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I've only been drumming a few years. One of my challenges has been learning to improvise, or solo, and I couldn't find a lot of advice on that.
The easiest step for me was one that my teacher taught me, and it was to substitute sounds. In a rhythm like DD tkT D tkT tk there are strokes that are accented, the upper case ones. He said to substitute a slap, pop or snap for the accented strokes, especially teks. Even that was hard for me at first, but it soon became simple.
From listening to Carmine and other drummers, I learned to substitute tk for a D, changing D T tkDD tkT tk to tk T tkDD tkT tk, for instance. I also began to switch rhythms on the fly, like alternating Baladi and Saidi.
Recently I've begun to leave gaps in a rhythm and fill them with something. After 3 repetitions of Baladi, I'll do one where I improvise either the first half or the last half of the rhythm, in between the dums. Instead of DD TD T I'll do DD roll D T or DD TD roll, or just a couple sharp flams, or whatever. I'm hoping as I get better to graduate from filling half a rhythm to a whole one. My trouble is keeping a feel of where the next one starts.
Any other tips or advice on this? Be kind. :)
The easiest step for me was one that my teacher taught me, and it was to substitute sounds. In a rhythm like DD tkT D tkT tk there are strokes that are accented, the upper case ones. He said to substitute a slap, pop or snap for the accented strokes, especially teks. Even that was hard for me at first, but it soon became simple.
From listening to Carmine and other drummers, I learned to substitute tk for a D, changing D T tkDD tkT tk to tk T tkDD tkT tk, for instance. I also began to switch rhythms on the fly, like alternating Baladi and Saidi.
Recently I've begun to leave gaps in a rhythm and fill them with something. After 3 repetitions of Baladi, I'll do one where I improvise either the first half or the last half of the rhythm, in between the dums. Instead of DD TD T I'll do DD roll D T or DD TD roll, or just a couple sharp flams, or whatever. I'm hoping as I get better to graduate from filling half a rhythm to a whole one. My trouble is keeping a feel of where the next one starts.
Any other tips or advice on this? Be kind. :)
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Re: Improvising
Thu, October 8, 2009 - 7:16 PMHi Dave,
What you are describing is more ornamentation of rhythms. Improvisation for me means being about to read the signs and signals of a lead drummer for rhythm changes during an improvised drum solo. That probably also means soloing on top on a rhythm.
But getting back to your question. This is the reason why it is important to figure out what the skeleton of a rhythm is otherwise you will never be able to properly do ornamentation. And all involves is playing the silences in between the major accents of a rhythm with high tone sounds. That all it is.
So with baladi
1-+-2-+-3-+-4-+-|
D-D-__T-D-__T-__|
You can ornament that rhythm by playing taks, pops, suks, rolls etc in between those accent notes. You could for example do this
1-+-2-+-3-+-4-+-|
DpD-ssTkDktkSktk|
The example you give of Carmine is not an ornamentation. He is playing a difference version of Saidi. The common pattern of Saidi is that there is a group of doums in the middle of the rhythm, normally a pair but sometimes a triple.
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Re: Improvising
Thu, October 8, 2009 - 8:21 PMIn addition to what Ignatius says: take a chop and repeat it. For example, if you have a 5 stroke roll that takes 2 beats (tktk T, or tktk P, or tktk D where the strokes run into each other, the gap is the rest of the second beat), then you know that you can fit 4 sets into a maqsoum or balladi and then go back to a form of the basic beat... in time, of course. Do the same with whatever: tkT tkD tkP tkP tkD tkT tkD P rest.
Also, hopefully you've got some recordings of real music, so while the percussion section plays, you play the melody lines, trying to match sounds and licks. Then, by yourself, see if you can keep whatever rhythm you are playing over going in your head while you play anything but.
