Darbuka Blog

Feb 25th 2010 by Matt Stonehouse

The 3 Month Darbuka Course...thunderbirds are go!

Well that was fun! Three months later and how is your darbuka playing? It should be well on track if i dare say so myself. It was a fun course to put together and very rewarding seeing so many people following it week by week.

Lets take a closer look at what was covered and why-
Week one was our introduction to the darbuka and also on how to read a drumming chart. There is a funny joke amongst musicians that asks 'how do you make a guitarist shut up? Put a chart in front of them!' I didn't want to scare people off with music theory but i did want everyone to be able to read a basic drumming chart and understand how a rhythm is counted. There are already enough bad drummer jokes out there. 
So where was i? Ah yes, Week one. We learnt some techniques, where and how to purchase a good darbuka drum and we started out on our rhythmical journey.

Weeks two and three were focusing on new rhythms and then ornamenting them. How good does Saiidi sound!? Many of these rhythms you will still be playing in twenty years from now. Did you know that if you swing the Kaligi rhythm you get the classic Bollywood Bangra rhythm? Or if you just play the Kaligi fundamental part you will have the dancehall rhythm!? How cool is that? Very cool. Each humble weekly lesson opened up a whole new universe of possibility. Music really does have infinate depth.

As for Week four well what can i say? It was time to get flashy and let loose. The drum solo! Every drummer needs one. Every concert needs one! When i teach the drum solo at workshops it always reminds me of when i take my dog (Honey) to the beach and let her off the lead. She charges to the water, jumps four feet high and then proceeds to attempt aound ten 360 degree turns whilst still in the air much to the raw horror of sun bathers (let's just say she is a BIG dog). The drum solo brings out this sort of high energy excitment with drummers and as i say to Honey the dog 'go and get your silly's out.'
Of course there are many drum solo's and situations that will take on a different mood but alas, this one was just for kicks!

As we approached weeks five and six marking the half way mark something had happened. A strange force had taken over our bodies and minds and lives for that matter. Stuck in a traffic jam? Perfect! Now is my chance to practice darbuka technique on the steering wheel. Beep, Beep! Ooh sorry, i was in a trance. Yes we started to tap on anthing we could find. Whilst i am on that topic- did you know that if you have a few coins in your pocket and a couple a larger coins in the other pocket it sounds great!? Well it does, believe me. Now where was i again? The drum roll. After learning several different ways to create a fantastic drum roll we took a turn to the left and were shown something life changing, something awesome yet kind of scary, something that made us want to quit that crappy day job and leap forward into our new found career! Week six introduced us to "the art" of drumming for a belly dancer.

Just when every drummer was about to explode with rhythmic overload, things took a turn once again and we entered yet another universe. 'Where are we now?' i heard people saying. ' Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore' i heard someone else say. Welcome to a strange land with even stranger music. Houston, we have landed on planet frame drum. Luckily for you everyone was very friendly and the newspapers were wrong!

Whilst we ventured around this amazing new world we dived into weeks eight and nine which covered ensemble compositions and trance drumming. Little did we know that all of this was just preparation for an even wilder and weirder world that was to be- Odd time rhythms. Ladies and Gentleman they don't call them 'odd' for nothing! Odd time cycles are a huge part of playing the darbuka. They are a wonderful canvas to play on. Week ten gave us an insight into this and set us on our path.

The last two weeks of the course were about practice: how to practice, what to practice and why we should practice! Yes the three P's of darbuka playing. As i write this i think most of you doing the course are at around week ten. What a great three months it's been. Welcome to your new world of drumming, you will never look back now, just around.

Stay tuned for what the future holds....could it be a course for the Riq? Advanced darbuka technique? How to transcribe a heavy metal song into an Arabic drum solo? Who knows... we will have to wait and see.

