Drill: Shime Drill #2

This drill is great for players looking to improve their timing on a swing jiuchi and evenness of sound between their dominant and non-dominant hands. These can be big challenges for newer shime players! Here’s a video of me demonstrating the drill, and here it is written out in kuchishoka. Be sure and do this one with a metronome. As you (or your students) improve, speed up.

(If you’re wondering, here’s Shime Drill #1.)

On another note, thanks to everyone who came to our “Teaching Taiko to Young Kids” session at Beyond the Drum over the summer! We had a blast sharing our kids’ activities with you, and hope you enjoyed learning about how we approach teaching taiko to kids (and experiencing it firsthand yourself!). If you have any follow up questions, please don’t hesitate to email us to ask. Happy teaching!

Drill: Fast & Furious 3

Looking for drills to help folks stay relaxed while playing at speed? Look no further than Kristin’s Fast and Furious series! Fast and Furious 3 (FF3) helps you practice fast hands and timing precision while moving between the kawa and fuchi. (Click these links for posts on FF1, FF2, and FF4.) Here’s FF3 written out in kuchishoka and western notation, and here's a video of our friends at Taiko SOBA demonstrating the drill. Thank you SOBA for the video assist! 

Challenge yourself in FF3 by increasing tempo while staying relaxed. The tempo shifts should happen in the final four “don ka” of each full repetition (see Taiko SOBA’s demo video for an example.) If you’re using this for solo practice, pay attention to your hands, arms, body - even your face! - while you speed up. As soon as you feel yourself tensing up, stop, shake it out, and start again at a tempo where you know you can stay relaxed. Pay attention (as always) to extension, stance, and other kata basics. Many players, especially newer players, speed up by bringing their arms closer into their body or cutting other kata corners. Fight that urge!

For everyone who’s back to in-person practice, add a straight teke teke jiuchi under FF3, as SOBA does in the video. The shime player drives the speed ups. (It’s a great way to practice gradual tempo changes.) The shime player can also be the one who watches people for tension and stops the group when they see it. 

Let us know if you try FF3, and happy teaching!

Activity: Videos and See, Think, Wonder

I’m doing a 4-week residency at a STEAM Summer School right now, working with 7th graders for 2 hours every weekday. Most of them hadn’t seen much taiko, so we’ve been watching videos to build familiarity with and reduce the (intimidating) mystery around taiko performance. Don’t underestimate the power of this kind of referencing! It’s also been helpful because this age just can’t spend 2 hours in a row on the drum, so I’ve needed lots of other activities to support their learning.

I’m teaching Matsuri Daiko, so I’ve included several videos of that song. For convenience, here are the videos I’ve show:

Soh Daiko (s/o to Tamiko and some great MC’ing)

Senryu Taiko (this one’s great because the song structure is relatively simple, so my students could pick out the body easily)

World Music Students, San Francisco School for the Arts (this one’s great because the performers aren’t much older than the kids I’m working with now)

(I’m open to suggestions, please let me know if you know of other versions I should show!)

I’m using Harvard Project Zero’s See Think Wonder to help my students to engage more deeply with the videos. See, Think, Wonder requires multiple viewings of the video. For longer videos, I show the whole thing during step 1, but only an excerpt for steps 2 and 3. Here’s how it works.

1. Show the video. While students watch, they write down things they see. They only write down what they can directly observe. For example, “I see people with smiles on their faces” rather than “I see happy people.”

2. Show the video again. This time, students write down what they think about what they’ve observed. For example, “I think the people performing are happy.”

3. Show the video a third time, and this time, students write down what they wonder. For example, “I wonder how long it took them to learn this song.”

This routine is a great way to promote thoughtful engagement and I highly recommend it. It’s been cool to watch my students progress from “I wonder how long it took them to learn this song” to “I wonder how they decided who would play their solo first.”  It’s textbook arts integration (literally) and can be applied to almost any subject, arts or academic. Let me know if you try it, and happy teaching

Activity: Mix it Up!

Whatever ages you’re teaching, you can help your students build confidence with creating rhythms if you scaffold well. I wrote the short poem “My Taiko Teacher” to help the students practice pulse in a 4th/5th grade virtual program I just finished. (The students LOVED the poem - never underestimate the power of making fun of yourself!)