Then play like this with a metronome that hits on the 1 and whatever you consider the halfway point of the beat. -
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Re: Improvising
Thu, October 8, 2009 - 9:59 PMI'll give my 2 cents:
Along with the above, dive into decades worth of recordings and just soak it up.. there's lots of licks to draw from... in any way you need, as inspiration, or outright 'borrowing' when you need to! I prefer the 'classic' Bellydance stuff from the 60's, 70's and 80's, myself.
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Re: Improvising
Sat, October 10, 2009 - 3:00 PMAnother thought that came to me today is that you have a weak concept for what really constitutes a rhythm. For example, if you strip a rhythm down to the base components of the pulse structure, eliminating doums teks, pops, etc., what you are left with is the internal skeleton. If you can make the transition to relating to whatever rhythm you are trying to improvise to in this way, you will find that you have a lot more freedom which should lead to a lot more success.
Also, when practicing in your living room, don't be afraid to blow it. (I think part of human nature is not wanting mess up.) Just make value judgments on what you played: "man, that really sucked but it has potential", "please God, that was so hopeless, don't ever let me do that again"; "wow, that was pretty cool. Can I repeat it?" And, again, listen more to drummers from "there" than here. You think Om Kalthoum, Farid, Abdul Halim, Fairuz, Abdel Wahab didn't have great percussionists? -
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Re: Improvising
Sun, October 11, 2009 - 6:03 AMyes listen a lot to the real thing. i don't know your musical background dave, but i recommend going to a well trained percussionist(maybe someone with a degree in percussion) in your area. perhaps a music store teacher or someone at a nearby university. style isn't important. anyone worth their stuff they will be able to give you years worth of info such as basic timekeeping, practice tips, all sorts of rhythmic experiments/exercises and improv techniques. they should be able to help you apply it to your drum - assuming you have learned some proper technique.
try using one of the 'play along' cd's by issam, karim, or souhail where they give you the rhythms for 5 minutes and you can just jam over the top. or make your own loops with a basic audio software for any rhythm you want to work with. record yourself and find out what your doing right or wrong. this will also help you develop a sense of the bars/measures.
and i've asked pro drummers of many styles what the most important thing to work on/learn is... always in the top answers are of course using a metronome plus learning how to switch from straight 1/4,1/8, 1/16 notes to triplets of the same values - we use this constantly.
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Re: Improvising
Wed, December 2, 2009 - 7:05 AMI couldn't agree more. Mark hit the nail right on the head. Rhythmical independence is the key, in my mind. The greater rhythmical awareness you have the more you can do to make any musical/rhythmical passage more interesting. Also, ornamentation is only a sub-set of tools to be used in improvisation. It is by no means the only set of skills to draw from when improvising.
Rhythmical freedom, as Mark discussed, is the first area to focus on. This will help you in developing your chops.
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Re: Improvising
Sun, October 11, 2009 - 1:25 PMThank you, friends, for your many suggestions, not just for myself but for others with the same questions. I live 3+ hours from the nearest ME bands (when the passes aren't frozen), so I don't have a lot of face-to-face time with ME players.
When I'm learning a rhythm, I list the skeleton of it and the popular variations (see my contributions to the "Lexicon"), and I practice each of them, and play along with various instructional CDs and DVDs, including Souhail's, Issam's, Hossam's, Amir Naoum's, Karim Nagi's, Helm's, Raquy's and others, and then to songs that have that rhythms, and I listen to a lot of music from here and abroad. I think it would be handy to list the most popular song for some of the less common rhythms.
I guess the only way to know the difference between an ornamentation and a known variation is a good list of the variations is to know or have a good list of the variations. I'm looking forward to our Lexicon.
I like Mark's comment about knowing the length of a chop, so you can drop it into a rhythm and not lose your place. Sort of a "plug and play" approach. I'll also have to try keeping one rhythm in my head while I play another. That's going to take some work.
Ignatius, you mentioned "Improvisation for me means being about to read the signs and signals of a lead drummer for rhythm changes during an improvised drum solo." Could you talk about that some more, please? And maybe list some common signs?
