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.

Learning Kaga Taiko at Ichikawa Juku

The exit off of the highway is barely noticeable. There is no sign, and hardly any deceleration ramp, just a narrow street that quickly disappears underneath a bridge as soon as it leaves the highway. You follow that street through a small group of houses clustered together, then you come out into an open space with mostly rice fields on either side of the road. On the left is a slightly run-down textile factory, which also happens to be our destination.


We park in front of the building and enter through the side door. It leads into a large room with about 6 desks pushed together in the middle of the room covered in papers, coffee cans filled with pens, ash trays and so on. The walls are decorated with several posters of swimsuit campaign models from the mid-90s for tool companies and beer.


The room behind the door in the back of the office has only a table pushed into a corner, and a few chairs lining the wall. The windows have been covered with thick polystyrene and then covered again with sheets. In the center of the room is one large naga-oke taiko and about 6 nagado taiko.

This is Ichikawa Juku in Komatsu, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan. It is one of the few places where you can learn Kaga Style Taiko, the 400 year old traditional style of taiko drumming unique to this area. We decided to attend this school as often as we could, following our December Kaga Taiko recital.

The Kaga Taiko courses we had taken only lasted from September to December. After the classes finish in December, we didn't have any opportunity to practice this style of drumming. In comparison to modern, sousaku taiko (what most of us probably are playing) Kaga Taiko is much more difficult to play and master. Therefore, if we want to continue it after we return to Michigan, we figured we needed to learn as much as we could.

Ichikawa Juku holds classes on Sunday afternoons, starting at 1 PM and lasting until...well, until the last person leaves, I suppose. It's a tough schedule for us. It probably takes 40 or 45 minutes to drive there and Sunday afternoons, there tends to be a lot of events that come up. In spite of this, we decided to attend as much as we could, at least until November or December, when we are hoping to return to Michigan.

The style of drumming and the style of teaching is much different than what we have been mostly doing/learning here. It is very complicated, challenging and interesting. And unfortunately, today, I don't have time to get into it all, so I must save it for next time. Come back soon to check for the update (with video!)

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.