Video: Playing Maracas in a Straight or Swung Time

Learn how to play maracas up and down or side to side and get professional tips and advice from an expert on playing traditional Mexican musical instruments in this free music lesson video.

Video Transcript

I'm going to demonstrate a time keeping technique you can use while playing the maracas. This is instead of the air drum note hits we were talking about earlier, I want to play a side to side motion with the maracas and I'm going to get the beads to hit ether side of the maracas. And, you should by going back and forth kind of on a horizontal plane you don't have to contend with gravity the way you do in an up and down motion. Side to side you can keep those pretty even. Now you can do the same thing kind of keep in mind on the backbeat but in a kind of tomahawk motion and you're going to get a more swung sound. It won't be as even just because gravity's going to work differently when you're kind of doing this 90-degree angle. And, you can kind of play or dictate the feel by just how fast you recoil if you're keeping a close mind on when you're actually changing directions. That's when the sound is, right when you change directions. That's when the beads are going to slap against the side of the maracas. So, as long as you are mindful of where that back beat is you can actually have control over whether you are playing straight time or swung time. There you have it.

Playing Maracas in a Straight or Swung Time

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