A Rhythmic Vocabulary

This 208-page book is the first systematic, comprehensive approach to learning about rhythm. It's for any drummer or other musician playing any style of music. It organizes and analyzes hundreds of African and Afro-Cuban patterns to give you a deeper understanding of rhythmic structure. It also teaches rhythmic concepts and variation techniques you can use to create patterns of your own. Learn to groove and solo with greater rhythmic freedom and express yourself with a richer rhythmic vocabulary. Winner of the DRUM Magazine Readers' Poll for Best Instructional Book. Please note: audio files of the CD that comes with the print version of this book are not included in this ebook version (but are available separately).

This book is a complete, step-by-step course for beginners on how to play djembe. Right from the start you'll be learning interlocking parts for some of the most popular West African rhythms: Kuku, Djole, Kassa, Madan, Suku, Sunguru Bani, and Tiriba. While you learn the patterns, you'll also learn how to make each of the basic strokes--bass, tone, and slap--with proper playing technique. We use life-like illustrations to show how each stroke looks from the outside and give detailed descriptions to explain how each stroke feels from the inside. The book also has easy-to-read box charts and a friendly writing style that creates the feel of private lessons. Please note: audio files of the CD that comes with the print version of this book are not included in this ebook version (but are available separately).

Textbook familiarizes readers with the signs, symbols and units of rhythmic notation. With drills, exercises, many musical examples, special sections on conducting technique, sight-singing and musical notation.

This new kind of dictionary reflects the use of “rhythm rhymes” by rappers, poets, and songwriters of today. Users can look up words to find collections of words that have the same rhythm as the original and are useable in ways that are familiar to us in everything from vers libre poetry to the lyrics and music of Bob Dylan and hip hop groups.

The lessons in Rhythm and Drumming Demystified (R.A.D.D.) utilize a process of adapting the rudiments---and the countless variations and grooves they spawn---to the framework of five systems of common rhythmic figures, as a means to increase one's control and flexibility with any sticking or time-feel. The book also contains a groundbreaking system for using the voice to develop one's "internal clock." By using this system, drummers can improve their groove by learning to generate time with their mind and allow their body to simply be a conduit between their perception of the time and its manifestation on the drumset.

On a simple trip to the park, the joy of music overtakes a mother and daughter. The little girl hears a rhythm coming from the world around her- from butterflies, to street performers, to ice cream sellers everything is musical! She sniffs, snaps, and shakes her way into the heart of the beat, finally busting out in an impromptu dance, which all the kids join in on! Award-winning illustrator Frank Morrison and Connie Schofield-Morrison, capture the beat of the street, to create a rollicking read that will get any kid in the mood to boogie.

This book--which won the 2000 DRUM Magazine Readers' Poll for "Best Instructional Book"--is a complete, step-by-step course on conga drumming. It's the book we looked for but couldn't find when we were first learning to drum. We did everything we could to make it user-friendly, so even non-musicians could understand it. The book teaches families of drum parts for several authentic Afro-Caribbean rhythms, including rumba, bomba, calypso, conga, and bembe. The instruction is clear and step-by-step, and the writing creates the intimate feel of private lessons. The charts are big and easy to read. Life-like illustrations clearly demonstrate proper technique for each stroke. Please note: audio files of the CD that comes with the print version of this book are not included in this ebook version (but are available separately).

Most classical musicians, whether in orchestral or ensemble situations, will have to face a piece by composers such as Ligeti, Messiaen, Varèse or Xenakis, while improvisers face music influenced by Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Aka Moon, Weather Report, Irakere or elements from the Balkans, India, Africa or Cuba. Rafael Reina argues that today’s music demands a new approach to rhythmical training, a training that will provide musicians with the necessary tools to face, with accuracy, more varied and complex rhythmical concepts, while keeping the emotional content. Reina uses the architecture of the South Indian Karnatic rhythmical system to enhance and radically change the teaching of rhythmical solfege at a higher education level and demonstrates how this learning can influence the creation and interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music. The book is designed for classical and jazz performers as well as creators, be they composers or improvisers, and is a clear and complete guide that will enable future solfege teachers and students to use these techniques and their methodology to greatly improve their rhythmical skills. An accompanying website of audio examples helps to explain each technique. For examples of composed and improvised pieces by students who have studied this book, as well as concerts by highly acclaimed karnatic musicians, please copy this link to your browser: http://www.contemporary-music-through-non-western-techniques.com/pages/1587-video-recordings