Monday, February 13, 2023

EZ simultaneous clave exercises

Awhile back we noted that if you play a simple rhythm in an alternating sticking: 


And move one hand to a different sound:


...you are playing the Son Clave rhythm in the 3-2 and 2-3 orientations at the same time

I don't know what that means— as far as I know that never happens in actual music, unless something's going wrong. But it may suggest something about where the rhythm originally came from. On a student's first exposure to it, it seems rather arbitrary, so it's interesting to find a very simple rhythm and hand movement underlying it. Maybe grounding it in easy hand movements will help us non-Latin folk play it in a more natural way, helping make up for not acquiring it through culture— a little bit. 

So, it's worth playing around with it a little bit. Someone could spend maybe .5 to 2 hours total with the following: 



I've made a small effort to take those exercises into a Latin music direction, but none of this is meant to be performance vocabulary. Play it, then back to legit Latin studies... 

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