Bembe Wheel coordination

Here are some generic snare drum and bass drum coordination/performance patterns for use with the bell patterns in the Bembe Wheel. Each one of those patterns deserves at least one individually-tailored “page o' coordination”, but these will get you started:

Play each exercise individually along with every bell pattern in the Bembe Wheel, then combine bass drum and snare drum patterns with the bell patterns. Actually, that's no small assignment. If you're having any trouble reading the 12/8, note that the hihat part keeps a steady dotted-quarter note pulse throughout every exercise.

UPDATE: The author of the Bembé Wheel idea is Gary Harding, a percussionist, scholar, and teacher from Washington state. For more background, visit his site, .

Working up even a simple independent line vs. a complex bell pattern is challenging, but often there will be just one beat per measure that is actually difficult to coordinate. You'll probably have to break each measure down a bit, just adding one or two beats of the coordination part to the bell part at a time. Look for places where the hands play in unison, or where the combination can be converted to a sticking— adding the 'B' (for Both hands) to your sticking repertoire is helpful:

That's the fifth snare drum pattern from this page combined with the well-known “short” bell pattern from the BW page. The sticking ignores the hihat part, obviously.

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African bell pattern and its inversions

What we have here is the familiar 12/8 or 6/8 bell pattern (here called “short”; in the US it's commonly called “Afro-Cuban”, or Naningo, or Bembé), run through several common inversions, each starting on a different note of the pattern. Users call this the Bembe wheel (or Bembe Wheels, or the Wheels of Bembe). It's not my original thing, but it has been kicked around the web enough that I'm not sure who to credit for it, other than the Ewe people of Ghana.

UPDATE: The author of this methodology is Gary Harding, a percussionist, scholar, and teacher from Washington state. There is further information on his site, which you can regard as authoritative— if there's any conflict with anything I say about this, go with Gary's info.

You can find it easily in “tab” form, but here it is for people who read music:

The patterns called “long” and especially  “short” will be most familiar. I always thought I was pretty sophisticated, African-influenced cat for occasionally using the long pattern, but as you can see there's quite a bit more to it than that.

Here's an article comparing the inversions of the bell pattern with the melodic modes in European music, which you could say are formed in a similar way. Use with caution— there is no actual connection I am aware of between the two things in practice or in history. I guess the conclusion we are meant to draw is that humans apply similar logic to music across cultures and media. But it wouldn't be a bad practice to think of the inversions as rhythmic modes, each with its own special color. And it may be that that is what is done; I'm a simple jazz drummer, and this concept is as new to me as it is to many of you.

Coming up we'll look at a few ways of developing this on the drum set.

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