Another bit of Ethnomusicology

It was a while ago, but back in October I went to a Taiko concert. Now since this was performed by community groups, it definitely wasn't the pinnacle of Taiko, but some of the performances were definitely impressive and some of the songs pretty challenging. That said, you could also tell me not to discount the concert just because it was amateurs performing - it's a look into the musical hobbies of people in Japan.

To get some foreign words out of the way, Taiko refers to music played in a drum ensemble of often 10-20 people. Drums can range from as small as a piccolo snare drum to the size of a Smart car. And the word Taiko can probably be used to label one of these drums, though there's probably specific terminology that I don't know about yet used to name each and every size drum.

What I really walked away from the concert with is the realization that significantly more than most music I've seen performed, Taiko is as much a visual spectacle as it is a musical one. Take for example how people who play the largest drums often take as long as two beats to wind up for a single strike. I liked how that gesture communicated a sense of power. Another visual spectacle that several groups used was the playing of a single drum by three people. In one situation, one person would play a pattern for a measure or two before moving to the side to let another person take his place and play the same pattern. In this fashion they would rotate between the three of them and after doing this for a while, increase the frequency at which they changed who actually played the drum.



Although this image is generally a bit blurry, you can still see how much the performers wind-up to strike some of the larger drums.

And here's a short video where you can see some of the grandeur that people portray during performances.

An Update Just for the Sake of Updating

I haven't had too many pearls of wisdom that I wanted to share with the world lately, but there is one thing I definitely want to recommend.

I was listening to an old episode of This American Life a couple of weeks ago which encouraged listeners to remix a song that was central to one of the character's stories. Unfortunately for me though, I listened to the episode too late after it originally aired to participate in the remix contest. But simply hearing about this contest reminded me about how the Dismemberment Plan did more or less the same thing. They released individual tracks of about 10 of their songs to the masses via their website and had a little contest of their own. The best remixes that they received back from fans they used to put together an album called A People's History of the Dismemberment Plan. I can't say I know much about the album: I never heard any of the tracks on the album, and I don't know who profited from sales of the album though I hope the D-Plan shared some of the money with the remixers.

Anyway I've been messing around with a few of those Dismemberment Plan tracks lately. And it really is a fun and challenging project - kind of like putting together a puzzle while being able to change the end result of that puzzle to whatever it is you want it to be. I never actually thought much about the process of remixing until I delved into these projects. As long as you have a decently powerful computer (not too hard) and sequencing software, you can do it. I'm using Logic Express 7 for Mac, but any simple sequencing software will work. There are some pretty solid and reliable free applications on the Internet - Audacity will let you have as many tracks as are necessary for remixing those D-Plan songs, but you'll be lacking a lot of effects and other controls. Or you could go for something more substantial. The latest version of Logic Express, version 8, with it's clean, simple design is a great deal at $200. Or you could just go the cheap way and search for a torrent.

All that aside, everyone should be an amateur producer and remix a few songs for the hell of it. Being able to undertake a project like this really is one of marvels of the Internet and modern computers. I'm sure there's a lot more out there besides Dismemberment Plan songs to remix, so get going.