https://www.youtube.com/embed/RkXePbwyTsE
hello everyone in this video i would like to share with you how to tune our rope tuned traditional djembe okay now uh there's a few techniques in tuning uh our rope-tuned traditional djembe so uh different types of tuning uh strategy will be used for different type of drums and different types of situation okay if you're ready let's just jump right in first i want to show you some of the tools that i use usually before i show you the tools i also want to let you know that if in the event you don't have these tools you still can tune your djembe as well just that you will do it in a in a more difficult way in a more challenging way so it's not impossible if you don't have tools okay so let's look at here now first of all i have this we call this a djembe puller or djembe rope puller or a djembe puller bar all right they all refer to the same thing now usually you can get these from uh online shop selling djembe uh you probably can get it Amazon i'm not sure but online djembe shops like Rhythm Traders in the U.S.
Uh drumskulls.com um and Wula Drums as well so it looks something like this i will show you how to use it later part the video next is the clipper now these two items are to be used together very important okay i will show you and if you don't have these two items there's another item which is a more efficient item it's this new invention here by a close friend of mine from China and he owns a brand called Zebra Djembe this tool is basically a replacement of these two tools here okay and for this product it comes with this little animal looking thing okay it looks very cute but it's very useful i will show you later on and if all else fails if you don't have all these nice you know super solid tools that i just mentioned if you only have a dunun stick that will work as well okay but for this to work you need to pair this up with very strong hands very strong hands so now let's explore the first tuning technique otherwise also known as the Tying The Knot technique which is a very common way of tuning the djembe so what i have here is a traditionally made djembe from Guinea west africa now there are also other djembe coming from Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Gambia now if you have djembe from these region chances are they are what i would say well made and you can see that the way the rope is being weaved into the drum are evenly spaced out okay now this is important because when we start to apply the Knot Technique that means every knot that we apply it will contribute to a certain tension to the djembe skin so every knot that we're gonna apply basically is worth our effort for pulling the knot okay as you will see later now uh this djembe the skin is newly placed onto the drum so you see there are no knots okay every rope is evenly distributed so in case you're wondering okay this green color rope the whole thing you're seeing here is one long rope all right and this is the opening end okay meaning it started from here and goes all the way up and down round to the drum and it kind of ended up here okay so we're gonna find the other end of the rope okay which is the only other end of the rope because the other end of the rope is here if you can see okay it's here right and this is the other end of the rope now so while here we're gonna go back under this okay all right now make sure we pull all the way out first like this and put it tight we don't have any slacks here now we want to have this end come back here okay to go through the next two ropes all right so when i pull this okay this rope will go over this rope okay or in other words this rope here will go under this rope thereby forming a knot okay so as you're seeing now i'm pulling in my bare hands okay this is a situation where you don't have any tools all right now make sure okay leave all the slacks out first okay once you are in position then we pull a knot all right i'm gonna do it now see this is our first knot okay this is our first note okay uh some of you who are watching may be wondering but how do we know which two ropes to start off with right okay because once we start out with the wrong two ropes okay it's gonna um be uh be very troublesome later on so i'm gonna loosen this out so that you can see in the case where the last vertical rope is in position see see this last vertical rope is coming from the whole complete weaving of the drum the complete round and now this is the last vertical row in position all right and then we wanna come in to the next double rope okay when you look at the double rope okay we look on top here we want to have this double rope not these two because this would be the same two we don't want the same column or rather two ropes from the same column we want a two row from a different column so this two is the uh two ropes that are nearest to the last vertical placement okay now we do this right so we are aiming for this two ropes okay now again i'll demonstrate what i did earlier on turn back like this okay now make sure we don't want to turn we don't want to do this step like this immediately we want to pull off the slack first always pull off the slack first very important okay so now i'm gonna get the tag end of the rope okay you know i kept saying the other end the other end right now