Is Your Face Alright?

In Japan, where the school year begins in April, March is graduation season. The school where I work is having its graduation ceremony on Monday. On Friday the choir was practicing singing Bach's "Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring" to sing at the event. The music teacher was not happy with the students' expression while singing the song. At one point he told them: 顔を見るだけで聴きたくないんだ。 For those who don't read Japanese, what he said is: "Just looking at your faces I don't want to listen to your singing."

This made me think of my post the other day about developing that special something in your group. What I mean is that your facial expression is just as important as playing the right notes and dynamics and is another thing that can give your performance that little boost, setting it apart from the mediocre. If your face looks bored, your audience will probably be bored. On the other hand, if your face reflects the feelings of the music, whether it's happy, sad, intense, then you will captivate your audience and they will feel the music with you and have a much more enjoyable experience.

So if you have started video taping your practices, like I mentioned in this post, then another good thing to pay attention to would be the expression on your face.

2 Suggestions to Help Your Taiko Group Develop That "Je ne sais quoi"

Saturday I practiced mainly shime taiko from 1 to 5:30 PM. That's a lot of strain on one's wrist and it is slightly painful now. I need to take it easy. I don't want to damage it permanently.

Anyhow, At Saturday's practice for one of the groups I am in, Jigen, two pieces of advice given to us by Yamada sensei stuck in my mind. One wasn't actually advice, but it still stuck with me. Both had to do with stage presence.

Now, you can see a lot of taiko in Japan. Some of it is good, and some of it is really good. What is it that makes the difference between a good group and a really good group?　　The groups that are really impressive, there is something different about them, something, ... you can't always put your finger on it exactly... something...that je ne sais quoi.

I might be able take a very simple phrase and play it perfectly: rhythm, dynamics, etc, just as it is written on the page, and it would probably sound fine. But give the exact same music to a member of a group like Yamato, for example, and have them play it and it will probably sound like a completely different song and be much more impressive. I hope you know what I'm talking about.

So how do you get to that point where you have that certain something than makes you a cut above the rest? Practice, of course, but there are other little things that can make a big difference. Here is one:

1. Act like you're cool (even if you think you're not).
We were watching a video of another Asano group, Sasuke, play the same song we are working on. Sasuke is made up of high school students and they took home top honors in a national youth taiko contest last summer in Tokyo. As we were watching them, admiring their movement in unison and so on, Yamada sensei said, "They think they're so cool". She was kind of teasing them, but I thought that unless you think you are cool, you probably won't look cool on stage. This isn't about being cool or not being cool, it's about thinking you're cool (not cocky cool, though). If you can tell yourself that you are cool for the 30 min or hour, or whatever that you are on stage, I think it makes a big difference. After all, you are cool. Drummers are cool and taiko drummers are not only cool, they're still somewhat unique (yes, even in Japan, it is unique to a certain degree). I don't know if I'm very good at explaining this "acting cool" thing, but I hope that you can follow my point.

And now for the other suggestion:
2. Play taiko with your whole body.
In Western drumming, I would say that one is probably trained to use mostly hands and wrists when playing the drums. If I asked what the difference between Western and Taiko drumming is, probably many people would say that for taiko, you need to use your whole arms. I say, you need to use every last part of your body, from the hair on your head, to your toe nails.

I think developing this partly just takes time and practice until you are comfortable enough with the correct stances, rhythms, and so on. You also have to be aware, though, that putting your whole body into your playing is just as important as playing the right notes. Yamada sensei had us work on this for one particular phrase in the song. When we eventually "got it" she said it looked 10 times better and asked us to do the same thing for the rest of the song.

She helped us to understand what she meant by using a sports analogy. She said using only your arms and/or upper body to play taiko is like a soccer player who only uses his leg and foot to kick the ball, or a baseball player who leaves his feet planted to throw a pitch. Picture those images in your head. Doesn't it look silly? If you think of a soccer player kicking a goal, or a pitcher throwing a pitch, their whole body is involved in the process. It should be the same with taiko. Although, your hands and arms are the main parts that are moving, your whole body should be involved in playing taiko.

I don't know if either of these suggestions are helpful to anyone out there. And I admit, they may not apply to all the styles of taiko that is being played out there. I also admit, that I probably haven't done a great job of explaining them clearly. It is kind of difficult to explain them without being able to show them. Then again, you never know what some people will find helpful, so I hope this will prove to be helpful to some of you.

Do You Videotape Your Taiko Practices?

