Getting Sounds From a Djembe Drum

Video Transcript

" Hello! My name is Scott Swearingen. My website is rythmpig.com. I have been a drummer for a long time, playing drum set for years and years - got tired of driving a drum set around and switched to hand percussion. I am a sociologist by training and so I got interested in different ethnic musical styles. I learned how to play various ethnic drums and its styles. See a few of those around here, mostly surrounded by African instruments here, the African Djembe, I have got a manufactured Djembe here, the achoco back here, got a couple of my Hawaiian instruments over here as well. I am going to introduce this series by showing a little bit of on how to get sound out of the Djembe and then after that we will talk about how to choose a Djembe, I will give you some specific patterns. So number one, first lesson how do you to get sound out of a Djembe, well observe. While the Djembe’s base is on the floor, if I hit it, that is what it sounds like, Djembe to get the sound, it has got to be tilted off the floor, the sound is going to come out of that bottom. So holding the Djembe, usually you sit with it between your legs tilted up, try to tilt it to where when your hands are up. This is a natural position of your hands and you feel natural, it is not too high, it is not too low, it is about there and you want to tilt the drum head where your hands held at this position are more or less parallel to the drum head. So you are able to do that without working too hard. If it is too high or if it is up here, you are doing this and it is too hard, it is down here you are reaching for it, so you are looking to get something held between your knees about that. Now, getting sound out of it, there are three different tones that you can get, the base tone, the play tone, singing tone there and the pop. You can get the pop by hitting the edge there. You can press a little bit, high from that tone, a little bit. Three… three tones."