Best books: Rhythms and Techniques for Latin Timbales

UPDATE: I just realized we've already shared another excellent free-online book by Rendon, Timbale Solo Transcriptions. Get that too, if you haven't.

Rhythms and Techniques for Latin Timbales by Victor Rendon is sort of the anti-Uribe book. You'll recall from my review that Ed Uribe's Latin book is huge, intimidating, and very demanding; Rendon's book is very approachable, concise bordering on terse, and is learnable in a reasonable amount of time. And timbales are the Latin percussion instrument most similar to the drum set, so all of this can book can be played on the drums by just choosing equivalent sounds, and adding a basic bass drum part.

It's mostly a style guide, showing some ways of playing each of the major Latin styles, including Mozambique, Guaguanco, 6/8 styles, Songo, and Cha Cha— the styles we've been most interested in on the blog. He discusses lead-ins— the abanico— and gives some contexts for practicing it, and fills. There are also longer sections on developing bell patterns, and left hand independence in 2/2 and in 6/8, each of which are several pages long. There are also several pages looking at the playing of Changuito, the timbalero for Los Van Van and inventor of the Songo rhythm.

A nice thing is that this is a free book— at least it's a pdf found multiple places on the internet, that is semi-ethical to download, since the book appears to be out of print and is not available to purchase. You can compensate Rendon for his work by buying his newer book, The Art of Playing Timbales, which is available at the Amazon links below.

Transcription: Raymond "Monchito" Muñoz — Caminando

Here we have a Latin percussionist funking out a little bit on Caminando, a hip cha cha* recorded by Eddie Palmieri on his great album Vamonos Pa'l Monte. The drummer, Raymond “Monchito” Muñoz, brings very much a percussionist's sensibility to the drumset; almost the entire track is played on the hihat alone, with little variation, and with very sparing use of the bass drum and snare drum. The funky parts happen at the end of the first interlude, and on the outro.

There is little information about Muñoz online, and I had never heard of him before. From what I gather, he is a Puerto Rican percussionist active in New York and PR since the 60's, or earlier. Apparently he studied with Henry Adler. From his Facebook page, it appears that he was seriously ill recently.

It seens that Muñoz's primary instrument is timbales, and he plays the drumset with what I imagine to be a timbalero's touch— for whatever that observation is worth. He draws a variety of sounds out of the snare drum (and hihats, to a lesser degree), playing loosely and not very loud, blending volume of the drumset with the congas. You never get the feeling that he's playing into the drums, the way many funk drummers do. I would be tempted to approach this by just learning and playing each measure— or group of two measures— as a groove in its own right.

* — If you're better than me at IDing salsa styles, please let us know in the comments.

Get the pdf

Audio after the break:

Snare studies for developing some Afro-Cuban bell patterns

There is so much heavy coordination involved in learning the Afro-Cuban styles that it's easy to neglect simply getting the bell patterns right— which is a lot like playing jazz without spending any time working on your ride pattern. So what I've done here is make some snare drum exercises which will help work on one aspect of that: conditioning the hands to consistently hit the right accents. In the left hand column there are some stock salsa bell patterns, and on the right are the matching exercises:

That looks like a lot of heavy mixed stickings and flams, but the difficult part of each of them uses this one flam pattern:

It may help to see the same thing written in 6/8— count each of these out loud when you work them up:

After you can play those warmups, learn the patterns for the Chacha, the Songo, and the Abakua, and then the rest of the patterns. It may be helpful to exaggerate the dynamics at first, being especially careful not to accent the flammed notes. Don't fixate on attaining absolute, mechanistic, precision; the end result we're after is a nice, grooving, bell pattern, with a little bit of that special Afro-Cuban swing, if possible— playing and listening to the music will get you to the correct interpretation.

Get the pdf

Groove o' the day: Chico Hamilton — Conquistadores

Here's a little 60's funky LA cha cha (or guajira? Or something— it's not a standard style) from the relatively unsung drummer/bandleader Chico Hamilton. This is Conquistadores, from his 1965 album El Chico:

The right hand plays a guiro part on the cymbal. I've notated it as a rhythm, but as you can hear, it's basically a buzz. Hamilton holds the groove throughout, freeing him up to shout at the band, and generally create a vibe.

Audio after the break:

DBMITW: Eddie Palmieri

While we're on the Salsa music, here's a Mozambique entitled Comparsa De Los Locos, by Eddie Palmieri, from his Vamonos Pal' Monte album from 1971. Nicky Marrero plays drums, along with several percussionists.




What the heck, let's do another one— there's a modern cha cha  from the same great record after the break:

Groove o' the day: Copeland's cha cha

Keith, not Stewart. Here's a groove I've gotten some use out of recently while subbing with Pepe & The Bottle Blondes, a Portland salsa/swing group, for my man Ken Ollis. It's a unique form of cha cha pulled from Keith Copeland's Creative Coordination for the Performing Drummer, which has proven to be really effective. Here the cowbell is simulated by the left hand, and the toms are played by the right, which is unusual:

Here's a nice two-measure version:

Experiment with other RH tom moves for variety or for fills. The cha cha is a medium tempo dance groove, so you don't need to get real fancy with it, or work for any kind of speed. Don't play the cymbal or the bass drum too loud.

If you're not familiar with the feel, there's a recorded example after the break:

Drum chart: Along Comes Mary by Cal Tjader

Pillaging the archives while I'm working on tour/book-related junk, I turned up another Cal Tjader drum chart, written by me a couple of years ago. I'll try to do more of these in the future- it's a nice alternative to complete transcriptions. The groove is a bright chacha all the way through.

Get pdf | get El Sonido Nuevo by Cal Tjader | get Along Comes Mary

YouTube audio after the break: