Tasodrums
Latin music = Independence
You can practice independence in lots of different ways, but especially after the first months and years and the usual exercises, there are two clear kings (queens?) of independence practice: Latin music and Jazz. Many of the world's best-known drummers name one or both of these styles as the ones that opened the most doors for them, meaning specifically how much these skills have pushed their playing forward.
In this post we focus on the first of the two. You get three topics and exercises to get you started with Latin rhythms: Dembow, Samba and Bossa Nova.
But first, let's have a little taste. And don't worry if this style of music doesn't grab you right now. Mastering these exercises will help your drumming whatever your genre is.
Just look at how seamlessly this drummer's limbs work together and how well they control the rhythms!
1. Dembow - the "kebab beat"
Let's start with an easier groove as a "warm-up" to get you in the mood. The Dembow groove comes from Jamaican dancehall and is the basic rhythm of reggaeton (in the Dominican Republic it has also grown into its own dembow music style). For some years now it's been common in pop music too, especially in "summer hits". This article gives some background on the Dembow groove. Below there's also a great video on the kebab beat from Rumpukoulu Basari (a Finnish drum school). It's worth watching!
Let's start with the basic rhythm, which is made up of bass drum and snare strokes.
Now add the hi-hat on eighth notes. There are many variations of this groove, but here's the first one. In the second example I've also added the rest of the hi-hat beats and the hi-hat openings.
2. Samba
Samba comes from Brazil. Its roots, though, go all the way back to Africa, and the style traveled to the streets of Rio de Janeiro with enslaved Africans brought there. Like the Dembow groove we just went through, Samba comes in many forms with lots of variations. In this post we'll learn the essential Samba foot ostinato, an independence exercise and one of the Samba grooves.
1. Foot ostinato
Ostinato means a rhythm or melody that repeats through a certain number of bars or a section. In Samba the ostinato is played with the bass drum and the hi-hat pedal. First practice just this at a few different tempos.
2. Singles, doubles and paradiddles
Once you have the foot pattern down, keep going by adding different stickings on top. In this exercise they're added as sixteenth notes, but use quarter or eighth notes depending on your skills.
- Single Stroke Roll
- Double Stroke Roll
- Paradiddle
R L R L R L R L
R R L L R R L L
R L R R L R L L
This is a very traditional independence x samba exercise. You can see part of it in this video.
3. Samba groove
Then on to the last exercise in the Samba section. 3 steps to a samba groove!
View this post on Instagram@isacjamba→
Here's the same groove written out as notation too. Not exactly easy, I'm already starting to sweat!
3. Bossa nova
Last in this post is one of Samba's best-known subgenres, Bossa nova (roughly "new style" in English), which grew out of Samba in the 1950s. One of the biggest reasons for Bossa nova's worldwide popularity was the song "The Girl From Ipanema" (originally Garota de Ipanema, 1962), whose English version became a hit in 1964.
Like with Samba, there are lots of grooves and variations. Below is a video for learning a common Bossa nova groove. Many versions don't use the hi-hat pedal, so you might as well learn both versions. More variations.
So that's a few Latin rhythms in a nutshell, with example exercises to get you started.
Keep in mind that just the "feel" in these styles and grooves is so different from what we're used to here in Finland that it takes time to internalize the rhythms. Add the 4-limb coordination you need on top of that, and I believe you can easily sink quite a few practice sessions (months, years) into these if you want your playing to start sounding natural.
I hope this post also showed you that even small steps get you going. Just mastering the samba ostinato, say with some stickings you already know, will move you forward toward smoother playing.
If you want to dig deeper, check out the video above for a collection of 13 different Latin grooves, and look for tutorial videos on YouTube!