04

Stretch
Be sure to stretch shoulders especially since we will be carrying the katsugi okedo for majority of the class. Also stretch your legs because of the amount of standing and bending of the legs. Please take time to stretch on your own before class, but we will do light stretching together.

Katsugi Fundamentals
Uchikomi: 4/8/16 warm up hitting with right hand, left hand and then alternating. Main focuses: correct placement of right hand and wrist so we can rotate and snap into the drum, left arm is making a slightly obtuse angle at elbow hinge (should not be 90 degrees or smaller), relaxing left wrist and make sure we leading with our pinky finger with a blade hand, and when getting to alternating hitting evenly with left and right hand.

Odaiko Drill (I want to rename it, but this is what it was called for my college group): We went over the final line of the patterns, Don Don Don Don/DoKo -Ko -Ko Don. We tried to play with each other and look at each other while playing. This is a great piece to think of as a "face off" or "I challenge you" attitude. Let's have a positive support and kiai feel to this drill when we play. Connect with each other and feel the distribution of energy. Though we are working through playing lines of music and all these other ideas, still try to focus on applying our uchikomi concepts to any of the drills we go over in class. Main focus should always be good form and good tone quality. So try to memorize the lines as best as you can so you can work on good form there after. Photo will have line 5 and then the other lines follow after.

Moving across the room: We tried to play and experiment with moving and playing the okedo. Sometimes we need to be able to maneuver around a space while playing the okedo with both hands so it is important that we have a good grasp on being able to control the okedo without actually holding the okedo in place. We alternated playing 4 and 8 lines (quarter note and eighth note) while moving across the room. We added small challenges like at one point turning and walking backwards, doing a 360 turn, among other challenges. One thing we can work on a little more is stepping in time with the hitting and making sure our steps are to tempo and not out of time (although that is also a good thing to practice because you won't always be in a situation where you can get to your spot in tempo and you have to move as fast as you can to get there) but that will be in good time. Last exercise we worked and played off of our partner trying to move together and listen, watch, and respond to what they are doing while we cross the room together.

Pina Colada lines: Taught and learned the pina colada line and the secondary "don't like bananas". Line will be used in some shape or form in the pieces I am writing on katsugi. More to come soon! Photo is attached for reference!

*sorry I did't update this sooner! gomen!

Clean Up

Aisatsu

Extra Notes

If you have any questions or need any clarifications feel free to email me or message here!