I do practice with a metronome, but I haven't tried switching to triplets. I'll look into that.
Most of the educational material I've read and listened to deals with how to play the drum, and learning the rhythms. What's harder to find is advice on constructing a solo, how to play with and signal other drummers, how to play for a belly dancer and signal changes and the end, how to not just ornament but make up a rhythm, etc. -
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Re: Improvising
Mon, October 12, 2009 - 7:19 AMTo me, the most important thing in improvising is the reason you are improvising. The context of what you are doing and what you are hoping to accomplish.
Some basic things to think about:
Are you a single drummer or in an ensemble?
What other instruments are part of that ensemble? Just drums, or are there oud players or viola players as well?
Are you playing a bass drum, such as a bendir or dohola, or a lead drum, such as a doumbek or darbuka?
Are you playing a solo bit to show your skills and wow the audience, or are you adding some depth to the overall rhythm with some syncopation?
For instance, in your original post on this topic you mentioned using a "tk" in place of a "D" to start a rhythm. For dancers, that would be terrible. Dancers use that first beat, usually a nice heavy Doum, to find their way in the rhythm and frame their movements. Playing a long riff of teks and kas and rizzes and rolls for a dancer essentially forces them to shimmy until you are done and go back to what they can use. Of course, that changes if you are in an ensemble and someone else is playing that big doum on a frame drum or dohola.
In my mind, the point of all the practicing rolls, triplets, pops, and rizzes is to develop the ability to play what is needed, on the spot and with confidence.
Ultimately, drumming is communication with not only the audience, but also the other performers. So, to put it simply, know what you are trying to say, how you are trying to say it, and why. Once you have all that worked out the rest is just fun.
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Re: Improvising
Mon, October 12, 2009 - 9:23 AMThanks, Charles. I hear what you're saying. The first time I heard that rhythm starting with a tk instead of a dum I was unable to follow it. It makes an 8-count rhythm more like a 16-count rhythm. When I do use that, I tend to do so sparingly, like the 4th repetition of a rhythm. -
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Re: Improvising
Mon, October 12, 2009 - 10:42 AMIsn't that a pickup though? and-a-ONE or tk D - something I learned as a variation on simply counting off... of course, you could have been playing some Debke rhythm. Just sayin'
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Re: Improvising
Mon, October 12, 2009 - 11:11 AMI use that particular Saidi variation as my 4th repetition too. I picked it up off one of Hossam's Sabla Tolo Cds though. Lots of fun and really adds some funk to it to keep it from getting too repetitive. The variation I do is (each spot being a 16th):
Dk T- tk D- D- tk T- tk (x3)
Tk D- tk D- D- tk S- -- (x1)
As for improvising I'm an amateur too but I can share a couple of my tricks. I only play over someone else doing the skeleton or basic beats, this may not relate to solo alone. First, anywhere in a written rhythm where it's T- or D-, I can switch to Tk or Dk. Anywhere it's already tk as 8ths I can double it up to tktk as 16ths. Breaking out into a completely filled in rhythm using this can sometimes sound cool for a couple repeats and it isn't that hard. As in, changing Balladi "D- D- tk T- D- tk T- --" to "Dk Dk tk Tk Dk tk Tk tk". Beyond that you can also switch anywhere you see a tk in rhythm to triplet, or my favorite burst, a fast triplet+tk, to roll into an accent. Say "Buttery Toasted Jam" quickly and imagine Jam is your accent note you're aiming at. Another favorite tactic is to layer another rhythm on top. Throwing a malfouf or double-time chifty over a group playing Ayoub is my favorite. If you've got a backup group that's good at not getting distracted you can go polyrhythmic with this too... do a 3/4 or 7/8 pattern over them doing a 4/4 and you'll sometimes create a rhythm together that sounds like a complex 12 beat long pattern or 28 beat pattern (with 7/8). Just don't lose track of the tempo or it'll just sound like noise!
