Wadaiko: drums, settings and ensemble practice

Securing the heads

A nagado-daiko has a deep body and heads commonly fixed with tacks. Shime-daiko use ropes or bolts to tighten the heads; hira-daiko have shallower bodies. One nagado-daiko featured in the Taito drum-museum account has a zelkova body and cowhide heads. Materials and dimensions vary by instrument.

Barrel construction and tuning

Body construction is a separate distinction: an okedo drum has a light, built-up wooden barrel and heads mounted on metal rings, tightened together with ropes. Miyamoto Unosuke’s workshop account describes repeated listening and adjustment while fitting a head. Rope tension also allows adjustment of an okedo’s pitch.

Where the stick meets the skin

Striking position changes the sound too. For its large-taiko sound library, Sonica Instruments recorded strikes from the centre towards the edge of the skin. The centre gives a louder, more resonant sound; moving outward reduces volume and changes the overtones. Both playing strength and position on the skin shape the tone. Striking the wooden rim produces a different sound.

Instruments and ensembles

Drums accompany local festivals and religious observances as well as theatre and stage performances. Their roles and rhythms belong to particular performance traditions. A player may use one drum or several; in an ensemble, different players share the drum parts.

Foundation rhythm and principal part

A teaching example published by Kyoiku Shuppan gives shime-daiko a continuing foundation rhythm, called ji-uchi, while a larger drum plays the principal part above it, called omote-uchi. Hira and okedo drums can add further rhythmic and timbral contrasts. In this arrangement, one player sustains the pulse while another varies the principal part.

In gagaku, the tsuridaiko hangs within a circular frame. The larger dadaiko used for bugaku commonly appear as a left-and-right pair; their heads are stretched on iron rings and tightened with thick ropes. Kabuki large drums signal the opening and closing of the theatre and create sounds such as rain and waves in offstage music; shime drums also accompany theatre and dance. Drum makers clustered in Osaka’s Naniwa area during the Edo period. The craft continued there, with present-day accounts describing hollowing a log, drying, skinning and tuning.

Osuwa Daiko traces its modern ensemble practice to Daihachi Oguchi’s reconstruction of an older score. In 1951 he combined different drums and parts into an ensemble style; a preservation society followed in 1953. The group’s chronology records appearances at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1970 Osaka Expo.

Kodo grew out of activities begun on Sado in 1971 and formed under its own name in 1981. Its first One Earth Tour followed in 1984. The group develops stage work from traditional music and performing arts while touring internationally from its Sado base.