Brendan Bache

Cuban music can be broadly categorised into two groups: rumba and son. As the names suggest, rumba styles share the rumba clave in common, whereas son styles make use of the less syncopated son clave. Rumba is not one single style and the term is used to refer to three main subgenres (guaguancó, columbia, and yambú) all of which are Cuban musical styles of direct African descent. While these three subgenres are all classed as rumba, they are unique styles of music that must be approached as such. A similar parallel can be drawn with the term “pop,” which is … Read more

The caribbean island of Cuba is a nation with a rich musical heritage. This is largely due to the rich diversity of its people and the vast amounts of migration that characterise its history. The mixture of indigenous peoples, Spanish settlers, and the African slaves transported across the Atlantic have given Cuban music a unique voice, a voice that has in more recent times been exported the world over. While there are many different styles of Cuban music, the majority share one thing in common: clave. Clave is at once an instrument, a specific rhythm, and a rhythmic concept that … Read more

Bossa Nova (translated as “new wave” or “new trend”) is a style of music that became popular globally during the 1960s. While it was popular in Brazil to a lesser extent in the 50s, it wasn’t until Stan Getz and João Gilberto collaborated for their groundbreaking album Getz/Gilberto in 1963 that the style gained international recognition. At its core, bossa nova is a fusion of Brazilian samba and American jazz music. It takes the rhythmic ideas present in samba while adopting much of the harmonic and melodic vocabulary as well as the song forms of jazz music. Our previous article explored … Read more

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Most musicians, myself included, spend a large portion of their youth practicing and playing music. We devote a lot of time and effort learning things that at the time we think are incredibly useful. But the problem is that as children or teenagers, we don’t really know which skills will be most useful in the real world of the gigging musician. What’s more, our tastes change and we might not be interested in the same music in our adult years as we were in our youth. This article will explore my personal experience with learning the … Read more

In the last article, we discussed some of the reasons that many traditional folkloric musical styles don’t translate seamlessly when applying Western notation. One example I gave was Brazilian samba, which has a very unique rhythmic sway that cannot be accurately notated in the traditional Western sense. This article will look more closely at this rhythmic sway and explore some methods for learning this style of music as authentically as possible, without actually travelling to Brazil. Of course, there is no true substitute for experiencing a style of music in the environment in which it originally developed. Despite its many … Read more

At a glance… 1. Drum anatomy 2. The physics of drum tuning 3. The drum tuning process 4. Fine tuning 5. Dampening 6. Tunings for different styles Guitarists have to tune their strings to certain notes in order to play chords, saxophonists have to tune their instruments so the correct note sounds when their sax is blown, but drums are completely different. Drums don’t have a “correct” tuning because drummers don’t usually play melodies or harmonies. In fact, it could be argued that the term “in tune” or “out of tune” can’t really be applied to the drum set. This … Read more