And since I'm not above shameless self promotiion if you want a mid-tempo, barely adorned, basic 4/4 drum song to practice soloing over you can get my song "Maqsum Noise" on iTunes. :) -
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Re: Improvising
Mon, October 12, 2009 - 1:28 PMGreat ideas, guys!
One little trick I taught myself about triplets. If 8th notes go, t-k-, and 16th notes go, tktk, then, if I'm playing 8th note triplets, I play ktk in the space it takes to play t-k-. It takes a lot of practice with metronome,
It's impossible to show this on this message board, but I hope you get the idea. -
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Re: Improvising
Mon, October 12, 2009 - 1:29 PMAWW, crap. That didn't come out right. I'll try again, later.
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Re: Improvising
Sat, October 17, 2009 - 1:17 AMThe signs and signals I look for when performing are specific for a backing drummer. Lead drummers normally get their instructions from the belly dancer but some of the signs and signals are the same.
A clenched fist means stop.
For rhythm changes, most commonly from 4/4 to a fellahi, in the middle of the 4/4 rhyhm you will hear a rhythm call like Tk-T, or even a very loud SS-S
www.khafif.com/rhy/rhymidi.cgi
For a change from a 2/4 to 4/4, which in my experience is quite rare, Issam showed me this rhythm call D-TK-S-T
www.khafif.com/rhy/rhymidi.cgi
At the beginning of the solo you may hear a typical call for a Malfuf TK-KT-K-
www.khafif.com/rhy/rhymidi.cgi
If the lead drum wants to do rolls so that a dancer can shimmy they usually play a soft repeating rak ka tak and slows in tempo. So I will play the current rhythm softer and slower for a couple of bars before completely stopping. When I stop that is when the lead drum will do his fancy rolls and flicks for the dancer.
For a lead drummer and dancer to communicate with each other normally before the drum solo the dancer will chat with the lead drummer. She will them what rhythms she wants and it's up to the lead drummer to watch the dancer for the cues. When a dancer suddenly dances to a different rhythm to the one current being play, that is the cue to change rhythms.
So for example with if start the solo with a malfuf and the dancer does travelling movements then after a while she stops and lifts her knee up and does a little kick, that is the cue to change to Saidi. Then after a while if they suddenly twist they hips, that is the cue for Fellahi. This is where it is useful for a drummer to know what a rhythm looks like when a dancer is dancing to a particular rhythm.
Dancers with also have other signals. Shaking of the hand means she wants to shimmy. If they make a fist behind they back they probably want to end the solo. You can also see the dancer straining her neck which is an unconcious sign they are tired and need the solo to stop. Issam had other signals that the BDSS dancers give him for repeating something. As well dancers will genernally lock eyes with you when they want a change or to communicate with you.
Another miscellanous signal, if a band leader, like the keyboard player, raises 4 fingers in the lead drummers direction that is a signal to do a 4 bar drum solo in the middle of a song.
That's my limited knowledge of signs and signals for improvisation. -
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Re: Improvising
Sat, October 17, 2009 - 11:15 AMThank you, Ignatius!
That's a lot more than I've been able to glean from other sources. I don't know how universal these signals are, but I think we should add them to the Lexicon so they can be *established* as universal. Dancers can signal with hand motions, but I haven't seen a lot of signals a drum leader can use. I've seen the "eye contact" sign (the "big hairy eyeball"), and just a couple others for stopping:
Hand moves sideways across throat
Lead drummer exaggerates his strikes, with hands hitting from much farther from drum head
Sometimes a dancer will tell us what move she'll make to signal a rhythm or tempo change, like when she raises her arms all the way up, or they'll yip or start to shimmy, but sometimes they have no clue how to signal a change.
Great stuff, Ignatius.
