I wish I knew how to transfer this whole interesting thread to my page . . . I dont, so I am copying it here . . . Rebecca Conant Yesterday at 12:10am · Portland, OR · Edited · UPDATE: As an example of even a stupid question can lead to an interesting and helpful discussion, see some of the comments by some notable drumming instructors below.] Embarassing question of the night: In Arabic drumming-- for the right handed player, is Tek with the Right/Dominant/Dum hand or the Left/NonDominant hand? After immersing myself in Persian rhythms in a class using Ton, Bak, Rast or Chap--AND flipping between being right-handed and left handed--my brain is looking at me rather bemusedly when I ask it for Tek and Ka. UnlikeUnlike · You, Dave Goodman and 2 others like this. Alii M. Bek tek is left hand... Yesterday at 12:13am · Like · 1 Alii M. Bek as I remember it... Yesterday at 12:13am · Like · 1 Rebecca Conant Hey, hijacking my own thread: I was looking at website selling historical costuming pattern that had a belly dance category and guess whose name came up, Alii M. Bek? Yesterday at 12:15am · Like · 1 Andrea Trautwein Tek is right and ka is the left hand.....or you can take it as you wish! Yesterday at 12:16am · Edited · Like · 1 Alii M. Bek not how I learned it...waaaaayyyy back when, dum is right, tek left, ka right. Yesterday at 12:19am · Like Alii M. Bek selling? hmmmm.... wonder how that happened! Yesterday at 12:19am · Like Jerry Fugate Tek is right, ka is left. Trust me. Yesterday at 3:49am · Like · 4 Dave Goodman The way Ive heard it, tek is with your dominant hand (the dum hand) and ka is with the top, non-dominant hand, but both are called tek in the Middle East. Yesterday at 6:57am · Like · 3 Patricia Beardsley Perrin Oh, THAT should clear it up for you Rebecca! Yesterday at 10:37am · Like Alii M. Bek I took lessons from the Arabic drummer at the Lebanon restaurant in Seattle, back in the early 80s. He taught it that way, dum right, tek left, ka right. Maybe he was left handed. Yesterday at 10:47am · Like Jerry Fugate Ive had lessons from Lebanese, Syrian & Egyptians (as well as some pretty good Americans) and there are variations, but most use the nomenclature described by Dave, dominant hand is dum and tek, non-dominant is ka. And most Arabs dont use ka unless they are teaching Americans. Yesterday at 10:56am · Like · 1 Rebecca Conant Well, no wonder Im confused. And I thought it as because my brain was just muddling with the semi-ambidextrous migrating between two languages things. Yesterday at 11:12am · Like · 2 Susan Rudnicki Ill agree with Jerry. Ka is non-Arab terminology. Souhail uses tek for R and L. Generally the R/L is resolved by watching your teacher, thats why youve got one! This is the way I teach as well. However, when I notate rhythms I use ka (L) to avoid co...See More Yesterday at 12:53pm · Like · 2 Dave Goodman Who was the drummer you learned from, Alii? If it was from George Sadak in Seattle, one of the few doumbek teachers there... hes left handed. Yesterday at 1:33pm · Like Dror Sinai both are tek sound, but I heard many call Ka for left (if youre right handed). Personally,while teaching, I call it La- as its easier to remember-LA for Left... Yesterday at 3:32pm · Like Faisal Zedan Dror, we missed you at camp. if I can say the left hand sound is KA. When we recite the sound we say: DUM TEK KA. When you have more control over your left hand, you will start hearing a KA sound, and at a lower speed you can recite DUM DUM ka ka TEK DUM ka ka TEK Baladi. Now some times at a higher speed when its hard to pronounce KA, we resort to TA as in DUM DUM ta ta TEK DUM ta ta TEK ta ta Beldi. Yesterday at 4:10pm · Like · 1 Faisal Zedan Susan, Arabic Derbakki has many, many sounds you can produce. Arabic drumming is codified also but we have an academic problem that among the many Arab countries we were not able to unify our drumming language. Unlike Iran, its one country with much unified music terminology. SO to say that about Arabic drumming is really invalid and I can happily through a whole demonstration around those two topics. Yesterday at 4:14pm · Like · 2 Susan Rudnicki Thanks Faisal! Yes, I know that Arabic derbakki has many sounds, especially when you are playing but Ive never seen notation for them. I thought that the different sounds were used in improvisation rather than specific compositions. In our Ensemble I just write down the basic rhythm patterns and teach the embellishments in person. Id love to see/hear your demonstration!! 23 hrs · Like Faisal Zedan Thank you Susan, You know, the notation system is new to traditional Arabic drumming. Plus the basic beats are made out of the three main sounds; DUM TEK and KA. and then using the alternate sounds of SUK and TUQ to replace the TEK. Then it gets harder...See More 23 hrs · Like · 1 Rebecca Conant Thank you everyone! As mentioned above-- my problem was a combination of senioritis on top of flipping between being left- and right-handed. Some days my brain can handle one, the other or even both, and other days it just looks at the drum and goes, HUH? Yes, Rowan teaches both traditional (though usually saying dominant and non-dominant hand rather than left or right) as well as symetrical. This has been great for me. Personally I prefer an aural system which uses onomopoeic names rather than left or right--then it is simply a matter of knowing where and how to address the drum rather than which hand to use. (To me, Where tells me Which without having to think about it.) Im seeing various teachers using various notation systems--or not. For the tombak class Im taking (only using framedrum), the instructor set up the printed exercises using standard western notation for the time signature and note value (quarter, eighth, rests, etc) with a symbol above to indicate pitch (Tom, Bak, Rast) and technique (open, roll, snap, etc). This is helpful and way better than what standard Arabic drumming notation has been in the US (at least in the NW) where it is simply D T K and you have to sort out the timing yourself. I didnt take Antoine Lamams class at camp, but saw one of his work sheets afterwards. Looks like he uses an even more advanced Western notation system where the D, T, K are placed on different lines to indicate the sounds (which I hear as pitch). That saves looking for extra notation, enabling one to read it faster when practicing. (Presumably by the time one is at a performance level, youre not reading the rhythm while playing.) 10 mins · Edited · Like Rebecca Conant It also occurs to me that since Tek and Ka theoretically are supposed to sound the same, it shouldnt matter which hand one uses. However, in reality, since most people do have a non-dominant hand--which usually is also held in a weaker position for stroking the drum (at least in frame drum), they do have different sounds. 15 mins · Like Rowan Storm May I humbly present (***drum roll ***) the Fourth Stroke, added to the three basic strokes of all Middle Eastern hand drumming . . . the non-dominant hand bass stroke, whose name came to me under mysterious circumstances > > > I should have been looking for a feminine name for the non-dominant hand bass stroke, but was searching merely for a phonetic match for the name DUM, dominant hand bass stroke. Lo and behold, the name GYN came to me, and only then did I realize that GYN is the root of the word woman in Greek language, which I speak fluently. GIFT from GODDESS. 1 min · Like Rowan Storm More comments coming soon ~ interesting thread!
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 23:25:07 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015