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Have Fun Playing Hand Drums: A Book and Cd for Playing the Djembe, Conga, and Bongo Drums |
Author: Ben James
Published: 1999-04 |
List price: $19.95
Our price: $13.57
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Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: November 21st, 2008 09:05:23 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Great Book
This is a fantastic book to use to teach children as well as adults to play any type of drum. The book comes with a cd which helps you hear how the note should sound. I am teaching my son who is autistic and the steps are very simple although I do have to break them further to accomodate his learning style. I recommend it highly. Have fun playing!!
 Good for an absolute beginner or a group
The book teaches easy, traditional rhythms for conga, bongos, and djembe. There were no Middle Eastern beats.
The format is easy to follow, and they use a method of notation (with shapes) that breaks it down well enough for a kiddo to interpret. By kiddo I mean interested, 7yrs & up but any kid with musical experience would find it very easy. In fact they picture lots of kids drumming in the book. Keeping this notation in mind, the book does not prepare the reader for interpreting standard percussion notation... which may or may not be important to you.
If you are already proficient with any of these drums and are looking for some new beats, I wouldn't reccomend this book. They only show a few core beats (3 in fact- one for each drum,) as the breadth of the material seems to focus on providing multiple percussion parts and activities for a beginning drum circle. The "finale" piece is simply a combination of the 3 major drum beats and their accompanying percussion parts (shakers etc.)
The three beats are given in their core form, and then are gradually embellished. As far as I know, this is just about how everybody learns a new beat: starting with the core and building on it.
They provided some exercise routines for skill building and hand coordination as well as counting beats and rests.
The illustrations were very useful, and the instructions for finding tones were quite explicit, even going so far as to explain alternate ways of making a specific sound. This could be wonderful for somebody frustrated with not finding their tones.
It does have instructions that illustrate tuning, how to find and execute slap & bass etc, as well as guidelines and blank notation space for you to write your own beats. I enjoyed the background information they gave about the drums- cultural and geographic origins, construction, how to find a drum with good sound, etc. The information they chose to share would be beneficial for any drummer, but may be redundant for most.
I really didn't get anything out of this book as an intermediate player. I was hoping to pick up a few more beats for my African and Middle Eastern drums and learn some technique with the bongos. Instead I think it would have been wiser to just buy a bongo book or get some cheap lessons from a university student.
This book would be excellent for kids OR adults with zero musical experience wanting to get their hand-drumming feet wet. I couldn't reccomend it more for that purpose.
A good introduction to drumming for the complete novice
This book begins with a quick historical overview of each type of drum and describes the characteristics of the djembe, conga and bongo drums. It explains where the common hand drum tone zones are on the drum head. It then goes on to counting a simple 4-beat rhythm and distinguishes between downbeats and upbeats. In a non-traditional music notation system of boxes with one of several symbols in it representing the distinct tones the drums can make, it introduces the idea of the rest where the symbol is missing in one of a pattern of boxes - every 4th box, every 3rd and 4th box, every 2nd box. Then there is practice combining the various tones the drums can make and rests, accenting either the downbeat or the upbeat, and so on. Fun for kids are the games, such as "Follow the Leader" and "Talking Drum," and imitating the sound of a train in "The Drum Train." Also of interest are the group drumming rhythms in two and three parts, still maintaining the 4-beat count, and traditional rhythms common to each type of drum. Experimenting with sounds and creating your own rhythms is encouraged. This is an easy book with a gentle learning curve. The CD is a nice accompaniment to the book's exercises and provides practice for playing along with a group. Recommended for beginners.
Excellent book and CD for learning and playing along with
The book is well illustrated and the accompanying CD is excellent for learning and playing along with - the exercises are played several times so you can get the feel of the sound and practice with the CD. The exercises and patterns are carefully graduated. There are also a number of play-along tracks to get more experience. I would also recommend this book for players of other instruments to get a good grounding in rhythm sense. This book followed by Richie Gajate-Garcia's "Play Bongos & Hand Percussion Now" is the best course for learning bongos I know of. Gajate-Garcia's book will take you to more complex rhythms and patterns useful for nearly every setting.
Serves its purpose well!
As a teacher of hand drumming to kids, I found this book to be a wonderful guide/reference for breaking down playing and rhythm concepts for kids. You could teach the book as-is sequentially as a course, or pull from different parts as you choose.
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