Introducing World Drumming

Course details

Every culture on the planet has some form of drumming, and this fascinating course is a practical, hands-on introduction as well as an exploration of various drumming and rhythm traditions. Designed for absolute beginners, Waltons New School of Music's Introducing World Drumming course combines three essential elements to give participants a solid grounding in hand percussion from around the world:

1. Learning how to play various world percussion instruments, including djembes, congas, bongos, dumbeks and assorted frame drums.
2. Exploring the commonalities and differences of African, Brazilian, Latin and Middle-Eastern drumming and rhythms.
3. Illustrating their applications in contemporary music.

Along the way, we will learn various hand drumming techniques and improve our rhythmic vocabulary with technical instruction, improvisation and ensemble skills, traditional ‘call and response’ aural learning and various notation and phonetic systems. All instruments are provided for use in the course.

What happens after the course has finished?

You will be given options for continuing your tuition at the school. Although a continuation ‘Improvers’ course cannot generally be scheduled on the same day/time as the Introducing course, one can be arranged if enough students would like to continue and your teacher has timetable availability. Students can also continue their tuition with either private (one-to-one) or small group lessons with other class members. We are happy to discuss these options with you.

Introducing World Drumming is one of our group courses for beginners. Private, partner, small group and one-off 'intensive' drumming and percussion lessons are also available for students at all levels, from beginner to advanced.