The History of Maracas

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Part of the video series: How to Play the Maracas

Playing Maracas in a Straight or...

Playing Maracas in Accent Beats

Playing the 2/3 Polyrhythm on Ma...

Playing Two Maracas in One Hand

Techniques for Playing Maracas

Tips for Maraca Rhythms

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Summary: How to understand the history of the maracas; get professional tips and advice from an expert on playing traditional Mexican musical instruments in this free music lesson video.

Views: 2,022 | Tags: construction, make, history, beats, mexican, percussion, rhythms, maracas, pulses

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About the Expert
Contact: aaronbland.com

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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Video Transcript

The History of Maracas

Hi I?m Aaron Bland on behalf of Expert Village and I?m going to talk to you a little about the history and construction of maracas. This is a Brazilian instrument actually comes from the word Maraca from the Tupi tribe in south western Brazil. Traditionally these were made of dried calabash, or goard, or coconut shells and filled with dried beans or seeds and pretty much put on a stick that?s what pretty much your maraca is a shaker on stick its a rattle. Baby's first instrument right here. Now most of these today are made of plastic just for there durability and inside they got plastic pellets or plastic kind of cylindrical shaped things. I?ve opened up a couple of these and its really a total mystery depending on what the manufacturer puts in it. I wouldn?t recommend trying it. Unless your that curious and want to buy another set of maracas. But I?ve got these cool plastic ones and they totally do the trick a lot of times one would be a little higher in pitch than the other either because there tuned that way or because no two coconuts were made exactly the same way. But either way, hear this one's got a little bit of a higher pitch to it just for some distinction. I?ve also got a smaller set of maracas that I?m going to demonstrate later as well. Again a higher pitch than the bigger sounding maracas or the bigger pitch sounding maracas.