Using clave to practice

[Raymond]

Franc,

Keeping the clave with your foot is OK but personally, I think you need to internalize it. I tend to use my foot sometimes but is to count quarter notes or "spaces".

What you strive for is to naturally feel it and you will fall into it every time.

Exposure and experince will give you that natural sense of clave. Keep it up!

Saludos!

[caballoballo]

What an interesting stream of different opinions. As I was reading the posts I was marking the clave while listening to an old clasic Guajira from Arsenio (dile a Catalina que te compre un guallo). I think Playing and dancing are 2 different things attach together by the clave. Understanding both have really make me better on both sides, dancing and playing. During soloing I keep my timing using the Piano montuno.

Raymond is correct,we tend not to accept anything else than the classic sound but,me,working as a dj, I do try to look for that sound in the new recordings not matter where they come from,check Ricardo Lembo salsa from Africa and you will notice what I mean,chk Lucas Vanmerjwick from Holland or the Orq La Luz from japan.

May be we the old timers have develope some kind of prejudice against the romantic type salsa,better known as monga because the big recording companies imposed the whole bunch of pretty boys impostors without any talent during the 90s which I personnaly hate that music.

[burke]

Was thinking about this a while back - I wanted to make sure my instinct for clave matched/lined up with my tumbao.

Wondered if there was was such a thing as a clave metrenome - searched the net and found two models both 40/50 ish bucks.

A toy that I think would be very useful for me and one I plan to order (once winter is over and the heat bills payed off!!!)

Darrell

[bongo]

Was thinking about this a while back - I wanted to make sure my instinct for clave matched/lined up with my tumbao.

Wondered if there was was such a thing as a clave metrenome - searched the net and found two models both 40/50 ish bucks.

A toy that I think would be very useful for me and one I plan to order (once winter is over and the heat bills payed off!!!)

Darrell

What's the link?

Does it play son or rumba?

[bongo]

Franc,

Keeping the clave with your foot is OK but personally, I think you need to internalize it. I tend to use my foot sometimes but is to count quarter notes or "spaces".

What you strive for is to naturally feel it and you will fall into it every time.

Exposure and experince will give you that natural sense of clave. Keep it up!

Saludos!

For me, you got to internalize clave well before you can play it with a foot, especially if you simultaneously play a conga rhythm with your hands.

I break it down slow at first, count, and watch for exact clave beat placement within the hand rhythm.

Once the the foot part is there, it really makes the rhythm swing, and so does the pretty dancer's hips.

[burke]

Don't know the link - I just "googled" clave and metrenome and checked out two that showed up. As I recall they both had a variety of claves (4/4, 6/8 in son/rumba - starting both on 3 or 2 side - maybe even samba?)

I'll have another look this weekend and see if I can find the links.

[Raymond]

I have learned that people tend to grasp things differently depending on what it works for them. Personally, a metronome is OK but I think you need to practice if your instinct and best way is to play, play, play and be checking your sense of it.

Lots of songs have changes of claves or clave feels. Changes of clave feels, or at least that is what I call them, is when although the clave is the same 3/2 or 2/3, the feel changes from regular clave to clave rumba. (Check the song Timbalero from Willie Colon...is a great song for that).

Using to tools to help us out like metronome, etc, is OK but you have to be careful that you don't start doing this mechanically. If you start doing mechanically, you will not "react" or do things naturally and it will not sound right.

A good thing I've seen people doing is practice doing the clave with a record...yes..the two sticks...See how you keep it up. Concentrate on that and then later hit the congas.....That helps...believe me!

This is an interesting subject and I like to hear the experiences and ideas from people who have not learned this or are learning in a different way from how I learn it and that sometimes we, latinos, take for granted.

Saludos!

[Mano Teo]

I agree with Raymond that a machine may not be the best way to go if you want an authentic feel. I've felt the difference between playing along with a record or friends who are latin musicians, and using a clave track. The problem is that in Afro-centric musics, like authentic salsa, son and rumba, while the downbeat will line up with the machine, the other subdivisions fall between a straight "four" and a straight "six" feel, which gives the music that cool, slinky feel. Rumba Columbia would be an extreme example of that "Afro-swing", to coin a phrase.

If you want a detailed explanation, with visuals, audio and all, I recommend that you get Michael Spiro's excellent book. Otherwise, be aware of the difference, and spend more time playing with records than a machine.

[JohnnyConga]

Ok for me u either have time or you don't. I say that due to my teaching experiences...If you DON"T have "natural" time, it has to be developed....a metronome is just ONE way to do that...playing along with tunes is another way of developing your time, cause u have to keep up with the music as u play along. singing clave out loud to yourself while u play is another way....a foot bell....a click trak....'foot tapping'....and also get used to "counting" while playing also, a lot of cats today do not count, LAZY, BAGO!....playing is NEVER enough , just remember that......OKAAAAAAAAAAAY!.... "JC JOHNNY CONGA...

