Songs

These songs are for people to use! My students have found them really fun. If you choose to use one or both, let me know. I would love to see your versions. Also, please credit Taiko Shine or Dr. Wendy Jo. Happy drumming from St. Paul, Minnesota!

The songs are Chōchō Fun (uses basic techniques and is great for a beginning class), Let’s Taiko (2+min funny song to start a recital, can be played really fast for more advanced students), and Murasaki Swing (a celebratory song with a swing beat, moving and solo sections, fun vocals, and a couple of dance moves)! Soon, I will post A Celebration of Purple as well.

Chōchō Fun

This is a good song for beginners. I have been teaching it since 2023 in a six-week course. I don’t usually get to part D, but the students are able to do the split part (when each side plays something different), and so do the intro through the song to the finale, just omitting D.

Link to the folder with musescore pdf, kucheshouka page, and audio file.

Instructional Video Playlist on YouTube:

Let’s Taiko!

This song works well to open our recitals. It works with beginning and intermediate students who like to be goofy and add in some theatrics (the drummers are split into two groups who argue a couple of times about whose turn it is to do the call), and the shime player has to fight in the beginning to get the students’ attention because they are messing around playing whatever they want! 🙂

Here is a performance from May 2025.

This is the performance from December 2024:

Here are resources (musecore PDF, kucheshouka, and audio file).

Murasaki Swing

All the resources are here.

Murasaki Swing was inspired by Jonathan Kirby’s practice song, “Shouts, Kas, and 3 Big Beats.”

These songs are open source if you credit Dr. Wendy Jo and Taiko Shine. Enjoy!