Basic rhythms

On these pages you will find an extensive set of rhythms for the djembe. Roughly 30 4/4 rhythms and 30 6/8 rhythms. They were all taken from the book by Mamady Keita, A Life for the Djembe. This is one of the standard books, unfortunately without solo patterns, but it gives the doundoun parts, which form the main "melody" of a rhythm, and the djembe parts.

I'm obviously not publishing the full book here, just one djembe accompaniment part of each rhythm.
If you use these practice pages, consider buying Mamady's book too and support one of the great masters of djembe! The extra information, doundoun parts, full accompaniment and so on, are important to have!

Learning goals

These rhtyhms are meant to be used as a warming up exercise. You can also think of them as the equivalent to the classical "etudes" that exist for other instruments. In the course of this exercise you will also learn a variety of things:

• Reading notation and playing music directly from paper
• Memorising the parts and their names
• Developing a feel for "how long" 4 patterns are
• Improvising variations on patterns
• Improvising an ending to a pattern and playing a call
• Seamlessly switching from one pattern to another
• Mixing patterns to create longer and more interesting patterns

How to practice

Make it a habit to start each practice session with a warming up on the djembe. Make sure you know at least 2 to 4 of these rhythms already, so if you need to puzzle out the notation, do that first. Some rhythms are long, some are short. For the purpose of this exercise, you play each rhythm 4 times 4 bars, 16 bars in total. Just double short rhythms, or halve very long rhythms. This usually corresponds to 4 dance patterns. If I refer to "times" or "patterns", I mean the length of a dance pattern. Play a call, play the first rhythm 4 times, play a call, play the second rhythm 4 times, and so forth.

You should vary how often you play a rhythm: play a rhythm 4 times and then give a call, and another time do a rhythm 3 times and give a call. Depending on the dance, sometimes the dancer needs 5 patterns (4 rhythm patterns plus a call) and at other times the dancer needs 4 patterns so you should play 3 rhythm patterns plus a call. If the doundouns have a long pattern, the call should always be synchronised to the end of the doundoun pattern, so all parts and the call end at the same time!

More information on how to create a breather and give a call in Solo dance phrases

Practice tips

• Start slowly so you can play continuously and switch seamlessly to the next rhythm.
• Take special notice to form your tones and slaps properly.
• At the end of the fourth pattern, create a "breather", a pause, so the dancers will hear your call coming. During your call, they will usually continue with the current pattern but mentally prepare for the next one. And so will you!
• Play the same pattern again but introduce small variations, fills, rolls or triplets.
• Play the same pattern again but leave notes out, creating more space.
• Combine patterns to create longer and more interesting sequences.
• Make an effort to practice reading the notation whilst you play, so you learn to play on sight (even if it goes slowly) and you memorise the rhythm names as you go along.
• Don't forget to play from memory too - you should be able to do both! So play a set of 10 rhythms and rehearse their names from memory.
• When your muscles are becoming supple, increase the speed, taking care that you can still keep up the seamless switching over to the next pattern, and your tone and slap stay clearly defined.
• Vary the order in which you play these rhythms, from begin to end, from end to begin, starting halfway, doing the odd ones first and so forth.

If you practice, then practice means that you take a small subsection that you cannot play properly, and practice that over and over again until you can. So if a switch from rhythm A to B doesn't work right yet, do not practice the whole rhythm A four times and then try the switch. Instead, do the last bar of rhythm A only, and then the first bar of rhythm B. Or if in a rhythm a left-hand tone sounds woolly instead of clear, then practice that tone!

If you practice such a small section, then stay in the beat, keep tapping your feet, wait for the correct amount of bars until you play the practice part again. This is especially useful in groups - it avoids having to count down every time, it avoids sloppy starts which make it impossible to practice properly. If you practice any combination of 2 bars, tap the next 2 bars to make it four. It gives you a rest, you can mentally prepare for the next start, etc. Plus, it would allow you to practice whilst the rest plays something else - who knows what you may discover!

Group practice tips

If you do the warming up as a group, there are all sorts of games you can think up:

• "Pass the solo" round the circle: Everyone plays a simple beat, one person plays a call, then one rhythm (4 patterns long), then a call, which is played together with the next person. Then the next person plays one rhythm (4 patterns long) and ends with a call together with the 3rd person, and then goes back to playing the single beat. And so on.
• The first person plays 1 rhythm once only, the next person completes the other 3 patterns, plays a call, plays another rhythm once only, and the next person copies that rhythm 3 times, etc.
• Two people play a call together. The first person then plays one rhythm once only, the next person answers with another rhythm. They "talk" either with one rhythm each, or with different rhyms, for 4 patterns each. Then give a combined call, and go back to the beat.
• More complicated patterns of "talk" can be devised. If you keep eye contact and maybe a few facial expressions you can indicate if the other person should answer, or "talk" at the same time, or do the combined call.
• Pay special attention to starting and stopping on time and at the correct speed!

Special points of attention for groups

• Focus on playing exactly in time. A single note should sound as a single note, not as "brrrr".
• As soon as you play exactly in time, you will notice a certain restfulness and openness in the music. All of a sudden it feels like the music swings, it is laid back and you have room to speed up if you want to.
• If the music sounds out of sync, 9 out of 10 you need to slow down, and/or make the pause between notes longer.
• For each "pulse" or note in the music, there is a small time slot during which that note can be played. You can play just in the middle of that time slot, or slightly slow, or slightly fast. These are very very small changes! See if you can make these small changes. Notice how the atmosphere of the rhythm changes from "laid back" or even "dragging" to "straight" to "brisk" to "hurried".
• In a group, you don't need to play at top volume all the time. Give other people "room" to play a solo, both by having room between notes, and also by having "room" in the volume. Playing a clear tone and slap at low volume is the true sign of a master!