Know Your Taiko: Meet the Instruments That Define a Tradition — Part 5: Let’s Create a Taiko Ensemble!
We hope you now have an idea of the most common taiko instruments and the sounds they make from our previous posts. In this post, let’s make a taiko ensemble using TAIKO THUNDER: The Ultimate Collection.
Although taiko sound amazing as solo instruments, combining multiple instruments can create a completely different sense of power and allure.
$695
TAIKO THUNDER: The Ultimate Collection is, in essence, 20 separate sound libraries — consisting of 16 taiko instruments and four percussion instruments — that cover all taiko sounds necessary for modern music making.
The collection features realistic sound variations from different hitting positions, special tone-shaping parameters for finding the perfect sound, and as many as seven separate mic channels with individual controls including hall reverb. All these features add up to a next-generation taiko library for every musical situation.
An example of a taiko ensemble
There are no hard-and-fast rules about which taiko instruments to combine —basically, you can create any combination you like. Having said that, you can make more effective choices by considering each instrument’s role in the ensemble.
As an example, let’s make the following ensemble.
The ensemble uses the following ten instrument parts.
- Four shime-daiko
- Two nagado-daiko
- One ohhira-daiko
- Two ohdaiko
- One okedo-daiko
In this ensemble, the higher pitched shime-daiko set the rhythmic pulse, while the mid-range nagado-daiko play the main rhythm and the larger taiko instruments provide accents. As you can hear, each instrument plays a simple phrase, but the combination of multiple taiko voices creates a sonic field with power and depth.
Another consideration is to create rhythmic modulations by inserting pauses at certain points, instead of having all instruments play the same phrase repeatedly. A further point for the larger, deeper taiko instruments is to have them stick to slower rhythmic pulses rather than busy phrases or embellishments.
For this sample, we used the okedo-daiko with bamboo stick hits to create accents at key points. By muting and unmuting this part, you can hear how dramatically the overall impression changes.
TAIKO THUNDER comes with kit presets and MIDI grooves for ensembles
Although you can combine taiko instruments in any way you like, TAIKO THUNDER comes with six taiko kits that you can use as templates when building a taiko ensemble.
The library also has numerous MIDI grooves made specifically for the six kit ensembles that you can try out and experiment with.