Big Drums

Location
Melbourne
Equipment
Zoom F4
Sennheiser MKH 60
Boom pole array

Today I went to visit my Taiko teacher from before I went to Japan. Toshi Sakamoto has lived in Melbourne for a long time and is a fantastic guy, he also teaches Taiko drums about 4 times a week to dozens of students. I played with Toshi’s group for several years before I went to Japan. I have loved Japanese Taiko drums for ages and it was lots of fun to learn how to play them. I was lucky enough to play them for a while when I was living in Japan. Currently I just don’t have the time sadly.

Japanese Taiko

I had asked Toshi if he would allow me to record the drums and he kindly said yes, he actually went on step better and played them all for me, this meant I got much better sounds than if I had played them myself. Taiko come in various different sizes, from the Shime which is the smallest, through to the Taiko drums which are the medium barrel or drum shaped ones, right up to the huge O Daiko which literally means “big drum” The have an amazing sound and a good live performance of Taiko has an incredible amount of energy and usually fantastic rhythm. Hopefully one day I will have the time to go back to playing Taiko, I have always found its really good for my rhythmic writing of music.