Current Practice

   Don't worry bloggers I'm not trading in the tumbadoras for the drum kit!  Mainly this is just practice to sharpen my counting and music reading skills. I remember many years ago when I was in Junior High School and I played orchestral percussion I could read music very quickly; dotted eight notes, flams, eighth note rests, all that stuff was just what you did in a music score. Well, things nowadays are much more sluggish.

   So here we are. I picked this method book for its emphasis on syncopation:

Syncopation occurs when a temporary displacement of the regular metrical accent occurs, causing the emphasis to shift from a strong accent to a weak accent.

   Obviously syncopation is very important in Afro-Cuban music and rumba. Clave, pallitos, quinto are all very syncopated.

   I'm not going to be a snare drummer anytime soon, so I stayed away from the snare rudiments with all their 5 and seven stroke rolls and all that. Also a friend of mine who is a great quinto player rcommended this book. He adapted the excercises for congas. Actually, he is the one who bought it for me as a way to repay a favor I did for him, changing the skin on one of his drums.

  So the practice pad is there for the obvious reasons; it's quiet and portable. I can tap away on this thing anywhere at anytime, almost. Well I just got the whole kit put together yesterday, so I guess I'll be seeing how I get on with it soon.