i've been dancing Since January of 2004. A friend wanted to take classes but didn't want to go by herself. Eventually she found that the classes didn't fit in her schedule too well but I fell in love with belly dance and in 2006. I decided I wanted to blog about it.
This has been a great fall for workshops. I am still absolutely smitten with and now I absolutely cannot *wait* for Michael Beach to come back and teach another drumming workshop. I learned more in this two hour workshop than I did in months of half-assedly noodling around with my drum.
He's one of the members of and he's a seriously awesome drummer - so he had a whole lot to teach us. But the hugest thing is that he's a funny and engaging teacher. The same workshop could have been a dull bore or a horribly intimidating experience if it had been taught by someone without a sense of humor. He made even those of us with minimal drumming experience feel at ease.
The workshop was held on Saturday. November 3rd sponsored by. It was held in one of the studios at. The workshop got off to a late start since Michael was flying in that morning but went for the full two hours and was absolutely packed with information.
He fits the content of his workshops to the skills of the people taking them and since we were mostly dancers or family of dancers we were mostly very familiar with the rhythms but had little knowledge about how to actually play our drums as musical instruments. So he started with the nuts and bolts of drums.
He started us out with a breakdown of the different kinds of drums that are used in the middle east what they are used for how to chose one etc. I have read a lot about Arabic drumming but found information like a little bit here a little bit there very disjointedly. Getting it all in one place really helped me get a better understanding of the drum as a musical instrument.
He taught us how to make four tones on the drum: doum tek ca and teca. Including where to place our hands on the drum what parts of the hand to strike with. It was a fairly intimate class only about 20 people so he had a chance to watch each of us make each of the tones and guide us as to how to do them correctly. Near the end of the workshop we talked him into showing us how to do rolls. Of course knowing *how* to do them doesn't mean we could actually do them. That was fun.
For the rhythms part of the workshop he provided us with a handout breaking down common rhythms. Most of us were familiar with the rhythms but his handout broke down which hand should being doing what etc. A couple of times he got the class going with a rhythm then played a more embellished version on top of our playing. It was *fun*. Though we were laughing that as dancers it was very hard to sit still and play our drums instead of getting up to dance.
Bring a a long belt or a sash to tie your drum to your waist. Michael suggested it in the class and anything to make the drum more stable seems like it would make playing easier. He shows in the workshop how to do it.
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://www.shimmyblog.org/2007/11/workshop-review.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
