Yamatai, the Taiko Drummers of Cornell

I know I haven't at all kept up with this blog, but I have kept up with taiko.  Class every week, at least a half hour of practice every evening. It's in my blood. I was looking at something entirely unrelated and found a project that I was interested in from some bright folks at Cornell. While I was checkin' that out, I found Yamatai, Cornell's taiko group, and this video. I enjoyed it so much that I just had to share it with all of my taiko friends, and this blog, neglected or not, still seemed like the best way to do it. 
So here it is!  Yamatai!  Enjoy!

Yodan!

Our taiko group performs Yodan from time to time, so I occasionally watch other groups to see what they do with it. This performance of Yodan by Zenshin Daiko and UnitOne is exceptional. Dynamic, multi-layerd and compelling, it's an inspiration.

Shime Maintenance

It's been years since I made some of these drums.  I've gone through the process of unlacing them and re-lacing them as the heads have stretched a number of times, but it's always . . . unpleasant.  I end up with very sore hands, broken fingernails, a sore back and an overwhelming desire to find a better way to do it the next time.  I've had a number of other drummers suggest that I might switch to turnbuckle drums, but I really don't want to do that. I like the way the lacing looks much better, and it appeals to my traditionalist tendencies. I have more than once thought to myself I wished they could be turnbuckle drums when I want to tighten them and laced drums when I want to play them.  Then it occurred to me that I might be able to come close to that very thing.

First, I sat down at my computer and created a design for a wooden ring that I then cut on the CnC out of 3/4 in plywood.

I left recesses for the rope, but tried to maximize the amount of wood in contact with the steel ring around the outside of the drum head. One for the top and one for the bottom.

This is what it looks like fitted on top of the drum head.  You can see how it gives access to the lacing holes but still rests on top of the ring instead of on the hide of the head itself.

The next step was to add the 'turnbuckles', which in this case were simply a bunch of bar clamps that I could tighten down a little bit at a time on each side to make sure it stretched the head evenly.  It takes a lot of clamps, but once the heads are tightened to the desired pitch I just laced it up tight and took the clamps off and it was ready to go. And I was able to get the heads much tighter than I had in the past.
All in all I was very happy with this as a solution.

I'm still here and still drumming!

Recently I've been exploring interesting similarities between traditional Japanese shinobue and traditional Irish flute.  There a number of very similar techniques used in the playing of both types of music and similar structures in the songs themselves (sometimes).  Because I was listening to music of both types the all knowing google presented me with an opportunity to watch the video below; A collaboration between Kodo, the preeminent taiko ensemble, and the Donal Lunny Band, one of the driving forces behind traditional Irish music being popular outside of Ireland.  Check it out, it's pretty cool, and see if you can spot how similar these two traditions really are.

Three Years!!??

I can't believe it's been three years, almost to the day, since I last posted. I'm sure every single person (all three of them!) who used to follow my blog has given up on me and moved on.  But I'm back!  I never stopped drumming during that three years, I just got a bit too busy to document everything I was doing. Or I just didn't have anything interesting to relate. I'm not sure which.

Enough excuses and back to the good stuff! If you've ever wanted to make Nagado Daiko I bet you've considered how to go about getting those tacks so straight and even.

Today, I'm going to focus on the even part of that. How do you know how far apart to put the tacks so none of them are closer together than the others?  Often when you choose a distance to put between each tack it will look great until you return to the place you started and the tacks either get too close together or too far apart.

Of course many of you are saying to yourselves, "This isn't rocket surgery. Just to do the maths!".

And those people would be absolutely correct. Some simple math provides an easy, accurate solution to all your tack spacing woes. The formula is this:

 where
C = circumference of the drum at the point you want to put the tacks
N = the number of tacks you want to use
T = the diameter of a single tack

Your result will be W, the width of the pace between each tack. There ya have it! Simple, yet effective. If you run the calculations and discover that the gap is too wide, increase the number of tacks until it's more to your liking.