so technically we can pull the knot like this already see if i pull that all right but if i just pull from this point it's a little bit difficult so a more intelligent way is to go through prepare the next pair of vertical rope first okay remember we have to go underneath it prepare first so same thing pull up all the slack make sure you pull down okay do not pull like this do not put a knot like this in this way no always pull down all right so we wanna minimize the slack and that's it that's the first knot we have okay so once we have it we're gonna prepare the next knot by doing this okay so like i said we don't want to pull this immediately technically we can but we want to prepare the next pair first all right and then we're gonna pull again all right and make sure we pull hard so that we have it too not so as you have seen the first two knots i use my bare hands to pull the rope all right it's not impossible okay but your hands might hurt or you want an easier way out all right a tool that we can use is our dunun stick so what do i mean so let's say now i prepare the next knot now okay instead of using my bare hands which can be painful now i'm going to use a dunun stick how do we do that okay watch like this just all right okay we kind of pull our this rope around all right because the rope has friction we use a friction to stop the this rope from uh slipping away and there we have it we can hold on to the uh dunun stick as a uh strength puller but you see this is too much right i'm basically holding up my stick here so that's not practical so what can we do we want to do it lower that's it okay and now i can just pull like this yep much easier okay so i'm gonna do next knot again okay minimize slack prepare for the next now realize i'm usually using this technique instead of using the tag end to to go under so this djembe is nicely made so it's easy for tag end to go under but sometimes some ropes are so near to the shell that it's hard to squeeze in so we use this technique okay this technique to prepare the next column okay same thing minimize the slack i'm going to use my dunun stick again sometimes i'll go at least two rounds to prevent the rope slipping now i can apply strength using the dunun stick and pull so that's one way if you wanna don't wanna use your bare hand the other two that you can use is this uh so well sometimes we call it djembe puller as well um this is one made from uh the company called Zebra djembe you can find other similar type products in the online djembe shops as well in fact any kind of rope puller that has a groove okay in this tool here the groove here is to prevent the rope from slipping away so in this case i'm gonna just like this see it's not slipping away anymore so i actually can hold on to this uh tool which is easy for the hand to pull so it's not so painful for the hand because you're going to be doing so many knots at the end of the day you're going to have calluses if you don't have these tools all right so i'm going to prepare the next knot now and i'm going to be pulling the next knot with this uh this little tool here in position see it's not moving now okay and then just grabbing it and pull that's it all right so i will continue this way i'm using these two right and then at the end of it when i finish complete round i will show you uh what's the result of the tune djembe this is the djembe that has been tuned with the first technique which is tying a knot with two ropes flipping over one another this is the end result so now we're going to explore the second type of tuning technique for our rope-tuned djembe now before i show you that i just want to share with you that um from my experience if you have a djembe from West African countries like Guinea uh Burkina Faso Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast chances are those djembe are like the one that i showed in my first tuning technique demonstration okay where the vertical ropes are uh spaced apart uh enough that when you tie a knot it's gonna contribute tension on the djembe skin but in this case like for this djembe here the vertical ropes are very close to one another so the first technique of tuning the djembe is not going to work so this is the second technique now to start off with this is the remaining of the rope right we're going to use to do our second tuning technique in the first technique i mentioned we had to first identify the first two ropes right that's it in this technique same thing identify the first two rope okay we go under but this time round is not just two ropes but we go under three ropes all right also earlier i mentioned that we need to minimize the slack but for the sake of demonstration i'm gonna leave the slack there so you can see how the rope um runs through these three ropes okay so underneath all three ropes and then bring back the tag end again over the third rope and then underneath again back through the second half first like this okay and bring back the tag end over the first rope again underneath second row and on top finally of the third row okay see like this right yeah so what we are doing is basically flipping the third and the first rope over one another okay that's the second tuning technique i'm gonna minimize the slack now to do the actual flipping of the first and third rope