The poem works great for practicing pulse. You can also use it in the following activity to help students take the first steps in creating their own rhythm patterns:

• Provide this link to your students (I put it in the chat for my virtual program; if you’re working in person, work with the classroom teacher to see how students can access a computer during your class. Alternately, you could ask the classroom teacher to have students print the slide out and bring it to class with you, and then change beats with markers.)

  • This is a “Make a Copy” link that will prompt students to each make their own copy of the slide that they can then work with. If you’re not familiar with this technique, I highly recommend Katie Wardrobe’s webinar Google Slides for Music Teachers. Actually, I highly recommend Katie Wardrobe, period. I’ve learned SO MUCH listening to her.

• If your students aren’t familiar with Google Slides, share your screen and show them how to click inside the green boxes and edit the text.

  • For my residency, I didn’t cover ka and kara because the students were all using rolled up towels as their playing surface . This is great for lowering barriers to participation, but not great for ka and kara.

• Give them a few seconds to change a note, and then have everyone play. If you’ve covered the idea of playing with a jiuchi, then play a ji, but if you haven’t, then play the poem with them without any changes. 

• Go through this process several more times until they’ve changed 4-8 of the notes.

You probably noticed that the poem makes liberal use of pickup beats. If your students are more advanced, point that out and talk about it. If they aren’t, then just tell them there’s a reason that “My” and “I” are in parentheses and leave it at that. Of course, explain if they ask, but my students didn’t.

Let me know if you try this with any of your students and how it goes. Happy teaching!

Fast and Furious Drill #4

The latest in Kristin’s Fast & Furious series is a fun one! Like all drills in this series, it builds the skill of staying relaxed while playing at speed. FF4 also helps you practice precision timing and finding the pocket. Thanks to our friends Vicky and Ian from Unit Souzou, Taiko SOBA, and Jun Daiko for helping us out with this video demonstration! 

In the video, Ian demonstrates the drill at 120 bpm and Vicky does it at 240 bpm, and they show how to loop the drill so you’re practicing both hands equally. They’re doing it on a shime, but it translates to other types of drums and practice surfaces. The drill is written out in kuchishoka and western notation here.

Challenge yourself in FF4 by gradually increasing tempo while staying relaxed. Pay attention to your hands, arms, body - even your face! - while you speed up. As soon as you feel yourself tensing up, stop, shake it out, and start again at a tempo where you know you can stay relaxed. There are several metronome apps that will speed up for you automatically. Erin Kelly from Pittsburgh Taiko introduced me to Sound Corset, which is the one I use. Raising the hand that’s playing the “additional” beats will also increase the challenge level.

When you get back to your group practices or your classes, add a straight teke teke jiuchi to FF4 and use that to drive the speed up. (That's a great time for your shime player to practice gradual tempo changes.) The shime player can also be the one who watches people for tension and stops the group when they see it. Let us know if you try this drill!

Content note on the final paragraph of this post: reference to ongoing anti-AAPI violence in the US.

 Finally, we want to recognize that the escalating racism and violence directed towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) is making difficult time even harder. As practitioners of an art form rooted in the Japanese-American and Asian-American experience, it is especially important for white members of the taiko community to pause and think about last month’s shootings in Atlanta and the latest wave of anti-AAPI hate crimes in the US. For AAPI folks, thinking about these things probably hasn't been optional lately; white peers, we can't let it be optional for us. We all have a role to play in sending a strong collective message that we will not accept racism, discrimination, hate, and violence in our city, state, and country. We urge everyone in the taiko community to stand up and support Asian American communities. Click here and scroll to the bottom of the linked page for resources to help you educate yourself on speaking up, talking to children, and fighting anti-Asian racism and white supremacy. 

Activity: Jiuchi practice

The “intellectual” parts of taiko are as important as actual technique, even when you’re teaching virtually. We recently put together a simple activity that drives home some basic taiko skills and terms. 

First, teach three basic jiuchi patterns (for anyone who doesn’t know, the jiuchi is the backbeat in taiko): 

1) straight jiuchi 

2) swing jiuchi

3) horse jiuchi 

Once students have the hang of these, put on a metronome, and call out the name of the jiuchi you want them to play. I play along with the class when I do this, but you don’t have to. Do this for 3-4 minutes each class as part of your warm-up. Over time, you’ll be able to significantly increase the metronome speed. (You can download a sample of a swing and a horse jiuchi on our drills page: sbbeat.online/drills.)

