Hello again, and welcome again to the Blergh. So, this week’s been a bit of a pretty full
on week, so I thought I’d do something a bit different, and hopefully a little bit
quicker. To take a break from the practise exercises
and do something different. A few of you have asked me about the djembe
stand that I’ve been using in these videos, so I thought I’d talk about that, and I
also wanted to just give you some tips, or just give you a walkthrough video, on how
to attach a strap with your djembe if you want to play standing. We’ll see how that goes…. First things first, djembe stands. It’s coming up to the holiday season, and
the exploitation and consumerism of capitalism is in full flight, so I thought, ‘what better
way to get involved than buying drum gear?’ It’s one way to deal with it. So this stand that I’ve been using is made
by a company called Gibraltar.
From my experience playing drum kit and using
drum hardware and stuff, and also, when I bought this stand I tried a few stands and
had a look around, Gibraltar hardware is generally really good and this was the strongest, heaviest,
sturdiest stand I could find. So when I bought this, I got it from a music
shop here in Melbourne, I think it was about $400, but if you live in the US – one good
thing about living in the US, perhaps the only good thing about living in the US – is,
these stands sell on Amazon for, I think, about $130, and you can get them shipped to
you free. I’ve included a link to where these stands
are on Amazon in the notes for the episode, and there should be something hovering about
on the screen as well. Full internet scam disclosure, if you so click
on the links, they’re affiliate links, so if you buy one from Amazon using that link
I get a couple of bucks, I think, like, $2 or something. So, I’d always recommend buying from your
local music shop, if you have one.
Also, gives you a chance to actually try out
the stand in person. But if you are going to buy it on Amazon,
support me! So for those of you not in the US, Amazon
won’t ship you this stand, so – I think just because it’s too heavy – so I looked
up a few other options, to give you more options… So first option is, you can buy just the top
part of this stand, so you can see… Just this part of the stand. And this part of the stand is kind of the
important, interesting part – the bottom part, this is just the bottom of any old stand
really. You can get just the top part on Amazon for,
I think it’s $80, and then you could just go to a music store and get them to sell you
the bottom of any old music stand that fits. Anything with the same diameter of the stand,
if you take it in there and plug it in, they’ll find something that fits. It also gives you an options to get something
lighter if you want.
Like, the bottom part of this stand is actually
the really heavy bit. So if you’r planning to travel with your
stand, especially if you’re flying on planes, being able to get a lighter bottom half actually
can be a useful thing. So, even if you are in the US, that might
be road worth taking, just because, yeah flying especially, the weight can really add up. The other alternative, especially if you like
the idea of a lighter stand, this same company, Gibraltar, also makes a light version of the
stand. So, this is called the heavy duty stand, I
think the other one’s called ‘light duty’ stand, or some other person named Judy. And it’s got a slightly different design,
and it’s about 3.5 Kg lighter, or 7 pounds, I worked out, if you’re in America, and
I think the lighter stand is about $100 on Amazon. So, it’s a bit cheaper as well as being
lighter, so that might be a good option for you, even if you’re in the US, again.
So if it sounds good to you to have a cheaper
or a lighter stand, I would recommend that one. I tried a bunch of different stands, like,
I chose the heavy one because it suited what I needed, but it’s about 10Kg, or maybe
more I think, so, if you’re going to travel at all with your drum, or even if you’re
going to just be carrying to and from your car, or on public transport, something like
that, yeah, maybe the lighter stand’s the way to go. So that’s djembe stands. In the meantime, before you’ve got a djembe
stand, if you want play standing up – and I’m sure you’ve seen it if you’ve looked
at videos – you can also just use a piece of material to make a strap around your drum
and kind of harness it to yourself.
You can make, sort of, pre-made harnesses,
with padding and stuff – I’ve never really tried them, but you’re welcome to try them
out. What I was going to show you today was how,
just, you know, one way to make a strap attach to your drum so you can play standing up. And there are multiple ways of doing this,
this is just one way I’m going to show you. And I’m not quite sure how I’m going to
go filming this, so, let’s see how we go, step by step… First, you need a piece of material to use
as a strap – on this drum I’ve already attached a strap, but, that’s what I’ve
got.
It’s a couple of inches thick – I’d
recommend getting, the thicker the better, 4 inches or so would be good, like a seatbelt
width. The thicker the strap is, it just means it
won’t cut into your shoulders as much. If you get a thin strap it’ll actually hurt
you and cut into you, which is generally not good. Places to try and get a strap – I think
I got this strap from just, like, a sewing shop. So if you’ve got somewhere that sells material
and things like that, they’ll probably be able to help you out. And, in terms of length, a general rule is
you want as long as twice your height. So, pretty much, if you get a 4 meter strap,
or a 13 foot, strap, that should work for pretty much anyone. Yeah, or twice your arm span, that’s the
same thing.
