Drum troups

**skinslapper** · #1 (**permalink**) 08-26-2006, 10:35 AM

Earlier today, I went and saw the Tao Japanese drum troup thanks to my lovely wife for getting me the tickets for my birthday.

The show was amazing and it's just so cool to see so many performers that are in sync with eachother.

If any of you get the chance, go and check these guys out, you can start here http://www.drum-tao.com/E/site . They have a drum that's 1.7 meters in diameter and weighs over 450kgs. They were hitting it with baseball bats among other things.

Anyway, I was curious if any of you have ever had the chance to do anything like that with an ensemble?

I did once, but it was just me on my kit two others who weren't drummers just beating along with a floor tom and rack tom each, but it still sounded kinda cool.

malletjazz · #2 (**permalink**) 08-26-2006, 11:37 AM

Taiko drummers are amazing - not only is the drumming fantastic, but the physical endurance needed to play them is astonishing.

The closest I've come to performing that kind of music is playing one of the percussion parts in Minoru Miki's Marimba Spiritual, a piece for marimba soloist and three percussionists, which incorporates that style of drumming. We didn't use the biggest taiko drums, but some of the smaller ones.

full metal · #3 (**permalink**) 08-26-2006, 04:33 PM

While living in japan they have like a thousand summer festivles all over japan and I have got to see many of the drummers perform and I have played on them as well but not with the rest of the group and they are so populer in japan that they made a video game out of it and is a blast to play.
but I have to say that when I played on them and watching other people that I dont think it took all that much to play them, and some times they would have very old men out there playing along as well.
But I do love the music and really miss the summer festivels.

malletjazz · #4 (**permalink**) 08-26-2006, 05:16 PM

This is the ensemble I was thinking of:

Kodo

The times I've seen them perform (all on TV or film - unfortunately, I haven't seen them live), the physicality of their performance was impressive, along with the musicality. Perhaps they're not representative of other such ensembles.