Greetings!

Today, we’re going to revisit our Bass Technique video, which covers how to play the djembe bass sound – you can find this video, along with the other technique videos, in the Technique > Djembe Technique section of African Drumming Online:
https://africandrummingonline.com/technique/djembe-technique/

We thought it would be a good idea to develop a blog series where we take some of our most popular free videos, and distill the info into text form as best we can. Different people learn in different ways, so we hope this helps some of you!

Not yet a member? You can sign up free to get access to this video, here:
https://africandrummingonline.com/

This video isn’t too complicated or long, and the sound it probably the simplest, so hopefully this post will be clear!

Before getting started playing the bass, it’s good to make sure you’re holding the drum correctly, and sitting up straight.

The way to hold the drum is gently clasped between your knees, with the head tilted slightly away from you so the hole at the bottom of the drum is tilted up off the ground a bit – this helps the sound come out. To hear what I mean, try hitting the drum when it’s flat on the ground, then try hitting it while tilted – it sounds much better tilted!

If you’re having trouble holding the drum while concentrating on your technique, don’t stress – it won’t hurt if you leave it flat for now, and you can work on tilting it later.

A good video which goes through good drum posture and positioning is this one from Tara Tucker, who runs Learn Djembe Online – her walk through posture and how to hold the drum here is super helpful:

Once you’re sitting correctly, and the drum’s steady, playing a bass involves hitting the palm of your hand into the middle of the drum to make a low pitched sound – I generally recommend students aim for the ‘paddy’ bit of their palm, like this:

While that’s the bit to aim for, it’s important that your whole palm hits the drum, and that you don’t tense your hand – keep your fingers relaxed, and they should hit the drum too. Don’t bend your fingers back!

Now you know where to hit, and with what, start with your hand above the drum:

Drop straight down so your palm hits the middle of the drum (fingers, relaxed, still touch the drum):

Then bring your hand up again, ready to play another sound:

Here’s the video section showing how the whole hit should look and sound:

That’s it for the hit – you should now be able to play a bass sound on your drum!

An extra point in the video to note is about the importance of learning how to sing rhythms – there are a lots of different ways to do this, but for a bass sound, I generally use a sound like ‘goong’ or ‘doing’ – here’s what I mean:

Finally, at the end of the video is a tip for thinking a bit ahead about your technique – while I’m not going to go into it here, if you’re already able to play basses, I recommend watching the last bit of the video to see another way of controlling your hand as it comes back from the sound – this will make it easier to move between basses and your other sounds, as you get more advanced.

Hope that helps!