Taiko Drills, Part 23 COUNTING IN 2 & 3

Taiko Drills, Part 23 COUNTING IN 2 & 3

Thanks for coming back!

I’ve got a bit of an aside drill today that’s kind of a mind/body teaser. Hope you like it:

Focus: Timing, Counting
Watch for:
1. Count!
2. Don’t stop counting!

So, today let’s hone in the focus on one particular thing. You guessed it–counting. We’ve talked about counting in 4 and counting in 3. There are a few different drills you can do to layer rhythms that are in different time. To keep things simple, let’s try 2 and 3 today.

Take a look at the table below, and play the down beat a few times with your Right hand, while counting out loud:

There is an equal amount of “rest” time between each hit. If you were to divide the same 3 beats evenly starting on beat 1, but only strike 2 times, where would the hits fall?? Give the left hand a few tries with the following (count!):

Now, see if you can play the two lines together: Right hand plays 3 beats for the Left hand’s every 2. Here’s the simple way to think about it:

Okay, so what should you spend your daily 15 minutes practicing this week? Here you go:

Right hand on 3, Left hand on 2 | 4X
Right hand on 3 | 4X
Right hand on 3, Left hand on 2 | 4X
Left hand on 2 | 4X

Loop it up!

If you find that you have two sounds on beat 1 when both hands hit together, take some time to back up to Part 7 for some extra practice and a few ideas on what might be going wrong. It never hurts to check your shime grip in the process. You can do this in Part 9.

Extension:

So, you certainly can play around with this in multiple ways in terms of which hand plays which part, how many times you repeat each line, et cetera. But in terms of increasing ability to understand how the two times are fitting together, there’s nothing more challenging (and helpful) than this:

Find a partner (or email me for the MP3). One of you will play 3 with both hands, rather than alternating. At the same time, the other will play 2 with both hands. You’ll only be successful if you keep the timing, listen, and count. Remember to switch parts at some point!

Count, Have fun, and Please Rate below!