welcome to world drum club i'm kalani your host
and teacher in this video i'm going to show you how to play a basic tumbau or what we would call
an ostinato if we want to be fancy about it basically just a word for groove or pattern
it's the kind of thing you do when you just want to support other players play along
with some other instruments in an ensemble and just kind of create a basic rhythm for
singing or dancing or whatever you want to all do so let's get to it i've got one of
my favorite drums here if you saw the other video in the 6 8 meter you know this is the valgey
super toomba oh my god it's beautiful uh american oak handmade on the sunset valgey factory
back in the 70s i got in 1980 ish early 80s and it's never been on a gig never been out
of the house it's huge it's bigger than me all right so you can look up valgey if you want
to check out more about that that's just another tidbit of information what i'm going to do is hold
the drum i'm going to tip it a little because i like that i like that base this drum is huge
it's low it's just nice warm so we're going to go with an easy version just like i did on the 6 8
video if you haven't watched that one go check it out we're going to start with the easy alternating
hand pattern and we're going to learn how to play a basic tombow so this is something that you
could do if you're a beginner if you're a music teacher you could teach this to your beginning
drumming students use it as an ostinato use it as just a way to sit down and play with other
people in an easy way easy for you easy for them all right so everybody's happy what we're going
to do is i'm playing with the metronome here 90 95 beats a minute and i've got a half note or
a half not a half no an eighth note half a beat so this is my main beat and then i'm
just putting on the subdivided beat or the eighth note just to kind of mark it
mark the time and we're going to be playing this kind of thing so we're going to
actually be dividing the beat into 16th notes so the first thing i would invite you to do is to tap along in a sixteenth note like one e
and a two e end up right left right left that get your little motor going i'm gonna
put on some 16th notes just so you can hear one e and a two e and the
three e and the coriander and then let's start once you've got that
let's start to bring out some accents right all right something like that let's try
that honey i'm gonna take the sixteenths out so those are sort of like bass tones but notice i'm mute i'm kind of playing
in a muted fashion i'm not playing not playing all open conga is our subtle
instrument we have a lot of different sounds that we make on the congress so you can go
kind of full on muted where you're really on the drum uh you could go anywhere from there to
you know a little more open but it's basically a pretty muted subtle sound just marking time
now we're going to introduce the open tone on the end of that one e and a two and a three and
a four and a one and a two and three and a four end that's it just to open tone it depends how
you're counting it if you're counting one and uh one two three one and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four or one e and a one e and a two
e and a three and a four e and however you wanna count it is fine however you break it up but you
you've got the uh the rhythm there in your ear now play along if you like two three
hey so you want to be feeling now once you got that let's make
it a little more interesting and de-emphasize the second beat
one a two let's bring out the uh one uh so instead of one a two
we're going to just play one ah one e two and so we've got three main beats here
the downbeat which is going to be i would say secondary and we've got the uh uh on
the left hand a bass tone and then the and on the open and those are the two
notes that we really want to emphasize i'm still alternating my hands there's nothing
tricky about this we're just alternating so don't lose that little motor but i'm just going to bring out the
one again uh to and all right let's go and hear what that sounds like do
your best to follow along here we go if you want you can put in a little double open all right from there you're adding accents kind
of playing around uh and doing that all right that i think is pretty groovy if you can get to that
point now notice as a finer point and this would be for you players that are want to get a little
more into the genre into the field all the 16th notes or the eighth notes however you're counting
them they're not evenly spaced there is a little check there's a little swing to it that also
another topic for another day the best way i think you can grasp that and get this micro
timing or what we call the groove or the feel is by listening and playing along to a
lot of listening to and playing along with a lot of music a lot of traditional music recorded
by professional percussion groups musicians in that genre so if you want to get that out
for cuban feel brazilian feel west african feel you got to listen listen listen listen play
with uh some of those players if you can take some lessons from those players who are experts
and represent that genre but one thing you can do right now is to get some of the music get it
however you want to get it down hopefully buy it and then listen and play along with it all right
so that's that's another component and that's what we call the feel or the groove that is micro
timing right now we're really just focusing on the macro timing the the big timing all right so
one more time and uh go ahead and you know you can improvise uh this pattern and then of course
if you get to play with a friend hopefully or in a group you can improvise on top of the
pattern you can hold this down play the tumbao for someone else and they can play a complementary
rhythm and or solo improvise on top of it but this when we play this pattern we really want
to provide a foundation for other players we want to hold it down get that groove going and
just let it lay in there and enjoy it enjoy the feel of the music it's not about being fancy
it's about being friendly here's my tombow all right i'm kalani this is world drum club like and subscribe hit the bell share this
video if you're a music educator post it you know go ahead and post it on your your facebook
groups or whatever your blog your vlog your log this information is for all of us all right
it's not we're not keeping it secret here so go ahead and share it if you'd like to
connect with me more go to patreon.com kalani you can become a patron of the
channel and get more over there whatever you do go make some great music
play for some people get some people dancing all right i'll see you guys next
time thanks for joining me you