So the first step is, to thread your strap
– so your strap should be just a big long piece of material, this one’s already looped
in, so I’m just going to have to pretend… if I twist this around. So, you just loop it through the strings,
the vertical strings, the tightening strings of your drum. I hope you can see that. Loop it through, and generally you want to
loop it through the vertical, through a couple of the vertical ropes, and you want to do
it so the – you should have a line down your drum, you probably have a line down your
drum – that line’s the goat’s spine, that sacrificed itself for your musical enjoyment.
And, as a general rule, you want the spine
to be going down the drum, like, if you’re playing from here, the line should be pointing
away from you. And the reason for that is, the spine’s
the thickest part of the goat skin, and if you’re hands are playing on either side
of it, they’re playing on similarly thick parts of the skin, whereas if you’re playing
here, or here, the thickness of the skin might vary. But if that sort of doesn’t make sense,
or sounds like noises, it also just looks better if the line’s going straight, so
do that. OK, so you’ve threaded the strap through
the strings, and pulled it through, and then what you want to do is tie it.
So, I’ve already tied this one – if you
want a knots lesson, I’m sure there’s a channel for you on YouTube, this one isn’t
it – I’ve already tied this one and I don’t even know how… So, good luck with knotting it. But you just want to knot it together so you
have a loop. And the loop is just the strap going in a
loop, and it threads between the vertical ropes on your drum. Now, this next bit, it’s easiest if you
put the drum on the ground, so I’m going to put the drum on the ground and then move
the camera around, and then, move the camera around, and then, see if I can show you how
to do it… OK, so I’ve changed the camera around – what
I’m going to try and do, maybe the audio won’t be great for this, but we’ll see
how it goes.
So, if you’ve got the drum on the floor,
and you’ve got your strap looped through it like this. First thing you want to do is loop the strap
over the drum, so it kind of rests on the bottom bit. So I’ll just show you what I mean. So, this bit comes over here, and then comes
underneath the drum. So, all I’ve done, and you could do this
with the drum standing up. So if the drum’s standing up, what you’re
doing is, the loop comes through on this side, and I’m looping it over the other side. So, I’m passing the loop over, around that
side of the drum, and then kind of catching it, and then putting it back over. So now it’s on the ground. And once it’s on the ground – so it should
look sort of something like that, where you have, can you see that? Yes you can. So, you have the loop going through the strap
on your drum, and then you sort of have two handles here on the side. And now the first step you want to do is bring
your two hands together, so the handles are together, like that.
OK? Like that. And then, if you sort of cross them under
each other like that, you’ll see a little hole appear here. And then, as you stretch that apart – so
I’m holding this together and stretching it apart – you’ll see a triangle forms. So, that triangle is where you put your head. So what I’m going to do now is try and show
you with my hand, so you’re head comes in through here. If that makes any sense. So it looks like this, it should look like
that, see how I’ve got a triangle in the middle? In here. This is the triangle. That’s where my head goes. So now I’m going to zoom out a bit and show
you putting the drum on.
So my head goes through there, and my arms
go through these two side holes. Let’s see if that makes any sense. Hello. OK. So, I’ve got the drum in front of me, I’ve
crossed my strap over, I’ve got my triangle there, I’m going to put my head through
the triangle, like this… Head through the triangle, and lift it up. So, that’s my head through the triangle,
and you see, I’ve got these two bits on the side, that’s where my arms go. Through there. And then, I’m standing up with my drum… There you go. So, if you’re drum’s too high or too low,
what you need to do is just either give it more length, or less length. So if it’s too low – it’ll probably
be too low if you start with 4 meters – just knot some more of the strap up, and do the
same thing. Keep trying it until you get it, roughly there. This is probably a little bit high for me. Something like that. I’m going to put this off now.
So, I hope that worked. I don’t know how good the sound’s going
to be on this episode either, but, apologies if it’s not great. It might be a bit buzzy or something, but
I’m sure you’ll be alright. So you can use that strap technique to, connect
yourself to your drum, both physically and spiritually. It was a bit tricky to work out how to express
it in a video, especially with the kind of limited setup I’m using, but hopefully that
made sense. If you have any questions, or if anything
didn’t make sense, please just get in touch with me and let me know, and I’ll try and
help. So that’s it for this week – djembe stands
and straps. How exciting! See you next week! Thanks for watching the African Drumming Online
Blergh. If you have any feedback, suggestions, or
requests for future Blergh topics, please send me an email at jacob@africandrummingonline.com. If you’re not already an African Drumming
Online member, you can join up, free, to get access to all our drumming videos at africandrummingonline.com.
Thanks very much..