Tag: Accompaniment
-
Is It My Turn to Solo Yet?
Originally published August 2004 by Jeremy Chevrier on his Djembe Essays Blog. My teacher always emphasizes the value of good accompaniment. Accompaniment is number one. If a djembe player cannot play really good accompaniment solo is not possible. All good soloists have exceptionally good sounding accompaniments. Theoretically one should be able to recognize a Master djembe […]
-
4 Tips To Round Out Your Djembe Solos
4 Tips For Better Djembe Solos
-
Tips For Playing Active Accompaniment
We introduced the idea of Active Accompaniment a while back, in this post. Here are some simple tips to get you started playing Active Accompaniment quickly. Start Playing Active Accompaniment A Word Of Caution:
-
Intro To Active Accompaniment
“Active Accompaniment” describes a style of advanced dynamic accompaniment playing we hear in Roots Djembe music. It has to do with the presence and priorities of the accompanist. A player who plays Active Accompaniment aims to actively contribute to creating both better feeling and better sound in the music. This is in contrast to the […]
-
The 3 Ways To Play Djembe Accompaniment
There are three ways to play djembe accompaniment: 1. Half-Assed-Waiting-To-Solo Half-Assed accompaniment playing has become popular in big cities. It’s a favored style among hotshot “soloists” the world over. After all, you’ll never get the girl by playing good accompaniment, so why waste your effort, right? Playing accompaniment this way is disrespectful to dancers and […]
-
Quickly Improve Your Accompaniment
Broadly speaking, there are two areas of djembe playing that we can always improve on so that the music just keeps getting better and better all the time: Accompaniment Solo. We discuss solo in this other post. Right now, let’s talk about accompaniment. There is a simple mental adjustment you can make to immediately improve your accompaniment, […]
-
How To Anchor Yourself To The Beat
Once you understand where the beat is, then you can move on to apply proper swing to your playing. Did you know there are a couple of musical elements you can easily look to when you want to find and anchor yourself to the beat? Doing this will make it possible to play with swing later. […]