A thumb roll is a wonderful technique to be able to perform when you need to play a quiet roll on a tambourine. The first thing you need to do is to get your tambourine a little sticky. I use bee’s wax, but you can use rosin or the Grover Roll Ring to make your […]
How to Perform Call and Response in Drum Circles
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Drum circles are a lot of fun and great ways for musicians and non musicians alike to share a music making experience. What is Call and Response? In a drum circle you often have a facilitator who keeps the music going and moving forward. The “Call” is a rhythm played by the facilitator and the […]
How to Play Fast Rhythms on a Tambourine
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Sometimes the rhythms that are written for the tambourine are just too fast to play with one hand, so the percussionist needs to learn a technique or three to play very fast rhythms. Take a look at this video for a step by step approach to playing fast rhythms on the tambourine Playing Fast Rhythms […]
How to Hand Drum on the Djembe: The Basics
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Learning and practicing hand drumming is a valuable way for every percussionist to learn how to create wonderful sounds on every percussion instrument. When you play timpani, snare drum, or xylophone for example you always have a stick between you and the instrument, so it’s important to have some experience in making a good sound […]
How to Play Legato Drum Rolls on Timpani
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Take a look this video about legato rolls from drum to drum and give it a try. In this exercise above practice moving from drum to drum while rolling. You’ll have to switch your lead hand during the roll so that you can move to the next drum smoothly. Practice playing a slow tempo with […]
Drum Rolling Exercises for 4 Timpani Drums
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Here is another timpani roll exercise that involves moving between four drums instead of two. Left hand and Right Hand Lead Drum Rolls When you roll between drum and you’re looking for everything to sound smooth and legato you have to be able to switch from a RIGHT HAND LEAD drum roll to a LEFT […]
How to Play Tied and Separated Timpani Rolls
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In this next video I talk about the ending of a timpani roll. Sometimes you will see that the end note is tied to the rolled note and other times you will see or maybe hear that there needs to be some separating between the roll and the next note. It’s an important technique to […]