Jiuchi practice is a “taiko vegetable” (thanks to Sue and Linda for the term!). Less flashy, but critical to healthy growth as a taiko player. Let me know if you try it, and happy teaching! 

Activity: Fast Find!

Sometimes you need a quick activity to refocus a group, or to build a sense of fun into a new class. This simple activity for kids and playful adults works well on Zoom; I’ve never tried it in a live class (we created it for our virtual classes) but I’m pretty sure it will work there, too. It supports some skill development (focus and beat internalization) but mostly, it’s fun and active and helps students build a playful frame of mind, which is great for learning. And sometimes you just need a brain break!

Click to watch a demo of Fast Find!

This video shows us doing Fast Find! in one of our recent Kids Taiko Zooms. Start by playing 8 don in unison with the class. Rather than saying the kuchishoka, count the don (say “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8” rather than “don don don don don don don don”). Play this count several times in a row until everyone has internalized the pulse. (I only do this once in the video because we’ve played the game before, so we only needed a quick review before jumping in.)  Next comes the game. First, say an object (a window, a door, something soft, etc.) then count everyone in. Students play the first note with you. During 2-7 YOU keep playing, saying the numbers out loud, and the students have to find and touch whatever object you’ve named. Their goal is to get back to their drums in time to play the 8th and final don with you. Since Kristin and I teach our online classes together, she plays the game with the students so they have an example to follow.

We usually play 4-5 rounds in our classes. It always gets energy up and puts a smile on people’s faces, which is no small thing in Month 11 of a global pandemic. If you have a particularly genki class, you’ll want to remind them that safety is more important than making getting back to their drums by the 8th don. 

Let me know if you try this game! I’d especially love to hear if you try it in an in-person class. Happy teaching!

Activity: Pop Tarts Ducky Face (Nonsense song)

Nonsense songs are a great way to introduce the concept of syllables corresponding to rhythms, the way they do with kuchishoka. We’ve created several for our kid’s Taiko Zooms, and my favorite is Pop Tarts Ducky Face. It’s good for ages 4 - 8(ish), depending on how you use it. It’s written out here in kuchishoka and western notation, and I demonstrate it twice in the video. First, I show how it works on drums, then I show one way it can be done with body percussion if you and/or your students can’t access instruments. 

To introduce this to 4-6 year olds, the script goes something like this:

Now we’re going to learn a fun new song! Everybody listen. (Do the song) Ok, that was it. Listen again, and pay attention to what I do with my bachi and hands when I say Quack. (Do the song) Did you notice? This next time, do that movement with me. (Do the song, kids copy your movement) Great job! Now, this next time, do that movement with me and say Quack when I say it. (Do the song) Way to go! Okay - this last time, do the Quack with me and also do the Boom! (Do the song) Nice work everybody!

This takes about 2 minutes, which is an attention-span friendly amount of time for these ages. Next class, do it again, and encourage kids to play or clap along, or to say more of the words. You can come back to it for many classes, building on it each time, but don’t spend more than a couple of minutes on it in a class. 

With kids age 7-8, you can spend 5-10 minutes on an activity before it’s time to move on; your first step is to demo the whole thing, then follow the “First me/Now you” method to teach it. Once students have it, play it all together a few times. You can have them rotate between drums in between repetitions if they need more challenge. With especially advanced groups, teach them the body percussion version, and then have them build their own body percussion phrases to go along with the words. 

Kids LOVE this activity, and it works in both virtual and in-person classes. Let me know if you try it - I’d especially love to hear about any modifications you make! - and happy teaching!

Activity: Rolling Hills Drill

Online classes are not an ideal environment for working on kata or ensemble skills. They are, however, a good opportunity to work on musicianship fundamentals. The Rolling Hills Drill helps your students build the ability to keep tempo steady while varying their volume. It’s written out here in kuchishoka and western notation.  

To get the most out of this drill, do it with a metronome. You can use one of many free online metronomes and share your computer sound, or you can use an external metronome (a real one or an app) and set it near your microphone when you lead this drill. Seventy (70) bpm is a beginner-friendly starting tempo. Of course, go faster if you’re working with more advanced players!

You can repeat this drill as many times as you’d like. Rhythmically it’s quite simple, so students can focus on keeping their tempo steady. For more advanced students, challenge them to start the drill with their nondominant hand, and/or extend the crescendo and decrescendo evenly over the entire 8 beats. This is also a great drill for solo practice.

