Showing posts with label jigen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jigen. Show all posts

2008-04-19

Jigen - New Taiko Group

In several older posts (here too), I mentioned being encouraged to join a newly forming taiko group, sponsored by Asano Taiko. I was to be a group made up of young, energetic people, with taiko experience, who have a serious desire to learn taiko. Both my wife and I were able to get on the roster for this group and finally, yesterday, we were able to have our first practice. After our first practice, I am very excited about this group. Yet I am disappointed, because as a result of various other events and holidays, we are not scheduled to practice again until May 17.

The group will be taught by Yamada Mizue san of Hono Taiko (also instructing the other groups we're in) and there are nine of us in the group right now. I believe they do not want more than 20, but I think 9 or 10 is a good number anyhow. We are all "young", although some of us would probably be considered as borderline. There are three teenage girls, three members in their 20s and three members in their 30s. It is actually a nice balance, I think.

Although I enjoy the other groups I play in, the members of them come from a wide range of backgrounds and have different goals for playing taiko. Everyone works hard, but you can't challenge people in the same way you can challenge a small, focused group of people, who have their sights set on a high level of performance.

We started practice with some activities I have often wanted to do in my other groups. One of those is metronome practice, the other is working on basic rhythms. For example, two measures of quarter notes, two measures of eighth notes, two measures of sixteenth notes and two measures of don doko don doko rhythm, and then following that same pattern in reverse. First we did it starting with our right hand, and then starting with our left hand. I think we must have done this type of practice for about 30 minutes. Since I have a professional drummer as a brother, I am aware that this type of practice is extremely important, and have wished it were more often a part of practices. I'm looking forward to developing my internal metronome and increasing my left arm/left hand strength.

Following this we looked at the beginning of the song we will learn. Apparently, our debut will be at the Asano recital in the fall, September or October, I believe. She gave us the music for the first half yesterday. The rhythms are harder than what I've been learning so far, but I didn't see any extremely difficult rhythms. Yamada san said the challenging aspect of the piece is that it is quite fast and physically demanding. It has three parts, Odaiko, Nagado and Shime taiko. There will be two Odaiko players (I am tentatively one of them), two Shime taiko players, who have not yet been chosen, and the remaining five will play Nagado taiko.

I am looking forward to practicing with this group of people, who all want to be challenged and improve their taiko playing.

2008-04-02

Back from Spring Break

We just returned from about 8 days of traveling around Shimane and Hiroshima prefectures, in south-western Honshu. It was our family spring break trip and our first major road trip in Japan. (Read about my japanese road trip experiences here.) Everyone asks us why we decided to go to Shimane prefecture. Apparently it is not a very popular tourist destination. It is very "countryside", so a bit inconvenient to travel to, but still, a beautiful part of Japan. To answer the why question, it is because my mother had been there once before and wanted to visit again. It turns out, however, that there was a slight taiko connection in traveling there. We learned soon after deciding to spend our spring break there, that Yamada san of Hono Taiko, who also instructs our Yume Mitai and Matto Bayashi classes, is from Shimane prefecture. So we got to visit the home prefecture of our main taiko instructor.

The down side of the trip was that I had to miss taiko practices on Monday and Tuesday last week. You would think one week is not that big of a deal, but I seriously notice a difference when I cannot practice, even for a week. Not only do I miss playing, but I can feel my body losing strength. We did make it back in time for this week's practices, however, and after only 15 minutes or so of practice on Monday night, I could feel everything coming back to me. I felt re-energized, refreshed.

Another positive thing happened at Monday's practice. I believe I mentioned a new Asano sponsored group being formed called Jigen in a previous blog. I had expressed disappointment at being too old to join the group, which had set the age limit from 14 - 30 years old. At Monday's practice, though, Yamada san again inquired of my age. Upon telling her that I am 33 she said, "oh, well then you are okay to join Jigen" (the new group). I said, "What, they raised the age limit?" and she said, "Yeah, many of the people that wanted to join were already in their thirties, so they decided to take people up to 35." I can't tell you how excited I am about this. This should be a fairly high level group, that will offer a real challenge and the focused training we are seeking. I do take it as a compliment that I have been encouraged to join, but I learned that part of the reason is also because of my gender. There are currently about 8 people lined up, two of which are male, so they are doing their best to try to balance it out between men and women a bit more. The first practice will be April 19. My wife will join as well, for the time being.

 
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