Closing
Congratulations on finishing Level 1: a recap of what you’ve learnt, how long to practise, and why the basics must be solid first.
If you’ve made it this far, CONGRATULATIONS!
It’s no easy feat to play an ornamented version of some of the rhythms we just looked at. It’s even harder to switch between them and maintain control and speed while doing so. However, it’s not impossible and is definitely in your grasp. Keep trying, and you’ll get there.
Let’s just recap what we’ve covered:
- What the darbuka is
- How to hold the darbuka and play basic notes
- How to read drumming tabs
- How to turn these basic notes into a rhythm (the Heavy Sa’idi)
- How to ornament this basic rhythm with the Ka stroke
- How to use a metronome to practice
- How to switch between rhythms
This has given us a solid foundation for us to work from and build upon. To all of the students I teach, I almost always choose these topics as the first three months or so of lessons, because they’re just so important. If advanced rhythms or ornamentative techniques are introduced too early, the student can get overwhelmed and end up sacrificing a lot of their basic technique.
For this reason, I would recommend that you spend a good amount of time practising these rhythms. If practising, say, an hour a week, I would expect it to take around 2–3 months to get the last ornamented rhythm switch at 150 BPM. If practising more regularly, you could probably do it in a month or so, but I would be amazed if someone managed to get to that stage in such a short space of time (unless they’ve had previous musical experience).
I’d like to close this section with a story. The great Russian weightlifters of old times, who could lift enormous weights and manipulate them in such complicated manoeuvres, used to have a policy whenever a student would come to learn advanced weightlifting from them. They would teach them a manoeuvre and then tell them to go away and practice that manoeuvre until they could lift a ridiculously high weight. Only when the student could lift this enormously high weight with perfect technique, could they return to the teacher and receive further instruction. That’s when the training begins, when the basics are solid. So, practice hard, get this bit sorted and then move on to Level 2 of the Darbuka Mastery Programme to unlock even greater highs in the Arabic style of darbuka playing.
Alongside the lessons, the guide covers the instrument itself: what makes a good darbuka, where to buy one, and how to tune and care for it.