Video: How to Hold & Play a Vibraslap

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Learn how to hold a vibraslap in this free video series that will show you how to play this mandible and provide you with other percussion instrument techniques with these video music lessons.

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Video Transcript

I'm going to demonstrate for you how to hold and play the vibraslap. The traditional way to play this is to hold it on the far end of it, like this. You want to hold it as loosely as possible to allow this thing to vibrate, resonant as much as possible. And it's usually played into the palm of your hand, like so. It can also be played against your knee, same way, just instead of the palm of your hand, just a one-handed way of playing this instrument. And I've also seen it played upside down like this, where you're holding, again the far end of it, bringing the palm of your down on top of the ball. This is for more musical applications if you have to play it more than once in a song or play a rhythm out of it. This is generally the best way to play, especially for microphone placement. Because it's kind of a studio instrument, you can set up the microphone right here and keep it pretty steady, keep it stable, the same distance from the microphone. Otherwise, you end up getting a proximity effect or you get a Doppler effect by bringing it closer to the microphone as you play it. Kind of gives it a crescendo feel or you could do a decrescendo feel, where it kind of fades off into the distance. So there's your holding and playing of the vibraslap. Also, make sure that your tendency, is going to want to grab this handle right here like this and, if you listen to the sound difference, it's a lot more muted and subdued than if you just hold this back bar. So that's really the most important thing about holding and playing the vibraslap.

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How to Hold & Play a Vibraslap

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