How to Use Individual Fingers to Play the Djembe Drum

Video Transcript

Hello there my name is Aaron Moon and I’m here today on behalf of expertvillage.com. I’m going to be showing you a few different ways to use your individual fingers on the Djembe as opposed to using your palm or your entire hand to produce the desired sound. When you play the Djembe with your hands you’re getting one single hit each time you hit the drum you’re getting one sound produced, like so. Now although all my fingers are hitting the drum it’s just producing one sound, now you can use your fingers separately to produce usually it’s going to be four different sounds if you want to use your thumb that can be five. But it’s just you know we’ve all done it when we’ve been nervous, maybe you’re taking a test and you just do this with your fingers you know it’s kind of a nervous tick. Now you’re going to be applying the same thing to the hand drum, the same nervous tick although I wouldn’t expect you to be nervous because you’re playing the drums. So it’s going to sound something like…you can use this in any area of the drumhead, you can use it in the middle, on the side, you can go from using four to using three it kinds of sounds like a horse galloping, the four and right there I was using it to produce a muffle sound when my fingers hit they stayed on the drumhead and that produces kind of a muffle sound. As I take them off while I do this it’s going to produce an open sound the tone is going to have the ability to resonate. It’s a simple way to add a little something extra a little texture to whatever you’re doing and whatever context you’re doing it. So I hope that helps out it’s just a simple technique you can use to add to your arsenal of hand drum technique, so thanks for visiting and please come back and visit Expert Village sometime.

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