Second Installment, Dondokomon

"Hello and welcome to the very first installment of 'The Origin of Species, Digimon!'.



Obviously, a drum.
What interested me was the type of drum.
More specifically, a Taiko (Great/Wide Drum).
They are a drum of Chinese origin, which was imported into Japan in the Yayoi period (500 BC - 300 AD).
My country has it's own travelling Taiko group, TaikOz.

Taiko are categorized into two catagories. Byou-uchi daiko (tacked-struck drum), with heads nailed to the body. Shime-daiko (tightened drum), with heads sewn onto iron rings, which are then laced together around the drum's body.

Byou-uchi daiko are typically hollowed out of a single piece of wood and can't be tuned. The preferred wood is keyaki due to its density and amazingly cool grain. Meari is the generic term used to group the other woods used to make Byou-uchi daiko. Their sizes are limited by the diameter of the wood that they are made from.

The typical byou-uchi daiko is the nagado-daiko (long-body taiko). The nagado-daiko is an elongated drum, pretty much shaped like a wine barrel, that can be hit in heaps of different ways that affect the sound produced. The drum can also be played by more than one performer at the same time. This style of drum also signifies the family of drums that are made from a single piece of wood. Nagado-daiko are available in a variety of sizes, from 1.0 shaku (12" in head diameter), to 3.0 shaku in 1 sun increments.

The chu-daiko is a medium sized nagado-daiko. Nagado-daiko over 3.0 shaku are also available, but they are referred to as ōdaiko (great drum).

Shime-daiko are available in a wide variety of styles, and are tunable. Before a performance, the instrumemnts have to be tensioned. The tensioning system is usually rope, but other systems have been used as well. Shime-daiko can either have stitched heads placed on bodies carved from single piece of wood, such as the tsukeshime-daiko, or stitched heads placed on a stave-construction body such as the okedo-daiko.

The tsukeshime-daiko is pretty much snare-drum sized, and is usually available in five sizes, numbered 1 to 5 with names: namizuke/icchougakke, nichougakke, sanchougakke, yonchougakke, and gochougakke (A mouthful). Namizuke has the thinnest skins, often with a patch of deer skin reinforcement in the center ( ), and is used in classical theater such as noh and kabuki. As the numbers increase, so does skin thickness and tension on the skins. The diameters of all tsukeshime-daiko sizes are approximately the same, but the height of the wooden bodies increases in order to provide greater rope leverage in tightening thicker skins (Boom).

Tune in next time for the third installment of 'The Origin of Species, Digimon!'"
'BZZT!'

ps, I will try to make the rest of the Origin of Species Digimon segments as long or even longer than this one.

pss, This was mostly copy paste. I typed some myself, and edited whatever I copy-pasted. I can no longer get sued for copywright infringement.

psss, I like Applesauce.