janela

Ah, my percussion class last night was fantastic!! Such intense energy...my teacher Marcello danced around, flapping his arms around while slapping his feet on the ground, dancing coco. (Here's an example of the coco rhythm. I LOVE this group. They play samba de coco and are from Pernambuco).

And then Marcello got us to play and dance at the same time. HAHA. I could dance while I clanked two wooden blocks (I forget the instrument's name), but not while playing alfaia. We played some coco, samba reggae on the alfaias and then would stop to play - the same rhythm as the caixa (snare drum) - on the wooden part of our alfaias. Ah, it was soooo energizing! And we sounded the best I've heard us sound. While we played this way, others continued playing the smaller instruments. And we'd sing at this time too, so that it was easier to hear, as when we're playing the alfaia (bass drum) it's almost impossible to hear our voices. We tried lots of buildups (probably not the technical word) and fading and singing and dancing...mmmm...

We tried lots of different stuff. And this may be gibberish to many of you, though I will try to explain as best I can. I will look for a percussion glossary that I will add to the resources section of this blog, for easy reference.

P.S. We have a show next week and one the week after...YEAH!