Learn Taiko drumming

I’ve officially “graduated” from my Absolute Beginning Taiko class, and I absolutely love it! We’ve learned Oroshi (aka Practice), as well as the first three phrases of Matsuri Daiko (aka Festival). I am having so much fun with this Taiko class that I’m going to stick with it and move into the Level 1 class. I really like the sense of community I get from the class, and that I have some unique talent to talk about. I even find myself speaking the phrases aloud so that I don’t forget the routines, which makes me seem a little on the cuckoo side.

If I stick with it, I may be able to perform in the show next September with our Taiko group. Yay!

I just signed up for an “Absolute Beginning Taiko Workshop” that starts next Sunday morning. It’s an eight week long workshop, so it should give me a nice introduction to Taiko drumming. Not to mention, I hope to meet some new people and keep myself busy on the weekends.

Our class (San Jose Taiko Adult Recreational Class) is over now- the last session was the recital on July 27.

Our recital consisted of two pieces that lasted about 4 minutes each. Actually, in each piece there were only a few lines that we repeated several times.

Probably the most difficult thing for me was that there is no written music or notation for taiko- we were taught the pieces by chanting them. We later wrote them down, but I would have liked it better if I had known the percussion-specific notation.

Still, it took 12 weeks and a lot of practice to get that far. Our sensei said that we had accomplished quite a bit for folks that had no previous experience and were basically doing it just for fun.

There was one part in the second piece that we had never done correctly in rehearsal- amazingly, we did it right in the performance!

I would like to take the class again, but we were told the waiting list is currently so long that the earliest class I could get in would be Summer 2010!

(I’m in the front row, second from the right.)

It’s my heritage…I’m a drummer…it seems that it should be natural.

Besides, I’ve said for years now that someday I will get into it.

Right now I’m halfway through the 12 week course, and I’m having a blast!

We will be having a recital at the end, which is already making me a bit anxious. I saw the video of the last class’ recital, and they were pretty good, with different pieces than we’re rehearsing, including choreography.

Still, it’s more difficult, but waaaay more fun than I expected it to be.

Completed on 12/10/06

My hope is to do it annually.

www.taiko.org

My blog post:

http://blossomsinthesun.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

love the rhythm percussion and sheer energy

“For Dani, Taiko is an extreme sport.”
- one of my friends.

It’s true though, so far I’ve taken four taiko classes, I usually end up with some mame (blisters) on my hands but last week I hit my knee as hard as I humanly could with my taiko stick. Now, I have a huge bruise.

Regardless of all this, it’s a great outlet for stress. Also, it’s one of my favorite parts of the week – aside from me, my friend who comes too, and one of my coworkers, no one speaks English so it’s a great time for me to practice my Japanese.

I really enjoy it.

Wow! What a blast! I was suprised that the drums as loud as they can be, were not so loud that my ears hurt from two hours of playing them.

The hardest thing was to maintain a strong, yet subtle stance while playing the drums. Sometimes you get so stiff that it makes it hard to be fluid. At the end of the workshop we learned a few bars of an actual song and that was really cool.

If it wasn’t such a hike for classes or the drums themselves weren’t so expensive I would dedicate more time to learning this.But I would say to anyone who is thinking about it to definately give it a go.

I just got back from the workshop and it was a blast! I liked it so much I’m going to try to get into the 12-week class next spring.