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.

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

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!

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.