March 3rd 2010 by Matt Stonehouse

The melodic darbuka player

How does harmony effect darbuka players? Can we play out of key also? You bet!
Our darbuka drums all have a very strong note through the 'dum' tone and this note needs some consideration....and tuning! If we tune our darbuka properly, our overall musical experiences will be far more enjoyable for both us and other musicians. I keep my larger darbuka tuned to an 'A' note. This is perfect for the bands that i play in because they often play in the key of D. If a song is in the the key of D and my darbuka is tuned to an 'A' note then we have an interval of a 5th. This note will compliment the music being played. It will also work well if the song is in the key of 'A.'

Why did i just say an interval of a 5th? What did he mean the key of 'A'? My darbuka only came with a tuning key!
An interval is a musical measurment between to different notes. The interval between the notes 'D' to 'A' is a fifth (5th). Use your fingers of fury if you must! This is often referred to as a perfect 5th. But alas, we cant always use our finger method due to their being twelve notes. If we include all the notes in our western musical system we have A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# and back to the A once again. This makes for 12 notes before going back to the same note once again only higher in pitch; the octave.
Another way to look at this would be A Bb B C Db D Eb E F Gb G Ab and back to the A once again like before. The smaller 'b' stands for flat whilst the '#' stands for sharp. Yes, the black keys on that dusty old piano in the corner of your bedroom. The reason i wrote this twice is just to make sure that everyone reading this was aware that an 'A#' note is really just the same a 'Bb' note. Got it? Good!

With these twelve notes we measure their distance from each other by intervals. In this case the 'tonic' is the 'A' note. This is because it is the starting point for both examples. Now if you look at this above example and count from the 'D' up to the 'A' you will count eight if you include the 'D.' Then why did i say it was an interval of a 5th just before? The intervals work in the following way- 1 (tonic), minor 2nd, major 2nd, minor 3rd, major 3rd, fourth, tritone, fifth, minor sixth, major sixth, minor seventh, major seventh, octave (tonic).

After you can begin to understand this you will then see why my earlier example of 'D' to an 'A' was a fifth, sometimes referred to as a 'perfect fifth.'
So we effectively have to intervals of a 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th. In between the fourth and fifth notes i mentioned a tritone. This not could sometimes be called a sharp four (#4) or a flat fifth (b5).

What all this mumble jumble means to you the darbuka player is...umm...i forgot!? Ah yes, it means that the note your darbuka produces will be one of these intervals in relation to the song you are playing along with. It's not just a dead drum with no tone. It's a melodic drum with a very strong note indeed! This is even more true when we play frame drums. Now the reason this is all so important and i am bringing it to your atention is that each interval has it's own unique sound, mood and character. If the tonic of a song is in 'D' and my drum is in 'A' then like i said, it's an interval of a fifth. The mood and sound of a fifth is rather neutral and very natural. The mood of these intervals can also be measured by the level of dissonance and consonance. Think of them like magnets either drawing toward or pushing away from one another.

The sound of the minor 2nd has alot of dissonance and creates an uneasy feeling with a very dark mood. This is a great interval to use when playing something dark, moody and exotic. Of course you also have to take into consideration the amount of time speant on this interval. If it's just a passing note it will have a different effect on the listener than if it were to drone for a given amount of time (like you drum would be doing).

The most soothing and beautiful interval is the major third (maj 3rd). This interval has alot of consonance and bonds together very well to create it's lovely tone of peace. Whilst it may be hard to grasp all of this new information in one reading, one thing you can do is to find out what the main key songs you play are in. If many of the songs your band plays are in the key of "A' or 'D' or even 'E' then work out the best note to tune your darbuka to. Tune it using a consistant note (drone) to make it easier. Using a guitar tuner may be a little difficult at first so go for something that gives a constant drone.

Just before i leave you with a fried yet excited brain, did you know that a chord is built up out of three or more notes? So what Matt? Different chords use different notes to create all the moods. If we use the tonic, the minor third and the fifth we get a minor chord, if we do he same yet change the minor third for a major third we will get a major chord. Think back to when we discussed the to different intervals for each note. The first one which is flatter is the minor interval, the other being major. So if we have three darbuka players all playing differently tuned drums we can play chords! Enter into a new universe my friends...