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This month features part 2 of Chris's Tambourine tips......

The campaign against lazy instruments! (part 2)

Let’s have a look at the tambourine again. All the work you did in the first part was with your right hand (or left, if you’re left handed… would you mind if I do it all right handed again? I hoped not, thank you. You’re so generous, you lefties).
This time, we’ll make sure that your left hand at least makes some token contribution to the sound you’re making.

Again, hold the tambourine in your left hand. Turn it over and have a look. You’re probably holding it with the fingers of your left hand touching the skin. If not, do that.

Now try not to move your hand, but take the fingers off the skin and hold it just by the edge.

Turn the tambourine over again, and see what difference there is in the sound of the tambourine when you tap it a few centimetres from the edge. Can you hear the difference? If not, experiment with where you hit the tambourine and how much pressure you put on with your left hand fingers.

We’re going to use three right hand strokes in this exercise. The first is the slap, which you did last time. Just slap the tambourine with your right hand, spread out over the surface of the tambourine. Your left hand fingers are touching the skin, which we mark with a ‘+’ sign over the note (‘+’ for ‘adding’ the fingers).

Next, a tap stroke. Just tap the tambourine on the edge with the fingers of the right hand. Again, the fingers of the left hand are touching.

Finally, a stroke that’s called ‘dum’. It’s meant to be the same sort of sound as the ‘dum’ you did in the last part, but this time you play it with the side of the thumb, getting the most resonant sound you can. This time, the fingers of the left hand are off the skin – marked with an ‘o’ on the music (‘o’ for ‘off’).

Now to put them together to make a simple rhythm that’s very characteristic of Samba, a dance from Brazil.

Tap – Slap – Tap – Dum

Simple, huh? Yet deceptively groovy in the right context. If you find this straightforward, try adding a tap with the heel of the right hand in between the tap and the slap, and straight after the slap. That will just appear as ‘-ah’ in the rhythm.

Tap-ah Slap-ah Tap – Dum

That’s it for now – have fun!

Don’t let that instrument get lazy!