Geoff Johns is a professional drummer and percussionist who lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado. An instructor at the Naropa Institute, Geoff has Studied and taught with many master drummers from Latin America, Africa, and Bali. He is the leader of the Bakongo! Drum ensemble.
The rhythms on this tape come from musical traditions which do not use notation. Instruction is directly from teacher to student. This is still the most effective way to learn, but tapes and notating percussion that can be used for African, Caribbean, Mid-Eastern, Indonesian, and other styles of traditional percussion music. I have taught this system to hundreds students and made modifications based on their suggestions.
Right And Left Hands
The position of the notehead symbol above or below a line indicates which hand plays that stroke. Notes below a line are played with your secondary hand. If your are left handed, notes below a line are played with your left; notes above, with your right.
This system avoids the awkward use of the “R” and “L” to indicate stroking, and can be read with equal ease by left handed players.
In this system notehead symbols do not indicate duration of sound. The notehead symbols indicate the type of stroke to play on the instrument.
I use the standard system of indicating time signature, measures, beats and rests, accents, etc. However, it is important and type of stroke. For example: A slap is a short, staccato sound, but it could be written as a sixteenth note or quarter note depending on when the next stroke occurs.
|5||Slow Atsiagbekor (Ghana)||4:59|
|11||Slow Atsiagbekor (Ghana)||6:11|