How the Claves Sound

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Aaron Bland and I'm here to demonstrate for you a clave playing technique. Now, it's going to go down a little bit like this. One of the two claves, called the clave itself, it's the male counterpart of the male-female duality. The clave that you hold in your hand, you're going to kind of cup with the tips of your fingers and the fleshy part of your thumb and this part of the palm of your hand. And, if you look, there's a cavity of space in between the clave and the actual palm of my hand. And that's going to run actually all the way through to this side right here, allowing the sound to project as much as possible. And when you take the female counterpart of the striker, I usually use about a quarter of the way down, not halfway, not with the tip of the stick, but right in between those two points. That's where I'm going to strike that clave. And hit it, and let that ring out. There's your clave playing technique. Now just for demonstration purposes, I'm going to let the clave sink into my hand. Listen to what happens. You're going to get a more muted effect. A pretty drastic effect when you're just considering you're basically playing with pieces of broom handle. Notice with the cavity of space in between just to let that project. You can do a little bit of experimentation with this, using the tip of the stick, the tip of the clave, to get a different sound. But the best sound, the most projecting sound you're going to get out of the clave is by then holding it, some people like to hold it with their fingernails so it's not being muted by your skin itself. I find this kind of hard to hold it that way, especially when there's a lot of momentum in this kind of music. You know, you'll want to dance, you'll want to be able to move a little bit. But the best sound you can get, again, is right in the middle of the clave, about a quarter of the way down the striker. There's your cave technique."