To be clear; this is the distance between the edges of the tacks, not from the tack center point to the next tack center point. 

If any of this is confusing (or, heaven forbid, you discover flaws in my math!) don't hesitate to let me know and I'll do my best to clarify.

It's good to be back!

Very Cool Practice Drums

One of the major problems all taiko groups face is the cost of drums. They're beautiful, they're loud, to drum on them is a spiritual experience, but they're very expensive. Groups find various solutions to this problem. Some groups, the like the one I'm member of, make their own drums. Other groups raise the money to buy drums from one of the major taiko drum manufacturers like Asano Taiko. Often there aren't enough drums to go around, not to mention a desire to reduce excessive wear and tear on those nice, expensive drums, so practice drums are used.
     Those practice drums are can be anything from a trash barrel turned upside down, an old tire with packing tape stretched over it for a head, clever surrogates made with industrial cardboard tubing all the way up to just using older and/or less expensive drums . . . there are a huge number of solutions the taiko community has developed over the years.
     Back about the time I started this blog I ran across a group that had come up with a type of practice drum that seemed to be a cross between a cajón and a taiko drum. The commercial site can be found here. It's in Japanese, but Google Translate provides a certain amount of assistance if it's required.

    I thought they were pretty cool. Check it out:

 

Etiquette, Part 1

(Tradition)

It's been a while since a post. I apologize for that. Life has been hectic (and that's a bit of an understatement)
But enough excuses. Back at it.

The community taiko group I'm a member of is, to put it simply, very informal. Most of us have been together for a long time, we know each other well and our sensei has stressed that our group is not a professional group and that we're there to have fun. In addition, our practice time is short. In a desire to maximize the benefit to our drumming skills we tend to just get right to it. As I step out into the larger taiko community, as I have been trying to do so the last year or so, I have come to understand that each taiko group has it's own in-class etiquette with varying degrees of formality and tradition. (I must admit I have yet to encounter a group as informal as ours, but there have been some that come close) When visiting a taiko group other than your own or when hosting a visiting sensei, it can be difficult to know the proper way to act.

That having been said, I thought it might be interesting to describe some of the practices I have seen or been told of in my travels through the taiko world. Talking about rules is almost always a bit on the dull side, so I'll divide this topic into more than one post.

One of the first and most universally recognized rituals I think is bowing when you enter and exit the Dojo. Ironically, I've heard that some groups in Japan don't actually do this and it's more common among North American groups. I have never been to Japan and can't speak to this from personal experience. The bow upon entering is accompanied by saying Ohayo gozaimasu, good morning, no matter the time of day. Some groups also say Onegai shimasu, which means something like “would you please” and in this context, “please teach us”. Some groups when a student is late to class require that the student kneel off to the side until invited by the sensei to join. Also, if during class a student needs to leave, permission must be granted as well. Some groups actually penalize leaving without permission by removing the student from one or more future practice sessions.

Some classes start with the students forming a circle and doing some breathing and warm-up exercise before starting practice, other groups start by forming a line arranged by seniority, most senior student on the right of the junior.

Some groups are very strict about speaking during class, even to ask questions. If you have a question it should wait until there is a break or the sensei states that it's an appropriate time to ask. Other groups it's acceptable to just speak up if you have a question, as long as you are not interrupting someone else. Every group I've encountered think it's bad form to drum or tap while someone is addressing the group.

In some groups there are very specific ways in which bachi and taiko (the drums themselves) should be handled. If the drums have kan, the rings attached to the body, they should be placed with the kan facing the audience. Bachi should never be left sitting on the drum head and none of the equipment should ever be touched or moved with your feet.

It seems to me that range of levels of formality is very broad and consequently it can be very easy to make a mistake if you're traveling amongst different groups or instructors. When possible it might be best to observe before you participate to get a feel for what is allowed and what is not. If you know a member of the group well enough, ask them, they should be able to help.