In this teaser, which presents the singer Thiago Lunar and his trio, I brought a kit and a different approach to be able to cover an assortment of Brazilian styles and rhythms, mainly from the northeast, played on this unique guitar, accordion and drums trio.
I have a passion for Brazilian rhythms and styles, and these are my main focus when it comes to me developing my instrument. A lot of styles like samba, maracatu, baião and ijexá were developed around multiple percussion instruments, not the drum set. In other words: none of them need a drum set to be played.
So, if one plays one of these rhythms on the drum set, he or she is actually translating or reducing multiple instruments’ rhythms to the available sounds of the drum set. That said, I wonder whynot bring some of these instruments into the drum kit?
Marcio Bahia (I’m a huge fan!) was also a drummer who inspired me to consider these adds and blends. Little by little, I kept adding percussion instruments to the kit and learning how to play them individually. That is a very important part of the process.
For instance, just adding a tamborim to the drum kit will not necessarily widen your “percussive mind.” The tamborim is definitely a new timbre you would have available but how you approach it is what makes the difference.
To develop the percussive approach you should immerse yourself in the tamborim world: watch a tamborim player, do tamborim lessons, play tamborim only in a “roda de samba” or “roda de choro”, play tamborim in an “escola de samba”(I didn’t make that one happen yet!), and so on. After that you would be able to start using the tamborim in the kit from a percussionist’s approach.
The same thing works for instruments one wouldn’t add to the kit. I play a lot of Forró genre which the zabumba is one of the main percussion instruments, but I don’t have a zabumba in my kit. But I did zabumba lessons, watched zabumba players live, I did Forró gigs playing the zabumba and I got to talk with Forró dancers. In short: experience Forró as much as you can to be able to play the rhythms in accordance to the language of the genre.
That’s about it! Adding percussion to the drums is fun and makes your musicality richer. The possibilities are endless. Follow me on my social media and hit me up if you want know more about this, I can talk all day.
Let's music!
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