okay that's it okay you see the first knot here okay you see the first knot here involves three ropes so the next step we're gonna prepare three rope as well okay it doesn't matter now whether the next three rope is part of the same column or different column basically the next three vertical ropes okay so again underneath three ropes sorry three vertical ropes i'm gonna pull off slack over the third one okay and then back up again over the first one over the first rope and then underneath the second rope and on top of the third rope all right and then i pull again all right so the second technique basically is to make sure that every knot has a certain amount of tension being applied onto the djembe skin also coming back to the tools we can use our bare hands we can use our wooden stick okay now i also want to show another tool i have here it's a very common tool that djembe players in djembe commonly use all over the world it's called the Clamcleat Power Grip Clamcleat Power Grip all right actually there're two version of it the first version is a smaller one where the width is about this long and this is the bigger version for bigger hands okay so i'm gonna prepare the next three vertical ropes again now i'm gonna use this to help me pull the slack right remember back over the third rope and all the way to the first rope for your slack very important over the first rope underneath second rope and on top of third rope same thing pull your slack first and then pull your knot see here okay nice groups of three what they grouped together okay so i'm gonna continue through the uh rest of the ropes okay one complete round and then later we're gonna check how to tuning this is a djembe that's being tuned with the second tuning technique where we have the rope go under three vertical ropes and have the first rope and the third rope flipped together this is the end result now we're going to explore the third type of tuning technique for rope-tuned djembe now the third tuning technique is to apply on djembe that's in this case as you can see not just the vertical ropes are quite close to one another but it is also very loose okay see it's so loose that whether you're gonna use the first tuning technique to apply knot or the second tuning technique where you do not with a three vertical rope that's not going to contribute any tension to the djembe skin okay so the third tuning technique will not be doing any not simply the strategy is to make sure we pull out or rather minimize all the slacks here okay so i mentioned earlier before for every rope-tuned djembe all this vertical rope that you see actually belongs to one long rope so in this case okay the starting point for this long rope starts from here and then down and up and down and up and down all the way through one complete round and to here okay so if you're gonna pull the slack okay this is a tedious job all right we have to start from the first column all right so you see i'm gonna the idea here is i'm gonna pull this slack okay have this slack pass over this slack to here and push the slack here so as we push the slack in each column we're going to be accumulating the slacks and until one whole big round that accumulated slack will contribute to this remaining rope and then thereafter we can start tying knot with the first technique or the second technique okay so in this case it's almost impossible to use bare hands to pull off the slack okay so we need special tools so the first type of tools i'm going to be using to pull off all the slacks from the djembe ropes is our djembe puller bar but this has to be used together with the clipper okay so first djembe puller bar you see this little thing here it's for us to hook up the slack okay hook up the slack so this is the first column all right so this is the first rope now see i'm gonna hook up here and then this part is for you to support all right on this part of the djembe okay put my both legs up and as i pull this slack okay i'm able to apply tension on the drum skin now but i have to make sure i can transfer this slack onto the subsequent column right so to hold the rope at this slack this way i use a clipper to clip it here okay so the slack won't return back to its original position okay so i'm gonna clip here okay it's not tight enough so i need to adjust okay so clipper in position if i clip it it's gonna stay there see now we can hold the slack here so we're gonna pull this slack out and transfer to the next column and on to here for our puller bar to pull again but that's the thing you see sometimes the rope has so much friction it's hard to transfer the slacks over so what do we do we need something like a normal screwdriver okay now this is very useful all right so i'm gonna kind of just hook yes hook out the slack so that it can loosen up and lessen the friction and then transfer the slack yes to the next column and next column here okay now the opening for the next column is here same thing use the puller bar to hook it all right now we still don't want to let go of the clipper first we pull first then let go clipper all right see slowly the slack is transferring over bit by bit so likewise clip next part again okay see the slack is building up slowly all right slowly but surely now transferring okay slacks over transferring here again now