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 13, 2009 - 9:38 AMHey, I know where you are coming from. I was at that point where it was time to start to figure out soloing and break away from being entrenched in the repetetion of the rhythm. So I looked at your question and thought, 'So the first thing is....' complete blank. It is a hard thing to tackle in evolving as a musician. So here is what I came up with after awhile.
A) I once took a workshop with Raquy on soloing. It was over half beginers too scared to solo(my group) and her students she had been helping. One thing that really stuck out was her saying play a solo with all high notes, no doums. This was a big deal to consider because rhythms have D and T, so to change to only T, that is a lot different. Think about it. Breaking away from always playing doums was a big step.
Also consider playing the rhythm for awhile, then try solos with pop or slap, etc. but don`t start it by playing maksoum with pops then solo with pops. Your audience will pick up on the difference.
B) Learn the concept of phrasing in music. I came up with a couple.
Use this to practice: in 16th notes:
D*D*tkT*D*tkT*tk
D*D*tkT*D*tkT*tk
D*D*tkT*D*tkT*tk
T***T***T***T***
So T is the pulse and learn for your solo variations how to feel this pulse as you process your solos and then to play them. Can you land the T and your foot on the pulse when you get to the 4th line? Then it is time to break out some sweet solos. If not, wish you were in the drum line, those educated drummers have it easy.
Solos can follow this basic pattern, listen to it in music:
TkTkTkTk
TkTkTkS*
TkTkTkTk
TkTkTkS*
It is a phrase of two bars in a 8 count over 4/4 time. Play it twice and you have 4 bars, very useful. Now you are breaking away from playing the rhythm, your are playing over the rhythm. Bellydancers listen for the big stop to keep in the groove. They actually do listen to us!
C) Mark and everybody is right, listen to them.
Also, you probably already have some great percussionists in your music collection, do what David said, learn the basics of music and then go back and relisten to music you already know. It will be like a whole new experience and draw inspiration from what they are playing.
Find a bunch of different types of ME playing and listen to it til you are sick of some of it. Then go learn the style you are not sick of. I have been listening to Harem for years and love it. Others find Turkish style too busy. Find out for yourself.
Good luck, it is a big step. And lots of new practice.
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 13, 2009 - 2:14 PMI think the hardest things for me are:
1) The changes from one lead rhythm to the next, in making them smooth.
2) If it's a long solo with a lot lead rhythms and changes, memory, e.g., Gemal Gomarraa's "Sahra Saiidi" has 16 rhythm changes. I'm finally on top of it. But it kicked my ass for a long time.
Both of these take LOTS of practice. Years. My girlfriend thinks my metronome is a threat to her status. :-) -
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 13, 2009 - 2:19 PMOh, and how I got from improvising to memorizing a choreographed solo is--
The practicing of an arranged solo with some difficulty, length, and variety facillitates "not thinking", smoothness, and the sounds of your drum over someone elses in lots of different ways. Practice builds comfortableness and familiarity.
Improv requires you to pull something out of your butt without thinking. You have something up there to start with.
I'm still working on these. I'm not satisfied.
:-) -
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 13, 2009 - 2:28 PMAs you might be getting here Dave, the painful answers are practice practice practice, and experience.
Drills, thought exercises, listening to others, and so on are very useful, but the real answer is to get out there, do your best, fall on your face, and keep playing all the time. -
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 13, 2009 - 3:03 PMwell on thimg you can do is Take one beat and Play 2 beats at half value in its place. or the reverse and where you have a double stoke just to a single stroke to basicly have a Insant of silece in there. Some time si will even replace one of the dooms with a hard slap such as Baladi with DS at the being instead of DD now i normaly don't do this Everytime just through it in for variation. Or even Just ride the rhythem with Just Kas's and Tek for a measure making shure to Really Punch the acents. What is important is that the Accents are there even if that acent is a long silence!
