The sound of the Taiko brings many people to it. Here’s a mini-session I taught Jiten Daiko on how I think about the sounds coming from Taiko. Hopefully I can prove these things that I have empircally found using some modeling (Bessel functions and waves on a boundary!) but we’ll see if I find the time.

Breaking down the Sound Link to heading

Thinking about the shape of a waveform and given the fact that we use the same instruments/bachi, I believe we can really only control the attack, the tail, and the chorus. Perhaps the perceived volume is independent of that but I have yet to see if I can control them all separately.

The attack is the first sound we hear from bachi impacting the drums, controlled a lot by our wrists and the speed of our arm.

The tail is the sound we hear after the attack. Sometimes there is more than one tail sound (this is what many western audience seem to perceive as the ‘pitch’ of the instrument). This seems to come from the head resonating, reacting to the drum resonance.

The chorus is the grit that comes out of the drum sound. It is often heard most by hitting closer to the center and harder. I believe this comes from the body of the drum resonating because I hear it coming through the drum but that may be an oversimplifcation: perhaps we cannot think of different parts of the sound coming from just one part of the drum.

Breaking the Drum Sound Link to heading

This is when we play the drum too hard. I believe it is when the attack is louder than most of the tail and we cannot hear the tail as much. When I hear someone playing too hard, I hear almost no tail which makes me think that the applied force is far stronger and drives the other frequencies to scatter and relax quicker in time (this is very physicsy so I apologize if that doesn’t make any sense).

Deeper Resonances Link to heading

In higher quality drums, the drum sound will not break. For example, we can hit a higher quality shime as hard as we can and it will be okay. On this level of instrument, we can hear a deeper resonance when we hit hard enough with enough pressure (stopping our bachi very close to the head). Kaoru Watanabe showed me that the art of hitting a drum to get these deeper resonacnes is a lifetime skill and requires utmost relaxation and clean form to do properly.

Elements of hitting: Bachi Link to heading

This can be heard by playing a bachi on a drum pad. The bachi also resonates, albeit very high pitched. This can usually not be heard by the drum but I know it affects the sound you make overall. It is easily heard when you have two bachi of differing weights, thus differing pitches so that ‘straight’ beat hitting sounds very lopsided.

Elements of hitting: Angle Link to heading

Hitting the drum in various angles changes the sound (what we usually say is a glancing sound). The most ‘solid’ sound that resonates the drum the most is a hit perpendicular to the surface of the drum. You can also hit different parts of the drum as the same time: See the gank in Kris Bergstrom’s style of playing and his excellent periodic table of sound.

Parts of the drum to hit Link to heading

Body, Rim, Head close to rim, inner rim (where chorus becomes noticable, varies depending on drum), near center (largest sound), and center (high pitch if its Asano and the cow spine is there).

Hitting non-head parts of the drum: Link to heading

Hitting the outside part of the shime makes the shime sing more than hitting the actual rim. I don’t know why but will guess that the rim is made of heavy metal that resonates the sound better and helps the entire head resonate together more. Unsure

Effective Sound: Choreography Link to heading

Choreography tells the audience when the sound starts or ends. Elongate or shorten before, during, or after the hit, to change the length of a hit.

Effective Sound: Shibori Link to heading

Shibori is the tightness of a sound. There is definitely a perceived tightness when we stop our motion and have very quick motion. I found that Shibori is a choreographic thing. Tightness comes from our motion and not from the sound.

Recording Link to heading

Recordings won’t pick up half of these things. They usually pick up three or four of these sounds at best. A good recording usually has 4 different sounds playing at once. You can tell the difference between drums by comparing other shime sounds in Taiko videos

vs. Isaku’s shime in this clip.

Weird stuff I haven’t figure out yet Link to heading

Physical origin of the tail and chorus sound comes from.
Hitting the outside part of the shime makes the shime sing more than hitting the actual rim. Why tho
In Isaku’s piece, Rei, there is a section where we hit the top part of the Odaiko and then drop our body to hit the lower part of the drum. Is the sound different because of the angle of the bachi? Or is just a perceived difference by our body langauge?
In a private lesson with Kaoru Watanabe, I explored the ability to reach the deeper resonances of the drum. This comes from many elements of relaxation, follow through of hit, heaviness of bachi, etc. but I don’t know how to get this sound out microscopically. Kaoru’s teaching was around hitting with an unbendable arm for maximum efficiency and claims that doing so will allow one to reach the lower resonances. It is similar to a professional pianists tone in years of experience and training towards a certain tone.
When you hit the rim with varying parts of the bachi as you hold it, is that darker sound coming from the rim or the bachi? I want to say from the rim, but then I have no reason why the rim resonantes at a pitch that is higher when you hit with the tips of your bachi.
A marimba primarily resonates in its lowest vibration via two nodes. Galen Rogers claims that these nodes are 2/9th of the length away from the tip of the bachi. This is done out for the Marimba here
During Jiten Daiko’s practice session, Will Tokunaga brought up Yoichi Watanabe’s instruction that the angle of the bachi matters in the sense that the angled tip of the bachi makes a distinct sound. I don’t know how much this matters in Odaiko playing when one primarily chooses the lowest resonances but will certainly have an effect on the shime. I guess the main question is: How does the sharpness of the bachi, change the shape of the sound? I think it is changing the area over which the force is applied and thus vibrating smaller regions of the taiko. I would predict this would make a more focused sound and be especially nice to hear on a shime. Maybe its time to experiment with different angled bachi.