How to Play Accents on the Tambourine

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Aaron Bland on behalf of Expert Village and I'm going to demonstrate how to play accents on the tambourine. Now, an accent is a note that stands out from all of the other notes usually by means of being louder than all of the other notes. And, in percussion, that translates into hit the thing harder basically. The tambourine, we've already established how to play straight time. If you wanted to accent or let one of those notes sound out louder than the others, a great way to do that is just using the palm of your hand. Kind of meet the tambourine half way. Again, another way of striking the tambourine, but we're going to use this in conjunction with your straight time. And I'm going to demonstrate one of the more popular ways of keeping time with an accent. Think of this as sixteenth notes where we're accenting the quarter note, or we're accenting the force of every four notes that you're playing on the tambourine. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. See, you get that pulse as well as the subdivision of notes in between there. Another popular way to do this is to accent every other four notes. So, instead of accenting the quarter note, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. You can accent just counts two and count four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one. And if you're playing with a drummer, you're basically listening for the back beat or when the drummer hits the snare, that's where you're accenting the tambourine. You could also, if you wanted to, accent one and three. Same basic motion, just at a different interval played at different times. Check this out."