[davidpenalosa]

Mano Teo:
>>I agree with Raymond that a machine may not be the best way to go if you want an authentic feel. I've felt the difference between playing along with a record or friends who are latin musicians, and using a clave track. The problem is that in Afro-centric musics, like authentic salsa, son and rumba, while the downbeat will line up with the machine, the other subdivisions fall between a straight "four" and a straight "six" feel, which gives the music that cool, slinky feel.>>

Hi Mano Teo,
It’s true what you say about what constitutes a cool, slinky feel. However, I say that practicing with a drum machine at different tempos is excellent practice. A strong sense of beat and pulse is essential for playing clave-based music with rhythmic precision. The ability to “play in time” is the first step to playing with “afinque”, being “in the pocket” and “in the groove”. You will not be able to execute precise, intentional, slightly displaced (“cool, slinky”) strokes until you can first play those strokes in their regular (straight “grid”) position. The only possible shortcut I can imagine is if you consistently learn from musicians who play with a particular feel and through total emersion, you just hear and therefore play the music like that.

>>Rumba Columbia would be an extreme example of that "Afro-swing", to coin a phrase.>>

A lot of the swing in columbia is actually generated by straight polymeter (simultaneous triple and duple pulses), rather than stroke displacement. It depends who’s playing.

>>If you want a detailed explanation, with visuals, audio and all, I recommend that you get Michael Spiro's excellent book. Otherwise, be aware of the difference, and spend more time playing with records than a machine.>>

I don’t see it as an either-or situation. Playing with a drum machine will help you be precise. Playing with a cool and slinky feel requires a high degree of precision. Also, you can program displaced feels on drum machines too. Play with records, drum machines and of course with people.

Michael deserves credit for demonstrating in his book how the slight displacement of strokes generates a desired feel. However, I think you may be misunderstanding him if you think he’s saying don’t go for the straight (in-the-grid) feel first. I’ve heard that Mike practices every morning with a drum machine and he obviously can play with tremendous feel. He is a very precise musician. That’s why he’s a “first-call” musician, he comes in to lay down tracks over click tracks and sequencers. He also plays folkloric music with the requisite feel.
-David

[bongosnotbombs]

Yeah I agree with the drum machine! I got one programmed
3/2, 2/3 rhumba and brazillian clave variants on it, great great
practice, go as slow or fast as you want, use it for 30 minutes,
counting....then switch to a cd, and boom! you are on it!

......But! neither of these methods will make you a good player,
you have got to play with real live people that depend on you for rhythm and time, thats the only way....

Everything else is just practice.

[Mano Teo]

David,

Great post -- I agree with pretty much everything you said, including the fact that you can program the "correct" feel on a drum machine. However, I doubt those metronomes that they were talking about have the "correct" feel programmed into them or are programmable. Also, I DO practice with clave tracks and metronomes to get the subdivisions "straight". Perhaps I didn't explain myself well.

Playing "straight" at first may be the best way to go, but my teachers (Brazilians and Africans, I haven't had a bonafide hispanic teacher) have taught me from the start to play with the "feel" that we're talking about. So I guess I took your "shortcut". Maybe it is a disadvantage not to go "straight" first, since I actually have to remind myself to play "straight" now when I'm playing in a church music group with North Americans -- they didn't notice, but we had very different time feels until I changed.

The way I shift over is by changing the way I move my hands and arms, feeling as if they were dancing in the right style. My head and trunk move a little too with that "dancing" feel, but it's subtle. Does anybody else do the same?

[windhorse]

The way I shift over is by changing the way I move my hands and arms, feeling as if they were dancing in the right style. My head and trunk move a little too with that "dancing" feel, but it's subtle. Does anybody else do the same?

Absolutely! And I assume you're talking about playing Clave.. right?
I find that if I'm singing, except for one particular song, it holds me in just the right tempo, and it "locks" tighter. It's sometimes a real interesting dynamic where it's a struggle to play when someone's playing the palitos on the Guagua, when they have a different clave feel.

[caballoballo]

Sometimes the clave jumps from 2/3 to 3/2,you have to be very aware of that because if you don't then your be cruzao (off beat with the clave). Sometimes after the mambo on salsa music the clave jumps from 2/3 to 3/2 just because of a break or the way the singer soneo or coro start . Like somebody said,you will feel those changes. Playing the campana if the clave is 2/3 you start one way,if it is 3/2 you start the other way around..



Edited By caballoballo on 1176122887

[taikonoatama]

I came up with another way to visually represent rumba clave - see the pic below.

I chose the Los Munequitos track "Mi Arere" from "Rumba Caliente 88/77" because it starts with 2 complete measures of clave at the beginning and the first one is very clean, without any other instruments - just claves until the pickup before the one of the third measure. I put this track into a sound editor, zoomed in and selected/cut exactly one measure of clave (the first), took a screen shot, put the image into Photoshop, divided it into 16 evenly spaced partitions (representing the 16 quarter notes in a measure), and put in red lines at the very beginning of each clave hit.

The biggest thing that jumps out is that 4th hit of clave - that is some kinda funk there, is what that is. The strictly notated/written form would have that 4th red line lining up with the line after it, of course. You can also see a bit of push with the 2nd/bombo hit. Obviously the feel varies with whoever's playing (and the speed figures into it as well), but I think this gives a good representation of the concept and clearly shows just how you can't really write it down - it's all about the feel.



Edited By taikonoatama on 1176256590

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