Tsucchi's "Taiko Strange Story" 14th | Single stroke is the basis of everything

Happy New Year to everyone reading the JPC Newsletter.
The time has come for the familiar Taiko story.
The series will continue this year as well without any regrets.
We look forward to your continued support in 2017 and 2017.

Well, this time as well, as always, I was sitting on the computer screen at the very last minute of the deadline, agonizing over how I was going to write a bunch of useless sentences, and I was sweltering with excitement.
What I noticed was that although it was called ``Taiko Kidan,'' there was almost no writing about taiko or drums. So, for the first time of the new year, I thought I'd write a little about drums...
(Is it an auditory hallucination that I heard Mr. Nishio's voice saying what he was saying? lol)
Yes, this is a newsletter for a musical instrument store specializing in percussion instruments.
When I read the other pages, I saw articles about people who are seriously considering percussion instruments and music, and I feel a little worried that my series has been skipped over.
So, for the first time of the new year, I thought I'd write a little about drums...
Well, it's about me, so please forgive me if I go off track.

The reason why I decided to write about this is that last October, I slipped on a wet road and injured my right wrist.As a result, I had to cancel my band 254soulfood's live performance at Tsuruse Paopao, which was scheduled for October 30th, and I ended up really disappointing everyone who was looking forward to it.
I have now fully recovered from that injury, and at the end of the year I was able to play a few songs at the countdown live at Paopao. I'm relieved that nothing serious happened.
I'm usually lazy at heart, so I don't practice every day, and somehow

"If you sit down at the drum set, you'll be able to play."

Supported by this completely baseless confidence, I have been able to continue playing with ease until now.
As part of my daily work, I come into contact with the drum set even if I don't like it, so during the sound check with the sound engineer, I spend about 30 minutes to an hour saying things like, ``Okay, give me a kick.'' Well, it's like basic practice, so we play each instrument at a certain tempo, with a certain volume and tone, from the kick, snare, hi-hat, tom to the floor and cymbals. Rather than expressing musical expressions, we share with the audio engineer things like, ``This instrument produces this kind of tone when played with this much dynamics,'' or ``If you press this kick lightly, it will give you this low feeling, and if you press it hard, it will give you this kind of attack feeling.'' We also share with the audio engineer things like, ``This drummer's hat gets stronger when he gets excited,'' and so on, as we play each shot.
This is actually good practice lol
He takes each hit seriously. Single stroke is the basis of everything. With that in mind, I tune into the drum set every day at concerts and recordings.
However, it may be unfair to say it like this, but it is a ``person's set'' after all, so even if I make a sound, there are many cases where the sound is not as good as the person in question.
I think it's just about sharing a basic database and reducing the burden on the musicians who will be performing at the actual performance. Of course, it is common for tuning to be changed through communication with the audio engineer. I have various requests. I want more kick attack, vice versa, I want the snare to be fuller, the floor tom low is long and it's getting in the way, so please do something about it! Or something.
In the case of floor toms, miking can solve a lot of problems rather than tuning. As with any instrument.
The impression changes greatly depending on the angle of the mic, its distance from the rim, whether you aim for the center or towards the edge, and whether you place the mute close to or away from the mic. When I get a request from a sound engineer I'm close to, I'll say, ``Oh, before I tweak the tuning, I'll try moving the mic a little bit'' and I'll fix the mic and play the sound again. When I do that, I end up thinking, "Oh, this might be good! Yeah, this might be good," and after checking it out, engineers often come over to see what kind of miking it is. It's a fun way to take advantage of the difference in impressions from the performer's side and from the audience's side.