Let me know if you try the Rolling Hills drill and how it works for you. Happy teaching!

Teaching over Zoom: camera angles

Front cam

A teacher should make it as easy as possible for their students to learn. This can be tricky in Zoom classes. Chances are your students have a mix of visual processing styles, and you can (and should!) set them up for success by using multiple camera views. Kristin and I use a front cam and a sky cam in our Zoom classes, and recently added a foot cam as well. 

Sky cam

You don’t have to shell out for new webcams to do this. If you host your class meetings on a laptop, use the embedded webcam as your front cam, and your phone as your skycam. (Assuming you have a phone with a camera and wifi.) You’ll need to do a little creative problem solving to set up your skycam, but we’re teaching artists, we eat creative problem solving for breakfast! Kristin and I set ours up  by mounting a tripod cell phone attachment to a lamp extension arm, and then hooking that up to the top of a heavy percussion stand. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked!

Once the phone is in place, you’ll host the meeting on your laptop, and also call in as a participant with the cell phone. When you want to use the skycam, turn off your computer video and sound, mute your computer, unmute the phone, turn on the phone video, and spotlight the phone. Reverse these steps to switch back to the front cam. Leave the phone muted with video off unless you’re sky cam-ing. VERY IMPORTANT: You need to plug headphones into the phone to avoid the echo/feedback issue you get when two devices in the same room are on the same Zoom call.  

If you have some money to invest, buy a webcam and some USB extension cables. Then, put your webcam in your skycam mount and use the cables to connect it to the hosting computer. It’s much easier to switch between cameras when they’re both plugged into the same device (there’s even a keyboard shortcut to do this in Zoom) and you don’t have to do all that unmute/mute business.

Foot cam

We’ve found that people LOVE the sky cam, particularly when we’re introducing new drills and songs. Just this week we added a foot cam for our naname class. This view shows the teacher from chest down, providing a visual reference for foot placement, leg engagement, and koshi integration. I highly recommend adding this view if you’re focusing on kata or introducing a style people aren’t very familiar with.

Drop me a line if you have questions or want to talk through using multiple camera angles in your classes. Happy teaching!

Teaching Taiko in 2020

Let’s be real: 2020 sucks. Pandemic, isolation, economic recession, stress about the election. And I say this as a person who still has most of her employment, still has health benefits, lives in one of the most progressive areas of the US, and who is white in a society engineered for the comfort and success of white folks. This year has been far harder for people of color and in other parts of the country.

A lot of people are wondering where arts education even fits in all of this, and are deciding that it doesn’t. Partners I’ve worked with for years have deprioritized their artist-in-residence programs. I don’t blame them. 2020 sucks. Their plates already too full figuring out how to provide quality online education when some students have reliable internet and a computer at home and others get their wifi in the parking lot of the public library using a smartphone.

Who has the headspace (or heartspace) to figure out teaching taiko online in all of this? US - and that includes every single teacher of taiko providing classes right now. Does it even matter? YES. Kristin and I end our online classes with a few moments for students to share thoughts or comments. Almost every time someone says they came to class in a rough frame of mind (or heart), and that the class gave them a lift they desperately needed. Everyone who is teaching taiko online right now is providing this same critical point of connection, community, creation, and - dare I say it? - joy.

The online classes you are teaching right now MATTER. If you can, offer classes on a sliding scale so people who are hurting financially can still participate. If that’s not financially viable, give the option for your students who still have income to pay extra so other folks can take the class for free. 

Keep it up, friends. We’re not out of the woods, but our classes are helping the woods be a little less scary. 

Activity: Using poems to teach pulse, the middle and high school version

Using poems to build rhythm skills is good for students of all ages! Last time, I shared a (fairly silly) poem I use with younger students and young-at-heart adults. For middle and high-school age students, I’ve used the first three stanzas of “Caged Bird” (aka “I know why the caged bird sings”) by Maya Angelou. This moving work has a strong pulse, was written by an important Black American author, poet, and civil rights activist, and powerfully conveys the despair and rage of the “caged bird.”  If you’re working in an arts integration environment, it connects seamlessly with English/Language Arts (ELA), US history, and social justice topics. This entire activity works well in person and over Zoom. 

Start by spending an entire class session (45-50 minutes) on the poem. Put it up on a smartboard or shared screen and have students take turns reading it aloud, stanza by stanza. Next, put students into small groups to discuss the meaning of the poem. (Hint: it’s not actually about birds. There are good resources online that dive into the meaning; Google is your friend if you’re not familiar with this work or need ideas for discussion questions.) After 5-10 minutes in small groups, bring everyone back together to share out.  

