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Summary: Learn how to play a flam on tambourine in order to produce the best sound and melody in this free video series that will have you mastering this percussive instrument in no time.
Views: 1,037 | Tags: play, instruments, percussion, musiclessons, tambourines
About the Expert
Aaron Bland Aaron Bland is a performer, recording artist, and educator
dedicated to spreading the art and spirit of music to everyone that it touches. Interested in... read more
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Questions & AnswersHi, I'm Aaron Bland on behalf of Expert Village and I want to demonstrate a technique I kind of stumbled across. A way to strike the tambourine. Now if you get creative, you could probably come up with a lot of different ways of hitting the tambourine. Try a cotton ball, try a sledgehammer. I bet you'll get a whole variety of different tones with different things. One of my favorite ways to strike the tambourine is using my thumb because I can use my wrist, turning in this motion for leverage. And when I hit it with my thumb, I don't need an extra mallet, I don't need a stick, it's kind of hands-free, and you get a cool tone out of the membrane or the head of the tambourine. Here's that thumb technique. Versus playing it orchestrally. You can hear a lot more drum in it. Now, I think I accidentally stumbled across this technique by being overly aggressive with a little thumb spin, you know, trying to stroke the tambourine like this. And, what I ended up doing was, I dragged my pinkie across the head before my thumb hit, so that there were actually two hits that are very close together. So, it's much like a flam, like a rudimental flam, two notes played very tightly, flam, versus, da, one single hit. And this is kind of the idea. Here's with that pinkie in it, I'll do it kind of slow motion. Then up to speed. And because you need a little bit of some velocity or some intensity, this works out really good for accents or notes that you really want to stand out from all of the notes that you're playing on the tambourine. Check it out. Try it out. See what works for you. Get creative.
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