Here’s an update to Clave Samba Independence Part 3. I’ve been working through the original, Part 3, and I found that I would break the page down into two bar exercises that I’d repeat, and then start stringing them together. The original page looked too dense to me so I came up with 3.1, which […]

The mission: play clave freely with one’s right hand, play samba with your feet, and play anything you wish with your left hand. So far, in Parts 1 and 2, we’ve explored playing common figures against the above patterns and tried out some musical examples. You can check out those two steps here: “Clave Samba […]

Last time, in “Clave Samba Independence Part 1,” we worked on some exercises to develop facility within the Clave Samba framework. The basis of that framework? The cymbal hand plays the clave rhythm and the bass drum and hi hat foot play the samba pattern. The point of “Part One” was to free up the […]

What about combining samba and clave? Well, I’m giving it a go, because I think it might sound really unique, so here is the first worksheet I’ve been using to develop basic independence. My initial thoughts? It is going to be very cool when I have some real freedom to play independently with my left […]