In your next class, go into the music of the poem. First, read it aloud while tapping the pulse on your body. Next, have students say the poem aloud with you while tapping the pulse on their bodies. Do this several times until they have it. Finally, put them in groups of 2-3 to explore saying the poem while playing the pulse on body percussion, taiko, classroom instruments, or whatever they have access to. If time allows, have a few groups demonstrate their work.

You can do this in person or in a Zoom class using breakout rooms and bringing everyone back together for the share out. You will probably need to practice reading the poem aloud and emphasizing pulse without making it sound like a nursery rhyme. This is time well spent. I’d love to hear about it if you try this in your classes, and any adaptations you make! Until then, happy teaching.

Activity: Using poems to teach pulse to kids (and playful adults)

We’re not all born with a strong sense of rhythm. This critical taiko fundamental can be developed at any age. This activity below helps kids age 7-11 (and young-at-heart adults) build their sense of rhythm, and it works well in person and over Zoom. It’s a little too goofy for middle and high school students. Next time, I’ll post the version I use with that age group. 

You want to do this with a poem that has a strong rhythm and opportunity for playful voicing. I first heard the Coyote Poem in the video in my Orff training and have used it ever since. Teach it through echo teaching, tapping the pulse on your body the whole time (as I do in the video). Once students have it, lead them through saying the poem silently to themselves, only voicing the whoops. This is challenging and very, very fun. If you’re teaching over Zoom, have students throw their arms up in the air when they say the “whoops” so you have visual confirmation (assuming you have them muted during class). 

In Zoom classes, your next step is to teach a movement sequence for students to follow while saying the poem. I demonstrate one in the video, but you can make up your own. Work towards students doing the movement sequence while voicing only the whoops. If you’re working with slightly older students (3rd and 4th grade), once they succeed with the movement sequence you created, put them into breakout rooms of 2-3 to create their own and share out when everyone comes back together. 

For in-person classes, rather than teaching a movement sequence, give each student a tennis ball. Put students into groups of 4; have each group sit in a circle and say the poem while passing their tennis balls on the pulse. Once they can do this, have them pass the tennis balls while saying the poem silently voicing only the whoops. Hilarity ensues, and so does learning! I’ve learned the hard way to be clear about expectations with the tennis balls before passing them out (i.e., if you don’t want kids to throw them at each other, or roll them across the floor, lay that out at the start, along with any consequences you have.) 

Teaching is hard right now, if you’re fortunate enough to have teaching work at all. I hope this activity brings you and your students some lightness and some learning. Let me know if you have questions or if you try it!

Taiko education as a tool for equity

As taiko players and teachers, we know how profoundly the art form changes people. The personal power, pride, and inner strength that can be found through taiko can fundamentally shift a life path. (I believe this is true of any arts education, but I'm a taiko person, so my focus is there.) 

But have you ever thought about WHO is benefitting from this opportunity for transformation? Overwhelmingly, it’s people with the money to pay for classes, or students who attend schools that can pay for a residency. This perpetuates systems of inequity present throughout the US. I challenge all of us to take a look at who can access our programs. Yes, we all need to make a living - but have you looked at how you might be able to bring in the same revenue by offering your classes on a sliding scale? Have you worked with under-resourced schools to help them obtain grant funding to bring in your program? Do you offer reduced residency rates for Title I schools? (A Title I school is one where 40% or more of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch.) 

If you’re able to answer yes to any of those questions, take your examination deeper. Do your lessons encourage students to explore and discover, or do they hold you up as the gateway to  specialized knowledge? Do you equip your students to investigate on their own, or do you mold your students to become your disciples? These questions reflect radically different attitudes towards teaching, and the difference between them is the difference between transforming a student life or replicating systems of oppression. 

Taiko education, done well, holds a key to changing our world for the better. Like-minded folks in the taikosphere, please contact me if you want to talk more about this. Let’s be the small, thoughtful group.

Activity: Shaking Up the Apple Tree (PreK-1st)

Since you need to change activities every 5 minutes for PreK-1st graders, you need a lot of activities when teaching these grades. Silver lining: kids this age are generally happy to see activities come up time and again, so you don’t need as much variety from week to week as you do with older students.