Nowadays, most drummers use some kind of in-ear monitoring system, and there are a wide variety of earphones, ranging from earphones that cost hundreds of thousands of yen to ones that cost several thousand yen.As a result, our job has become to find ways to naturally hear the sound we want clearly. In this case, you will have to communicate with the monitor engineer.
Well, I guess it's because I'm lazy that I end up not being able to take care of myself as I play all kinds of instruments and interact with all kinds of people every day.
When I meet talented people, I not only fall in love with them, but also compare them to myself and feel depressed. I don't want to feel depressed, so eventually I stopped comparing myself, and I started thinking that ``I'm me,'' which was a convenient interpretation, and my arm was getting more and more rusty... Just when I was thinking that my right wrist was injured. Maybe God was watching.
``People are people, and I am myself.However, you mustn't neglect your efforts.I'll punish you for your lazy nature.''Maybe he put a drumstick against my right hand.
I got moss on the wet sidewalk after the rain, and the little finger side of my right wrist ended up on the ground, and the small area couldn't support the entire weight of my body, so it quickly swelled up, so I bought some ice at the convenience store in front of me and immediately iced it.
My job that day was to be on standby to play instruments for a festival called Asagiri Jam, so I left early and headed to the hospital. An X-ray was taken, and the doctor's diagnosis was ``triangular fibrocartilage complex injury,'' which is a rather difficult diagnosis. When I asked a doctor, ``What do you do for a living?'' and I said, ``I'm a drum technician,'' that didn't make the doctor understand 50,000% of the time, so I couldn't help but notice the slight change in the doctor's face as I simply answered that I do this and that.
Now that I think about it, when I stepped into the lobby of the orthopedic clinic, I felt a little uncomfortable.
Normally, there were many middle school and high school students coming home from club activities to get treatment for injured limbs from playing baseball, soccer, and tennis, and elderly people coming to get treatment for weak legs and back, but there were also a few young ladies mixed in with them. They don't look like they have sprains, bruises, rheumatism, or back pain, but... yes, they are music college students who came to this hospital with symptoms such as tendonitis from practicing too much, and this hospital is said to be a very good doctor for that kind of treatment. So, getting back to my examination, the doctor, whose face looked a little strange, asked me with a sharp look, ``So, do you play music yourself? Is that something you do for a living?'' I couldn't help but reply, ``Oh, yes.'' At that moment, when I looked in the direction he said, ``Okay, I'm going to put you in a cast. Go to the teacher over there,'' and I saw a boy around high school age who was currently in a cast.

"What! Seriously? There's a band concert at the end of this month..."
"If you do that, you won't be able to perform this month or even for the rest of your life. Is that okay? It's no good, right? Just be quiet and put a cast on it and let it heal properly. The live performance at the end of the month will be canceled!"
Now that I think about it, I am seriously grateful for that diagnosis, but at that moment, the words "the live show has been canceled" weighed heavily on me, and I was also very sorry for causing so much trouble at work.
I did it.

The immobilization meant not moving the wrist at all, but allowing the five fingers to move freely to prevent the tendons from stiffening, so the tuning process was not too difficult and I was able to do it without having to cancel.
The thing I was most worried about, although it's selfish of me, was, ``Will I be able to play properly after this?''
I was amazed at myself, wondering how someone like me, who is so lazy and easy-going, could be so frightened by the fact that ``playing a musical instrument'' was threatened in my life, and how easy-going a man I must be to realize now that playing a musical instrument occupies such a big place in my life...Hohoho.
I was kept in a stiff cast for a little over two weeks, and when the swelling and pain had subsided considerably, I went to the doctor and was hoping that it would finally come off today, but he said, "You still need to be immobilized. Let's cut the cast in half," so my wrist was kept in place so that it wouldn't bend inward for another ten days. I was finally able to get it fixed completely, and first I immersed my right wrist in the bathtub, which I had never been able to do before. When I slowly moved my wrist in the hot bath, it felt quite painful, or rather like a creaking sensation, probably because it had been hardened until now. There are almost no problems in daily life, but the important thing is playing...?

One sunny autumn day, some of the drummers went to Akigase Park, the famous Arakawa Riverbed in Urawa, to rehabilitate themselves with their beloved Rogers. I was able to move my hands better than I expected, but my strength was still weak, and I couldn't do things like high hats with one hand in 16-step increments, which I thought I was good at, for long. However, I thought this was a test given to me by God and continued to steadily train my right hand.
It's been a long time since I practiced this seriously. That shouldn't be the case. In a hotel room while traveling, use a nylon brush to make slow single strokes on the pillow. At the sound check, we can make a big sound, so we practiced the beat. From the outside, it might just be a routine check, but for me it's important rehabilitation. It's an abuse of power lol
Taking this opportunity, I joined a 24/7 fitness gym to strengthen my sluggish body, and have also started machine training and running. Although I haven't seen any results yet, I've managed to go from feeling like I was dying after running for 30 minutes to being able to run for an hour, and when I do things like that, I feel energized and have fun.
After that, I tweeted about whether I should go to Akigase again on social media, and Makito Yamamura invited me to come to Rizken.
I visited Rizken with EVANS' Hydraulic Red (which I bought at Drum City, of course), which was supposed to debut live.

Up until now, the main colors of Hydraulic were clear and blue, but now red is back, so it might look good on pink Rogers! I bought it with a really curious feeling, and when I tried it on, I was so happy because it felt so good. That sound that I love is playing right in front of me. The bottom of the tom is the familiar REMO silent stroke and has a pseudo single head. However, I'm thinking of changing the bottom of the 12" tom to EVANS resonant coated.
There are times when you want a little brighter overtone.
After writing this far, I realized that there were only a few pages left.
I would like to talk about Hydraulic Red, also known as ``Aka Doro'', on another occasion.
Those days when I was worried about not being able to write seem to be a lie.

I'll be grumbling like this again this year, so I'd appreciate it if you could keep up with me.
In these times, let's just relax for a while.
We look forward to seeing you again in the magazine.
I hope your days are warm and peaceful...