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"The Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. After all, we have already corrupted the world with power and greed....which hasn't gotten us anywhere - now's the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants."

--Babatunde Olatunji

Drumming Music Notation - Hand Drum Lessons with Easy Rhythm Instruction for African Drumming Music, Latin Drumming and other Hand Drum Rhythms.

free music education resources and drumming tips for beginning or advanced drummers...or anyone just wanting to groove with world beat and alternative music - including Roots Jam: hand drum rhythms & lesson book

How to read the notation (bottom of page)

Listen to rhythms with mp3 files or RealAudio

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This Week's Lesson:

Old meets New: Generate Random Rhythms!

Recently I met with an old friend who found out about my interest in drumming for the first time. He knew virtually nothing about it, except that he supposed it was our oldest art. When we got to talking about the actual rhythms involved in traditional African drumming, I mentioned that threes and fours predominate. Still, he wondered if there might be an "infinite" number of possible combinations of beats. Checking out the math later, I came up with a finite number for a sixteen beat pattern: 4,294,967. This assumes three possible kinds of note--bass, tone, slap--for each beat, plus the choice of a rest (-). Thus four possibilities, raised to the sixteenth power. Oh, but the end result is really one less, or 4,294, 966: because the one possibilty that doesn't count, has a rest for all sixteen beats (- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -).

Enough esoterica. Now the computer can do in seconds what it took humans 50,000 years or more to refine. We already have "found" poetry, a pastiche of grocery list, newspaper blowing in the street, TV news and snippet from tonight's book. Now let's find some new rhythms, using what comes our way...

--Nowick Gray

Right hand lead -- or go to: Left hand lead

2/4:

_______ _______
| | | | | | | |
             

4/4:

_______ _______ _______ _______
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
                             

3/8:

_____ _____
| | | | | |
         

6/8:

_____ _____ _____ _____
| | | | | | | | | | | |
                     

Order ROOTS JAM: Collected Rhythms for Hand Drum & Percussion

Random Quotes

The rhythm notation . . .

The following notation can be easier for drummers and percussionists to use, compared to the usual notes and lines of conventional sheet music. Because drum notes aren't sustained but struck once, it makes sense to show the timing for these beats as single and equal. Rests are measured by the same, single-beat units.

All the rhythms at this site, and in the book Roots Jam, use the following notation for drum beats--primarily those played on the west African djembe.

D: Dun ("Doon") = bass beat with left hand
G: Gun ("Goon") = bass beat with right hand

d: do ("doe") = rim beat with left hand (tip half of fingers)
g: go = rim beat with right hand


T: Ta = slap beat with left hand: sharp glancing stroke
P: Pa = slap beat with right hand

- = space

About left and right hand notes:

Though the majority of the rhythms displayed here (and in the book Roots Jam 1) will show leading with the left hand, the handing can be reversed (and is for most rhythms in Roots Jam 2). In fact it makes sense to play both ways equally well, or to alternate for balance.

If you're just starting out and want to play a pattern starting with D/d/T with a dominant right hand, you can treat D's, d's and T's as right-hand beats, and G's, g's and P's as left-hand beats.

Additional Notes:

X = low note on bass drum or two-tone bell or percussion
x = any note on monotone percussion, or high note on two-tone percussion. [Another way to show hi/lo notes is hi on first line, lo on second; or by H and L]
k = bell note when played with bass drum (jun-jun)
x = underlined (or bold) note means stressed or accented.
(d) = parenthesis means optional note(s) or way to play a given note(s)
d__g__d: = triplet, with three notes played within 2, 4 or 8 beat measure.
d_g: = two notes played as if two ends of a triplet (d_-_g)

Notation Example:

_______ _______ _______ _______
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
D - d g - g d g D - D - d g d g

Click for sound: MP3 or RealAudio - Track1-2

The notation form above, with the bars over the notes to aid in counting, is used in the book Roots Jam (vol. 1). It's easy to use either by handwriting or typing.

A variation, the so-called "box notation" method, is easier to follow visually, and is used in my second rhythm collection, Roots Jam 2. Notice also that the example below switches handing to lead with the "G":

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