I created “Shaking Up the Apple Tree” by adapting an activity from my Orff training. It works in both virtual and in-person classes. It introduces call and answer structure, teaches rhythm steadiness, and even has a math integration! Kristin and I demonstrate it in the video, complete with the short shtick I use to transition from the prior activity. The explanation below is based on having two teachers. If you‘re teaching alone, clap the pulse while you say the rhyme and have the kids join you; then, have them echo your claps in step 3 with clapping instead of drumming. 

1) One teacher says the chant below; the other teacher drums a steady pulse to mark the beat. Everyone stops on “STOP!”

Shaking up the apple tree
Watch the apples drop
To hear the apples falling
You’ve gotta’ STOP!

2) The teacher who said the chant claps 1-8 times. 

3) The other teacher drums that number of beats on the drum; students drum along.

Little kids love this! The “story” stimulates their imaginations, and they get a fun sense of accomplishment from playing the sound of the apples falling. 

Happy teaching!

Activity: Red Light Green Light/ MaruBatsu

In our classes, we typically do a group drumroll to end our warm-up. It’s a great way to transition to skill-focused work, and rolling gives students a chance to focus on relaxation and form. In our kids’ classes, we have two approaches that turn the roll into a game, boosting engagement. They’re both effective in person and in virtual classes. 

Red Light Green light

If you’re not familiar with the children’s game Red Light Green Light, you can find tens of thousands of explanations of it through a Google search. We use a piece of red paper and a piece of green paper. If Kristin holds up the green paper, students roll; when she holds up the red paper, they stop. In Zoom, the paper can also indicate dynamics. If it’s close to the camera, students roll loud; if it’s farther away, they roll quietly. I play along with the 4-5 year olds (they need an example to follow), but not with the 6-7 year olds. 

MaruBatsu

Maru means circle in Japanese, and Batsu means X. It’s relatively common in Japan for someone to hold their arms above their head, fingers touching to make a circle, indicating that something is good or correct. They hold their forearms crossed in front of their bodies in an X to indicate the opposite. For drumrolls, Maru means go and Batsu means stop.

Simple and effective tricks to get your younger students excited about playing a drumroll. Let us know if you try them in your classes, and happy teaching!

Activity: Body percussion: Hand Warmer, Taiko Player, Heart Warmer

Body percussion is a great way to help students maintain rhythm chops in your #taikozoom classes (as many of us have figured out!). This original (?) percussion style exists in folk traditions all over the world: palmas in flamenco, step in American Black culture, folks traditions in south Africa...the list goes on and on. If you want to take a deep dive into your own body percussion training, Antwan Davis is an Oakland-based body percussionist and stepper who has some fun videos on YouTube.

You can do more with body percussion than play your existing rep and drills! Kristin has created a rep of body percussion phrases of various difficulty levels for our classes. Here are 3 that are beginner-friendly and the way we’ve introduced and used them:

1. Show the phrase name and beats written down on a piece of paper.

2. Hold that paper up to your webcam and give students a moment to read it. (Your visual learners need this.) For example, we notate Hand Warmer as “slide snapsnap.”

3. Demo the full phrase 1-2 times SLOWLY, saying whatever you wrote on the paper.

4. Invite students to join you. 

When you’ve introduced more than one phrase, link them together. For example, Hand Warmer and Taiko Player both fit in the ma (rests) in Heart Warmer. For an extra challenge, add stepping on the beats. (We demo both of those in the video, follow the links in the previous sentence to see.) If you’re lucky enough to be sheltering in place with you co-teacher, you can each choose one pattern and do it several times in a row and have the students choose which of you to follow.

 As the pandemic continues, we hope you’re all doing okay. We’re grateful so many of you are attending our Taiko Zooms - it keeps us connected to our artform and artistic community. If you’re feeling isolated or missing taiko, please join us! If your schedule doesn’t allow you to attend, but you want to build and practice songs and skills, kaDon is an AMAZING resource and you should check them out.

Happy Zooming!

Activity: I’m a Taiko Player song (4-5 year olds)

Little kids in taiko classes need to sing, dance, and move as well as drum. Luckily (?), you need to change activities every 5 minutes for PreK-1st graders, so there’s plenty of time to cover all of those bases. Kids classes also benefit from consistent structure - a beginning and ending song, for example.  

