Maz and I will be representing On Ensemble at the 7th-annual Intercollegiate Taiko Invitational. We will be teaching multi-drum basics, slant drum basics, and demonstrating our research with lighted batchi. I am excited to be back at Stanford for the weekend and to see what’s new in the exciting world of collegiate taiko!
I’ve just returned from the load-out following our concert at El Camino College. The crew there was great, and really loving audience members turned out, despite the inauspiciously-timed Laker game. Thank you, On Ensemble fans!
Thank you to Jerry, Kenny, Katy (shoot, I think it was Katy…. our great “A2″!), and all the other stage crew, and Terri, Barbara, and Hector for all their prep work on the show. It was a joy to work with you all!
I’ve just returned from a delightful three days of Stanford Taiko events! In celebration of the group’s 20th anniversary, Stanford Taiko hosted an alumni weekend to coincide with its annual Spring Concert. We reminisced at a series of receptions, plus a fun rehearsal for our brief cameo in a massive, 40-alumni arrangement of Tatsumaki. I stayed with the great Andy Clayton, who between sessions of baseball and skateboarding with his kids, showed me his recent work on Calypso steel drum music. The highlight of the weekend was Stanford Taiko’s great performance. The new members are strong performers already and the concert debuted a number of new and really refined works. The following morning, two people at the Mountain View farmer’s market recognized me from the concert and said how great they thought Stanford Taiko was. I agree!
It was a joy to see so many of the folks instrumental in Stanford Taiko’s history and Jane Lin, Wisa and Sue, Linda and Steve, and all the other folks involved with the weekend made us feel special. Thank you, Stanford Taiko!
Recently I was inspired to dig through some orphaned tracks and have decided to post a few. We do a lot of experimenting when it comes to song writing and end up having a lot of different tracks that don’t quite fit into the On Ensemble sound for one reason or another. As a composer one thing I’ve always tried to do is to challenge myself to do the thing I’m least comfortable doing when it comes to making music. When I first started off I was just intimidated to finish a song so I would force myself to finish pieces and present them to whatever group I was in. Then it was writing pieces in non 4/4 time, then it was writing melodies and then harmonies and now it’s writing lyrics. Some of these explorations get turned into On Ensemble material some of them get spun into other projects then there are some that kind of fall between the cracks. This track is one of those tracks. It’s a free jazz inspired piece based on a 13/8 groove. For a while I got all inspired to write songs in 13 after we had done a collaborative piece with Patrick Graham based on different patterns in 13. Before that it was pieces in 5 and now I just want to write things in 7. I don’t really know how 13 snuck in there in-between the 5 and current 7 obsessions. Anyhow I original wrote this as a piece that we could play with Russel Baba and he’s featured on Saxophone along with Kaoru Watanabe on fue. This is a live recording from the first and currently only time we’ve performed this track. I’m thinking of featuring it on our next album but we’ll see how it all works out. The pictures during a sunrise at Borobudur taken during my Indonesian Arts Education fellowship in central Java. Enjoy!
The beat’s the thing when Terry Longshore, director of percussion studies at Southern Oregon University, and percussion instructor Bryan Jeffs host Day of Percussion, starting at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 21, in the Music Building on the SOU campus, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd. The event features percussionist Alex Acuña, marimba player Matthew Coley, taiko percussionist Kelvin Underwood and drum-circle facilitator Kerry “The Shakerman” Greene, along with the SOU Percussion Ensemble, percussion trio Compás and the Ashland High School Percussion Ensemble. There will be clinics, workshops, vendors and a raffle. The event will culminate with a performance by Acuña, Coley, Underwood and the Percussion Ensemble at 7:30 p.m. Pre-registration for the day is $25 ($30 after Monday, April 16) and includes the concert. Admission to the concert is $10, $5 for students. Call 541-552-6899 for registration. Concert tickets are available at the box office or by calling 541-552-6101. See sou.edu/music/percussion/dayofpercussion for more.
Get High With Me
A little while back I commissioned an odaiko stand from master-drum-maker, Mark Miyoshi. The stand has arrived… and it’s everything I wanted!
Sexy close-up photos after the break.
I was curious how the shape of my batchi path changes as I play faster. Here are a few images showing the difference between 30bpm, 60bpm, and 120bpm.
The first image is my right hand playing at 30bpm. The faint blue lines next to my head are the path of the batchi tip as I strike toward the drum. The batchi rebounds off the drum and is then reset into alignment with the arm at the beginning of the pull-up. This reset causes the “kink”, a short, horizontal path of the batchi tip before it raises up for the next strike. By 60bpm (the second image), the arm is moving quickly enough that the bounce of the batchi is smoothly incorporated into the pull-up.
As the tempo increases, the height and width of the loops decreases. More specifically, the exaggerated path of the pull-up nears the path of the strike. (And when playing shime-daiko at even faster speeds, the pull-up path and the strike path are essentially the same.) Note that in all three images the arc just before striking the drum is essentially the same. Interesting!
After a long day of Eastern Taiko Conference workshops and taiko fun a few of us returned to the dorm to find all the doors locked. With some time to kill and my workshop materials on hand, we made some silly lighted batchi images. Cheryl arrived just in time for a cameo!
