly 11, we may get two new members) lined up on the stage playing shime taiko.
　
We are pretty excited because we have always wanted to learn the technique for playing shimedaiko. It is where you can show how good you really are. Why is that? Because when you play shimedaiko, every little mistake, or uneven stroke is obvious. A group that can play shimedaiko well is likely to be a good group all around. On the other hand, sometimes a group that looks to be pretty good all around is exposed to be amateurish as soon as you hear them playing shimedaiko without the larger drums accompanying them.

You see, the shimedaiko are very high pitched and do not reverberate nearly as much as the nagado or Odaiko. With the bigger drums, little inaccuracies and mistakes are covered up by the sustained sounds. But the piercing sound of the shimedaiko holds a magnifying glass to your technique and stick control. I knew this already, but it was reinforced to me at practice, as we lined up the shimedaiko, sat down and our instructor, Yamada sensei of Hono Taiko, began giving us drills to practice. We played them all together, then we played them one at a time. Playing one at a time, as expected, you can easily hear all the little mistakes and uneven sticking. Our next big performance isn't until March, but even so, at the end of practice Yamada sensei gave a sigh and said, 「道が長い」loosely meaning, "You guys have a long ways to go."

This was no suprise to any of us. After the practice, it was painfully obvious that we had a lot of work and practice to do. Knowing the difficulty of playing shimedaiko well, and having wanted to learn to play it for a long time now, I had asked my older brother (drummer for Chicago Super-Band, the Detholz!) for some practice exercises and suggestions when I was at home this past summer, which, of course, he gave me. Now that there is some added urgency to quickly learn shime technique, we are trying to find every opportunity to practice these drills even just a little bit each day.

We are lucky to have a pair of cheap shime daiko of our own. Although they may not sound as great as Asano drums, they are sufficient for practicing. On the other hand, just like almost any drum, they are pretty loud and living in attached condos makes it difficult to practice. Our downstairs neighbors have complained more than once (oops). Anyhow, we are trying to find ways to muffle the sound enough so that it doesn't bother the neighbors, while at the same time, not losing too much of the stick action. See the photo for our latest attempt.

New Drums

We were able to order a couple new drums over the past two months. Unfortunately, they are not Asano drums. They are only a tenth of the cost of Asano, but they do allow us to practice on or own, so for the time being, we are satisfied to use them. They are two shime taiko, the small, high pitched drums that one often sees being played in taiko groups. Here are a couple pictures of them. (At least the sticks are from Asano)





Actually, this puts us slightly ahead of our goals for buying drums this year, and there is only one more that we planned to buy before the end of 2008. So we have about six months to save up the money for that.