Basicly play it strait like 3 times through then on the Fourth time vary it some.
for example
(Dt Tka DD tkt tk ) *3Dt Tka DT Tkd tk :|
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 13, 2009 - 4:33 PMYep. I try to practice every day, and experiment (when my wife's out of the house), and once a week I play for a belly dance class, which also teaches stamina, focus, avoiding distraction, keeping tempo, staying in sync, reacting to the dance, and switching smoothly between rhythms. Been doing that for a couple years now, for various teachers, and it helps a lot (and gets the dancers used to a live drummer, which many here are not).
I took a writing workshop recently, and the two strongest suggestions by the teacher was 1) Write! and 2) Read (and read like a writer). I guess the same goes here: 1) Play! 2) Listen. :) -
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 13, 2009 - 8:26 PMWell, and here is something I am pretty confident about: If you have been playing for a belly dance class weekly for a "couple of years now" you are a much better drummer than you think.
I do that as well, and I know that the feedback you get from live dancers in a class / workout setting is usually brutally direct if you are not doing well. That is, they stop dancing and glance at you... (Sheer terror and embarrassment.)
Keep on doing what you are doing. The best out there have played for decades, and some things just take time. Luckily, it is a lot of fun to practice. -
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Re: Improvising
Wed, October 14, 2009 - 5:15 AMahh the zen of playing fpr Belly dance class's Especialy when a teacher wants a strait open slow maqsum for a Hour strait.
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Re: Improvising
Wed, October 14, 2009 - 8:55 PMI play for a couple classes a week for different teachers and I have a more interesting time of it. I play for advanced students that are trying to hone their skills with drum solos, so I am playing many different drum solos on the fly and they are responding to the changes. I love doing this. It's like jazz. Constant improvising.
Don't just listen to other drummers play drum solos (you'll undoubtedly copy riffs). Listen to jazz musicians, good jazz musicians. Great sax players like Coltrane and Coleman. Great horn players like Miles and Don Cherry. You'll get an idea how to make the music on the fly. You'll feel how you can bend it a bit and how you always need to feel the pulse and hold it even while you are way out there. And do it with dancers to see what it looks like. Remember, the dancer is the other musician that you are performing with. You are "jamming" with the dancer.
This is the secret of Tony Bennett as a great jazz singer , his teacher discouraged him from listening to other jazz singers and encouraged him to listen to jazz instrumentalists. It taught him better to think of his voice as an instrument rather than just imitating other singers and their techniques.
In John Coltrane's later work, he became influenced by the polyrhythms of West African percussion through his friendship with Michael "Babatunde" Olatunji and in his "First Meditations" he is using the tenor sax like a djembe playing a slalom in and around the pulse in a different time signature. Now we don't normally play polyrhythms in Arabic percussion, but we do layer rhythms and much can be learned by listening to how musicians in different disciplines do things.
Stay true to the genre, but add your own mark to it otherwise you're just repeating what's already been done. -
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Re: Improvising
Wed, October 14, 2009 - 10:08 PMI've been playing with a West African drum ensemble (until just recently), and we played a lot of call-and-response games where someone would make up a riff and we'd echo it or riff on it, and we'd take turns doing little solos, and I was comfortable with that because with the other drummers there they keep the beat going. I'm still skittish about doing that without another drummer with me. That's why I liked the suggestion of dropping in riffs of a known length.
I asked a local drummer about soloing, and he had trouble giving me guidelines for doing a solo, but then he played a solo from one of his CDs, and explained to me as it played what he was doing. His basic mantra was, "Okay, that sounds good, but I can't keep doing it. What next?" He'd play something, and then repeat it, and then add a beat, or subtract a beat, or change the sound, or go from fast to slow, or low to high, or vice versa. Listening to his stream-of-consciousness helped a lot.
Until a few months ago I couldn't solo at all on doumbek, (partly just out of fear), but I learned to leave gaps in the rhythm and fill it with whatever came to mind. I'm still not comfortable with the idea of doing that for longer than half a rhythm, nor if I can do that while someone is dancing.