this djembe i have here is a Bali made djembe i haven't been touching this djembe for a long time so the friction here is really really tough okay again i'm gonna hook right so this process basically repeats itself for every vertical column all right make sure i pull first and let go clipper okay so as you can see the slack is getting more and more each time okay so that's what i meant by accumulating the slack now there comes a point in time right when our slack is too much okay this the space is too much until you know even before i apply tension on the puller bar i'm already at this position so i would have left very little space for me to actually apply strength to pull up the slack so in this case that's what this fella is useful for all right so at this point we won't be using this anymore in fact we'll clip it here okay here all right now we have enough yes space to use this guy here and also have the bottom of the puller bar all right uh anchor against this part of the djembe and pull let go of clipper yes so henceforth we'll be using this to hold the slack instead of this so as you can see even with the tools here i'm still a bit panting right i still require a lot of strength so at this point um if you have these two tools here the clipper and the djembe puller bar you're all set to go but now i want to share with you another tool which i think it's more convenient and less hectic okay now is this tool here it's a new invention by one of my friends uh in China uh actually this product has been around for quite some time okay now this two fellas here these two guys here basically uh do the same thing as what the puller bar and the clipper does i'm gonna show you so at this point we wanna be transferring the slack until here and pull this guy right so to give you a idea this fella basically the function is like what the puller bar is doing its function is like what the puller bar can do and this little animal looking creature will be replacing the clipper so as you can see i'm trying to transfer the uh slack to this part and ideally to this part so we can pull off the slack and let go of the clipper now usually in this step we will be using the uh djembe puller bar to hook up the slack right but now instead of the puller bar i will use this tool here so this part of the tool is used to anchor at this part of the djembe right now make sure so this is we can open up like this but first we'll keep it closed first this part anchor here all right and this is the part that's gonna kind of grip the rope okay so anchor actually anchor grip the rope okay and then i start pulling see it's gripped here and i actually can pull now that's it i don't have to use the hook anymore all right so after i pull one whole uh round here i can right take it out again and prepare for the next close it up bite the rope again okay and pull again so you see now i let go my clipper and i pull i don't have to be using the puller bar anymore okay and i pull i'm not using any strength okay see so and pull all the way down okay so at this part we wanna the clip usually will use a clipper to clip on the tension right so that the slack won't go back right so we'll use this little creature here to kind of park our creature right here okay let the creature sit on the rope and push all the way up then we let go okay that's it the tension it doesn't go back because it's stuck here this fella here helps us to hold the slack all right so now i'm going to transfer this here right it's going to be painful if i use my finger to hook this up so what do we do okay this new invention here lock it here anchor the point here let this part bite the rope okay okay this is what it looks like here so there's groove here it can easily just bite on our rope okay and then that's it okay and i start pulling right do a second time so basically if you have a lot more slack ready you have to do this a few times for a single column okay but you know not much strength being used and uh it's relaxing it's pulling it's pulling now i use my little creature here to tuck it here to stop it the slack from going back see yes now this is the djembe that's being tuned with the third tuning technique where we pull all the slack off the vertical ropes okay that means no knots okay as you can see no knots on this djembe but simply pulling off the slack uh from all the vertical rope and this is how it sounds so these are the three different types of tuning techniques we can use on rope-tuned djembe after you have tuned your djembe my advice would be to always keep your djembe in a dry environment now i come from singapore singapore is near the equator so our country has very humid condition it is almost impossible to be in a dry environment so what i do is i try to have a dehumidifier at the place where i store my djembe also have my djembe be kept in a bag if i'm bringing my djembe out for class or for performance and if you ever drive don't leave your djembe in the car overnight all the best to your djembe playing let me know what you think about this video and uh tell me any questions if you have all right post in the comment section remember to like and subscribe to our channel and see you at our next video
https://howtoplaythedjembedrums.com/how-to-tune-djembe-with-different-techniques/
No comments:
Post a Comment