Building Speed on the Djembe Drum

Part of the Video Series How to Play the Djembe Drum

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Building speed on the djembe drum is an essential element of the instrument; learn how to do it with tips from our expert djembe drummer in this free djembe video music lesson.

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Tags: african american, djembe, drums, instruments, music
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Posted by Magnum on Sunday, 30 December, 2007 at 7:14 PM

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Sensational stuff. I just started taking Djembe lessons and this has been so helpful. I'll be watching and rewatching

Video Transcript

Building Speed on the Djembe Drum
Welcome back. Well, so now you know how to play quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes, triples and sixes or sixtuplets. How you get there, how you build it up. It is hard. You have to play it for a longtime. If you just jump into and trying to play sixes or sixtuplets, you get lost and you get off. So again if you play everyday just for 15 minutes you are going to find yourself getting a lot better and a lot more capable with this stuff. So one of the easy things to do to learn how to go fast is to build it up from the basic quarter, eight and sixteenth pattern. So that you start playing quarter notes one, two, three, four… and then you go to the eighth note…, now it sounds like I got fast…, but I did a lot doing stuff like this note, now I have got sixteenth note …, now I have got the 16th note… one, two, three, four… one, two, three, four… one, two, three, four… one, two, three, four… So if you want to build up and build down within sub-diving those beats. It helps you learn how to get all this together. One, two, three, four… one, two, three, four and…. So that’s all I did. I started with my quarter notes one, two, three, four then I went into my eighths. One, two, three, four and then I went into my sixteenth one, two, three, four and then I am going to back down. So one, two, three, four… one, two, three, four…

About the Expert

Expert: Mr. Swearingen is an Austin Sociology professor by day, who has been playing the djembe since 1985. Read More