TOERE TIPS

A picture of how I hold the toere stick to play toere.

* I use my index finger to control the rebound.
* The thumb and middle fingers holds the stick.
* The ring and little fingers to hit the toere after the rebound The wrist plays a big part while playing.

The wrist should be very flexible. That’s the key for endurance and have a good hit on the toere.

“I am drumming with my arm and not my wrist. Any tips?”

Normaly, that’s when a real teacher is very handy for this task to explain how to play correctly.
Anyway, I will give my advices and tell you what I understand so far about this subject :

* know exactly which part of your toere has the best “bouncing” part (each toere is unique) ; you will be able to take advantage of it
=> less force to strike, but a good bounce to take the next strike confortably
* Watch out for the angle of your wrist ! It has to be slightly incurved on the exit
=> in order to strike the toere well, you have to evaluate the good amount of force to use.
* Don’t grip too tight the stick. The right “tight” holding is tricky and depends of the tickness of the stick. Practice and find it by your sense.
=> If you hold too tight, it will affect the curving of your wrist. Your wrist will harden and you won’t be able to play at ease.
* Have a good distance between the toere and your stick. If you go too far from the Toere to strike, that’s when people see that you “use your arm” lol.
=> Less distance between toere and stick : faster beat. But don’t get too close neither … very few sound will get out of it.
* Your elbow should not go too far from your waist. ORO-ORO style ? Very difficult technik. Sometime I think it is a natural gifted to play like that. You have to think like a metronome in your head to know exactly when to stop playing. And know by heart each pehe or otea that you are playing. And then comes the technical stuff : strike from bottom to up or up to bottom. Drummer has their own way to do it as long as the sound is good. Not for beginners at all. But if you want to try, go ahead :) And lastly, don’t forget to take a break, or your hand will swollen. Take it easy, practice regularly and get better with time.

Some tips of how to make the three form of a pehe (when you only know the basic Pehe) :
* First way of doing : Let’s take for example the TOMA :
Basic : I. П П П I I П П П П I
Variation 1 (ROPU) : П П П П I I П П П П I
Variation 2 (MURI) : I П П П П I I П П П П
The basic pehe has the following signature : I. П П (The tab are usually lighter in the basic form)
The Variation 1 (ROPU) has the following signature (start with) : П П
The Variation 2 (MURI) has the following signature (start with) : I П П
There is another Variation called “tahape” it has the form of : I I П П It doesn’t varies much, it can be something like : I I П П x 4
I don’t cover this variation, but sometime it sounds good to have it play along other variation.
* Second way of doing : Write down the tab of the pehe that you want to make the variations.
Open the toere pehe spreadsheet (available on my website) and try to see what seems alike in other pehe.
Count the beat out loud to make the fit of the variations in time.
* And then third way of doing : use a daw (digital audio workstation) of your choice (but has to have the midi feature) Adjust to a lower tempo, it helps.
Play the Basic pehe on the daw and then play each other pehe’s variation that you can come up with.
If it sounds good, then you get it :).
Note : use the metronome feature, or play along a midi drum to give the tempo.

I personnaly use all of theses three steps.

Don’t limit yourself to what people teach you, use your ears.

I could say that you have to practice a lot :)
But here are some tips that I can give :
* Spot the right point to hit on the toere to have a good rebound
* Control the rebound, so you won’t lose the beat for the next hit
* Learn the pehe by heart, so you can focus on the technik
* Chose the right stick (the stick has to be the length of your forearm to your middle finger)
* When you play the sound at the bottom, be shure to use the tip of the stick
* To train more … without having to bothers the neightboors, you can use 2 toere stick and hit them together.
It can be a good practice too to help you control the stick without relaying too much on the rebound of a real toere Another good tip to help you, try to play along my video. You can for exemple, play the Variation 1 on your toere while you watch the basic form of the pehe on video or vice versa.
There is still some more techniks like : how to hold the stick or how to chose the best width of the stick. It seems to have at least two kind of playing style for hitting the toere.
– Straight : the stick strike at the same spot of the toere. It strains your wrist. Hard to get endurance with this way of hitting.
– The other one is a little awkward as you have to hit at two different spot of the toere. It is most used by “oro-oro” players. You can really go fast with that way of hitting the toere; but you will lack of precision shot (and sound).