Shime Drill 1

This first drill in our shime series develops several skills that are foundational to good shime: tempo steadiness, speed, and producing a consistent sound no matter what sticking you’re using. Notation is here and video is here. (To keep the video short, I only demonstrate the right lead. The notation shows the drill in its full form, with left lead immediately following right.)

Try this drill at 90 bpm. If you can execute the drill with accurate timing and consistent sound at 90 bpm, increase to 92-95 bpm. If you’re successful there, keep gradually bumping the tempo up until you reach a speed where your timing starts to slip or your sound becomes uneven. That’s your fail speed. Once you find it, do this drill every day for 2 minutes: 1 minute at fail speed, and 1 minute at 2-5 bpm below fail speed. 

You will soon see huge improvements in your ability to produce consistent sound at faster tempo. As you start to succeed at your fail speed, increase the tempo until you find your new fail speed. It’s a perfect time to push ourselves to become the best individual players we can be, so we can contribute even more to our groups when we meet in person again. 

If you don’t have a metronome, there are free metronomes online and free apps available for both Android and iOS. You can also turn on your favorite streaming service - or radio! - and use the music as your metronome. Most streaming services have playlists that are at specific bpm. 

Happy practicing!

Tips for Teaching Stance: Tachi Uchi

Stance isn’t the most exciting element of kata, but it’s the most important. A good stance is fundamental (literally) to everything else a player does, and a good tachi-uchi (aka tate-uchi) stance is fundamental to learning good naname or odaiko stance.

Here are my tips for introducing tachi-uchi stance to beginners.

1. Explain in broad strokes.

As the teacher, you have a more nuanced understanding of how stance works. Your beginning students aren’t ready for it. Below is what I tell beginners when I teach them horse stance, which is the stance I teach for tachi-uchi. If the stance you’re teaching is different, what you say will be different. No matter what you say, keep it simple. 

• Place your feet a bit wider than your shoulders.

• Angle your toes out slightly. Picture standing in the middle of a clock and pointing the toes of your right foot between 1 and 2 and the toes of your left foot between 10 and 11.

  • I encourage taller students to explore a shallow split stance, placing one foot a bit behind them. If you do this, make sure that they keep their hips square to the drum, dropping a foot back without dropping that hip back.

• Let your knees gently bend, following the angle of your toes. Knees should point slightly out, not directly forward.

• Let your weight settle into your feet while keeping your legs engaged. Make sure you can plant the front of your foot and lift your heels up off the ground.

• Picture an electrical current running up the inside of your leg and down the outside. This helps achieve active groundedness in your stance.

That’s it. This takes about 5 minutes, more if I spend individual time with students. (See #3.)

2. Use visual aids, but sparingly.

Totally new players who are struggling with stance will benefit from a visual reference. Provide one with masking tape (bonus: this also introduces a way spikes can mark drum placement for performances). Once a player finds their stance, put a 2-3 inch piece of tape on the floor in front of each big toe. This will help them return to the correct place each time they get into stance. Only do this for the person’s first 3-4 classes, so they don’t become overly dependent on it (textbook scaffolding). 

3. Talk less, play more.

Playing is the only way students can build a body-level understanding of any taiko fundamental. As quickly as you can, move from talking to having them play - songs, drills, games, whatever. Experience is the best teacher. Guide and correct while they’re playing, but give them lots of time to implement.

In the future I’ll share tips on how I teach stance for naname, shime, and odaiko. Happy teaching!

Teaching K-3 students to solo

Creating patterns

Soloing can intimidating. It’s a tough skill that draws on multiple competencies; acute awareness of the pulse, a large “beat vocabulary,” confidence, and more.

Soloing can be taught, but students get overwhelmed if you try to do it all at once. My method of introducing soloing to younger students breaks the skill into bite-sized pieces learned over several weeks. It’s one thing I do in class over those 4 weeks, rather than the only thing we work on. With students this age I let them create and play duets if they want, which is less high stakes and cultivates confidence.

Here’s my method:

Week 1

1. Teach kuchishoka using the Squirrel Village story.

Fill the boxes with one kuchishoka each.

Week 2

1. Remind students of the squirrel rhythm pattern from the story. Have them play it on their laps. Point out that the number of syllables they’re saying corresponds to what they’re playing.

2. Draw a horizontal rectangle on the board. Divide it into 4 equal boxes.

3. Choose 4 kids. Have each say don or doko. Write the words they say on the board, one per box.

4. Lead the class through clapping the pattern their classmates created.

5. Have students move to drums.

6. Lead students in playing the pattern on the drums.

7. Repeat steps 3, 4, and 6 two or three times.

8. Introduce su. (It’s in the squirrel rhythm, but they won’t have realized it.)

9. Repeat steps 3, 4, and 6 several more times, adding su into the mix.

Week 3
(Ask teachers to bring individual whiteboards, markers, and erasers to class.)

1. Do steps 3, 4, and 6 from last week to activate their prior learning.

2. Give 2-3 minutes for students to create a 4-beat rhythm pattern on their own whiteboard, drawing boxes and writing words inside them (the way they’ve been doing it as a class). Allow them to work in pairs with their drum partner or own their own.

3. Have students say and clap their individual patterns all at the same time.

4. Have students play their individual patterns on the drums all at the same time.

5. Have students leave their whiteboards and rotate to a new drum.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 at the new drum.

7. Rotate and repeat for up to 20 minutes.

Week 4
(Ask teachers to bring whiteboards again.)

1. Have students make up their own patterns individually or in pairs.

2. Have students play their patterns all together.

3. Have students play patterns one at a time. You need to conduct this. I count in the whole group, then make friendly eye contact with a student when it’s their turn to play and mark their 4-beats with my hand. The first time around is rocky, but the second time goes fine.

At the end of Week 4, each kid or pair has a short solo ready to plug into a song. Have them play it twice if you need a longer one. Be sure to email your classroom teachers before Weeks 3 and 4 to ask them to bring their individual whiteboards to class (I have yet to run into a class that doesn’t have a set).

If you try this approach, let me know! I’d love to hear how it goes. Happy teaching!

The Critical First Day: Taiko Fundamentals Gr 4-5

With older students, the taiko fundamental I start with is staying together as an ensemble on a shared pulse. Again, it’s easier to scaffold this using voices and bodies before drums. Two music vocabulary words come up in this activity: ostinato (a repeating pattern) and polyrhythm (combining two or more different rhythms simultaneously).

My current 4/5 residency is 8 weeks of 30 minute classes - only 4 hours of instructional time! - so I move through things FAST. Here’s what I did on the first day to get them started on this skill:

1. Have students clap and sing the alphabet with you. Clap on every syllable.

2. Clap without singing.

3. Teach the ostinato.

4. Define ostinato.

5. Split them into two groups and have each group do one of the parts.

6. Define polyrhythm.

The students in the video speed up, which is pretty normal. In the second class, we return to this activity and I add a straight beat jiuchi to help them keep a steady tempo. The week after that, students translate the beats to drums. They play “don” instead of clapping the alphabet and the ostinato becomes “don don ka su.” Students learn kuchishoka in Week 4,  use the kuchishoka deck to create solos or duets (their choice) in Week 5, learn a song structure in Week 6 and voilà- a polyrhythmic taiko song with solos, all from the clapping alphabet! I first got this activity from my Orff training and have adapted it over the years.

Questions? Hit me up. Until next time, happy teaching!