We repurposed the nonsense folk song Sarasponda into “I’m a Taiko Player” to be the closing song for our kids Taiko Zooms. It  incorporates a dramatic raising of the arms, the lyrics are silly, and you get to “DON DON DON!” at the end of each phrase. Kids LOVE it. I demonstrate it in this video, and it’s written out here in western notation. 

Here’s how to introduce it:

1. Sing while doing the gestures (raising arms during the phrase, then patting legs on “DON DON DON!”). Have students listen and watch, keeping an ear out for the DON. 

2. Say the words once through in rhythm while doing the gestures. Kids continue to watch and listen.

3. Sing it again. All kids should copy your gestures and movement, and any kids who have learned the words can join.

4. Sing it again. This time, encourage kids to sing the words they’ve picked up. Play DON on a drum if you have one, legs if you don’t.

5. Repeat! Continue to raise your arms slowly during the beginning and middle of phrases, and only play on “DON DON DON!”

Once the kids are comfortable singing with you and playing “DON DON DON,” add in the second verse, replacing “tsu-ku” and “really small” for “DON DON” and “really big.” It’s especially fun to make very tiny gestures and sing quietly in this round! Remember not to slow down-- it’s important to affirm that quiet does not always mean slow, and fast does not always mean loud. (Particularly since we do sometimes speed up for the last round!)

“I’m a Taiko Player” reinforces loud vs. soft, listening for and responding to cues, the kuchishoka for loud and soft strikes, all while singing and playing. It hits a lot of music ed standards and is fun to boot. Let us know if you try it, and happy teaching!

Activities for Virtual Classes: Virtual Wipeout!

My game Wipeout is a fun way to build foundational skills for soloing. If you aren’t familiar with the game, read about it here. Kristin figured out a great way to use Zoom’s whiteboard feature to play Wipeout in online classes and made this video to share the process. 

In the video she’s working with an 8 beat phrase, which is where you should start. We’ve recently introduced a Wipeout variation “Swingout.” Instead of an 8-beat phrase, we use a 6-beat phrase (so the numbers 1-6 are on the whiteboard) and a swing jiuchi. Galen Rogers, another taiko teaching friend, let me know he’s using a spreadsheet to play Wipeout in online classes with his high school students, which sounds fun! 

Wipeout is easiest if you’re team-teaching (one person runs the whiteboard and the other person plays along with the students). It is possible for one person to run the whiteboard and play the pattern or jiuchi, but that will truly test your multitasking ability!

I hope your Zoom classes are going well! Remember, if you need a paid Zoom license, TCA has made theirs available for taiko groups. Contact Paul Sakamoto. There’s also this great TCA livestream on how to use Zoom. Happy teaching!

Activities for Virtual Classes: Vote the Note!

In Vote the Note! we combined Zoom’s poll function with one of our activities for teaching improvisation. It encourages collaborative creativity and is possibly the lowest-stakes improvisation exercise EVER! Here’s how we do it:

1. Before your meeting, add a poll with 4 questions. Each question should be multiple choice with 7 options: don, doko, ka, kara, tsu, tsuku, and su.

2. In your class, launch your poll. 

3. Give participants 1 minute to vote.

4. Share results. The top vote-getter for each question becomes one beat in a 4-beat phrase. In the results below, the third beat would be “kara.”

5. Lead participants in this 4-beat phrase 5-6 times, stopping between each repetition. 

6. Play the 4-beat phrase twice in a row, so it becomes an 8-beat phrase. Practice it several times as an 8-beat phrase, stopping between each repetition.

7. Once people seem comfortable, play: 8-beat phrase/8-beats of improv/8-beat phrase. You should keep a jiuchi during the 8 beats of improv and count to 8 to help people learn the phrase length (à la this post).

If you have more experienced players in your virtual class, add some improv challenges. We’ve challenged people to try improvs that are movement only, or where they play with big movement and quiet sound, or play only ka. If everyone is more experienced try an 8-question poll in Zoom and vote an 8-beat phrase. I don’t recommend that if you have a critical mass of beginners, however - it will be exponentially harder for them to master an 8-beat phrase vs. learning and repeating a 4-beat phrase.

If you haven’t used the poll function in Zoom yet, here’s a good tutorial. Polling requires a paid Zoom account. If you don’t have one, TCA is generously making its Zoom licenses available for taiko groups to use. Email Paul Sakamoto to find out more. As always, I’d love to hear about it if you try this in your classes. Happy teaching!