Here’s a basic method for doing a generic, Afro-Cuban-derived Latin feel using the book Syncopation. We’ll be taking rhythmic patterns out of Reed, and using them as our bell pattern, playing them with the right […]
Category: Afro-Cuban
Groove o’ the day: Mickey Roker Latin
Fantastic, I hadn’t planned it this way, but here’s yet another thing you have to buy— a Latin groove by Mickey Roker, on the tune Woody’n You, on McCoy Tyner’s album Live At Newport: Roker plays […]
Groove o’ the day: Elvin Afro 6
All I can say is, we’re all going to be masters of the 6/8 Afro groove by the time we’re finished here. That’s fine. It’s a lot of fun to play, to listen to, and […]
Page o’ coordination: Afro 6/8 — a hard one
This is something I wasn’t going to post until I had made decent headway with it; which I have, at the cost of some misery. If you’ve been keeping up with current events, the Afro […]
Locking with clave — 01
This is derived from an idea discussed by David Peñalosa in his book Rumba Quinto. In rumba, an Afro-Cuban genre, the quinto is the highest-pitched conga drum; the quinto player is the lead player, improvising […]
Son clave basic coordination
Here’s a companion piece to our page of Rumba clave coordination, this time using Son clave. The format is basically same: the first patterns are logical, and the later ones build a few common Afro-Cuban […]
Straight 8ths within Afro 6/8
I keep feeling like I have to justify doing so much with the Afro 6/8. I’m just working with it a lot, and here we are nothing if not personal and idiosyncratic. I also feel […]
Rumba clave basic coordination — hands only
Per the title, here we have some basic coordination with rumba clave, for hands only. The first set are just logical patterns based on clave— notes in unison with it, before it, after it, or […]
Afro 6/8: a Stone-based method
First, sorry if you want to read about stuff other than this Afro 6/8 thing— you can always do a fresh root-through of our voluminous archives— I happen to be working with this a lot, […]
More Guaguancó
OK, my new record is done, my taxes are done, and it’s time to get back to business as usual. Here I’ve found here an interesting version of Guaguanco, a very popular traditional Afro-Cuban rumba […]
Page o’ coordination: the middle of the triplet
[UPDATE: download link is working now!] This is the first of two rather punishing entries into this Afro 6 series of stuff; this is actually preparation for the next one, which is really hard. Here […]
Groove o’ the day: Tamba Trio — Negro
Posting is going to be a little spotty for the next few days; I’m recording my new album at the beginning of next week, and until then I’ll be preoccupied with stuff related to that. […]