The Basics of Rhythm on the Djembe Drum

Video Transcript

" Welcome back and on behalf on Expert Village I am Scott Swearingen at rythmpig.com. I have got some of my music on there, you can listen to and download for free and my CD is available on that as well. So, I am going to talk a little bit here about playing it and instruct showing you how to play the drum. I wanted to give you a quick micro lecture on the drumming. I frequently run into people who have bought a drum and they think the drumming is this… no control… no rhythm and no pattern… big noise Other people liked to make big noise on it. Drumming is not that making noise Drumming is about learning how to hold the rhythm, keep time and keep the beat and especially on African drums like the Djembe, you have got to be able to keep a beat and stay in time as everybody else because the whole point of African drumming is that you are going to be playing with other people not by yourself. I ran into one guy at the pool the other day playing the drum and he was just going... Then he said well did you bring a drum I want to play and I said what are you doing and he says well I am playing a drum and I said I do not know what you are doing that I cannot play with you because you are constantly varying your speed and your volume and you are not playing rhythm or another and finally, I just said well you have fun playing because I cannot play with you. If you are going to be playing a drum you got to be holding constant steady rhythm and play with other people. So when you are playing Djembe… what you are going to do is practice, first things first, start with a simple rhythm like this… and do this over and over and over... What you are trying to do is hold the setting of the beat and after you can be like that… start to vary it… lesson number 1, and you actually play, rhythm #1. In out,out in. out in, out in over and over again, that is the root rhythm right there and then you can go backwards on it in and out…"