Today, a short entry with a suggestion for any of the readers who are in taiko groups of their own. I was recently reminded of how helpful and enlightening it can be to tape (video, that is) yourself, or your group during practice, and then watching it afterwards and critiquing the performance together.

With taiko, I think that the way the performers look and move together on stage is just as important as playing the correct rhythms and playing a song musically. But knowing how you look while playing, trying to see whether everyone's movements are in unison and checking to see if you, or anyone else has any type of strange movement tendencies going on is pretty tough to accomplish while you are trying to play the song yourself. Even if one member is to step back and watch, that person cannot see everything, and sometimes, it is more effective to see what is wrong with your playing on your own, instead of having someone else tell you.

You can solve some of these problems by putting up mirrors in your practice area. It can be helpful to a certain extent, but it is still difficult to concentrate on noticing every thing that needs to be fixed, while at the same time trying to perform the song. If you set up a camera, though, you can focus on playing/performing and then watch it afterwards as many times as you want, so that you are sure to catch all of the little things. It is amazing, sometimes, what you can notice when you step back like that to watch yourself play.

This probably isn't a groundbreaking suggestion for most of you. Many of you are probably saying, "Yeah, we already do that. Thanks anyway." We have actually been doing that for awhile as well. It isn't really a new idea for us either. It's just that this past Saturday, we did it for the first time in quite a while and I was so impressed by how effective it was in letting us know where we stood and what needed to be fixed.

It was a song that we have all memorized and have been practicing since last October (2008). It is quite a difficult song and a pretty long song as well, but we felt like we had made pretty good progress and were nearing an acceptable level of performance (which was good, because our performance is only about 2 or 3 weeks away). So our teacher, Yamada sensei, said, "I'm going to tape you guys and then I want you to watch it." So we taped it and sat down to watch it. We finished, it was quiet, Yamada sensei said, "You guys thought you were further along than this, didn't you. You're going to have to work really hard these next few weeks to get this ready."

She was right. Stepping back and watching it on video was very enlightening. I didn't realize how much I was actually looking down, instead of looking forward, out into the audience. Our dynamics, which we thought were really good, were hardly noticeable. Our accents were barely stronger than the unaccented notes. At some points, the height and movement of our bachi (sticks) was all over the place.

Although there are a lot of places to fix up, most of them are pretty easy to repair. Had we not watched ourselves on video, however, we wouldn't have noticed them... Until it was TOO LATE! AHHHHHHHH! Sorry, just kidding. Anyway, we decided to tape ourselves again next practice.

So, if you don't already tape yourselves at practice, I highly suggest that you give it a try. You may be surprised at what you notice.

How is Classical Ballet Like Learning Taiko?

Can I write about classical ballet today? My daughter had her first ever ballet recital on Monday. The whole event was a pretty impressive production. And it should be, considering the cost. In the end, after paying our share of renting the hall, renting costumes, printing up programs, making a professionally produced DVD and so on, we probably payed between 8 and 900 dollars! *A warning to anyone who is thinking of having their children take ballet lessons in Japan: The teachers are wonderful, the lessons are reasonably priced, but the recitals, which happen anywhere from annually to every 5 years, are incredibly expensive.*

The last two or three months have been pretty busy with extra practices and rehearsals gearing up for the recital. I was able to attend some of these practices and I was impressed with one particular aspect of how my daughter's teacher, Kawamura sensei ran the rehearsals. When she first started taking ballet lessons, about 14 months ago, when the recital was still a long ways away, the one hour lessons would begin with 30 minutes of basic, fundamental stretches and exercises. Then there was a short break, one to two minutes, when the children (between 4 and 6 years old) could have a quick drink, and the remaining 30 minutes was spent working on pieces for the recital.

What impressed me was that as the recital drew closer, and the pressure to perfect and polish the performance numbers grew, Kawamura sensei never once changed the lesson format. No matter how much work needed to be done on the recital, the first 30 minutes of the lesson were strictly basic exercises and stretches. I think this type of teaching will produce some excellent ballet dancers in the future.

Such dedication to basic skills is also important for taiko playing and performing, I believe. Practicing fundamental exercises with a metronome is not necessarily the most exciting part of playing taiko. Playing the songs is much more fun. Furthermore, when there is a performance approaching, there is always the temptation and the pressure to skip over the basic warm ups and jump right into the song, to make sure that all the wrinkles are ironed out before the show. In my opinion, however, remaining dedicated to fundamental metronome practice, will likely improve your taiko playing, and perhaps, smooth out some of those rough areas all by itself. I am willing to bet that the more you practice fundamentals and basics, the less time the group will need for polishing the song.

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.