Here's a question for you. I just recently watched Issam Houshan doing drum solos at the BDSS show, and he almost always had one of the dancers playing a doumbek or frame drum with him, and my question is, Why? Were they helping him keep time, or making it sound richer, or some other reason? I feel inadequate drumming by myself.
I ask all these questions because I still haven't wrapped my head around all the aspects of drum solos for bellydance. -
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Re: Improvising
Wed, October 14, 2009 - 10:36 PMGood question about support drummers.
Issam is a master and doesn't need anyone to help him "keep time" but they are necessary for another reason. When you heard him play, he was playing solos that were a bit more abstract than the original pattern (this` is a good thing), the support drummers were there to hold the basic pattern, to give it the other layer and to help the dancer to hear the pattern and also it augments the improvisation. When he comes to a bridge, they help underline the bass line and make it more dramatic when he (and they) bring it home.
Issam talked about this dynamic in a workshop that I went to with him and he showed the difference of him playing alone and with support.
His playing was of course awesome both ways, but when he played alone, he felt he needed to hold the basic pattern with his right hand while playing fills and accents with his left. Because he only has two hands, it was a simpler sound. When he had somebody else hold the basic pattern, he was able to be more outlandish with his solo and flourishes because he was devoting both hands to just the solo.
The sound was richer and more involved when he played with another drummer and his playing was more rousing, but what he played when playing alone was actually more difficult to do.
You are supposed to make the drum talk. In West African percussion , a "Djembefola" is one that makes the drum talk. Anyone can play and keep the beat, but a soloist makes the drum talk. The same is true of Arabic percussion.
In both disciplines it is important to have support. We don't need a bunch of soloists. Support drummers are there to support, not try to solo against the lead drummer. Good soloists realize this and know how to play support and do it well and allow the lead drummer to improvise.
I have played support (riq, frame drum, dhola, tabla baladi) with some pretty wonderful drummers and I keep it simple. That can be tough to do for somebody that is accustomed to playing lead, but I do it because I know my place. Playing support is a very important and useful skill to have and is necessary to creating a rounder ensemble.
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 20, 2009 - 4:07 AMHi guy's.
This is a good question and there are all of the right answers here, but I know how it feels when you want to add more 'colour' to your playing and ornament within a rhythm when your playing solo.
Have you tried Matt Stonehouse's web site Fingers of fury?
He's got some great ideas on his site that show just how to break the rhythm like the guys have been explaining. This is a good web site that I subscribe to. His site helps when your stuck for ideas or want to build routines etc
It's easy to watch someone else play rather than have to work out what is being explained.
I'm not on commision lol but I do recomend fingers of fury to my students and friends who play.
I've been playing for five years and there is some great advanced material on there and a forum with weekly (video) updates that gives the answers to question raised.
Hope it helps.. Wade -
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Re: Improvising
Tue, October 20, 2009 - 4:31 PMThanks, Wade. I've been to his site before, and he has some good stuff, but I've held off on subscribing.
I'm gonna take what's been suggested here and run with it, and then if I run into a wall maybe I'll hit Fingers o' Fury.
Dave
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Re: Improvising
Sat, October 24, 2009 - 1:48 PMBy the way, I'll be doing a percussion workshop in London on November 14th and available for private lessons as well. Saturday is booked up but, if anyone is interested, times on Friday are available. Details can be found at the tribe listing for FireWater here: people.tribe.net/84607267-...49265f16a9
A lot of the time, improvising has nothing to do with getting more chops, it is more a matter of concepts. I doubt the workshop will be delving into soloing extensively, whereas a lesson can. And, as always, as long as it is for personal use, you can always audio or video record private lessons. -
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Re: Improvising
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 1:37 PMWow, London! Have a great time and enjoy your trip, Mark. =)
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Re: Improvising
Tue, December 1, 2009 - 11:41 PMi'm a little late here, but this is genius, jeff. excellent advice in a string of already great advice.
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