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Basic Rhythms 1
Each didgeridoo can produce only one keynote. It is for this reason that for the most part the possibilities to vary the sound are of arhythmic nature. Just by pressing together and then releasing your cheek muscles you can create interesting rhythms. By speaking silently into the didge you can significantly accentuate your rhythms. While you are blowing in air from your lips into a word or letter. You can also speak loudly or sing into the didge. It will sound ever fuller. This is indeed a special effect one can use to create variation in the rhythmic patterns or to improvise. But thank godness everyone can play how they wish. So go ahead and sing, scream, whisper or speak into your didge whenever you are in the mood! We recommend beginners who generally don´t yet have well-trained cheek muscels to create rhythms using the fewest means possible. To start limit your didge-vocabulary to the syllables oa, di and vowels i and o. These sounds can be spoken either long (drawn out) or short. Example: oaaaa, oa, diiii, di, etc. With oa puff out your cheeks, with di draw your cheeks together. The larger the difference between the puffing out and drawing in of the cheeks is, the more distinet the rhythmic effect will be. If up to now you have only be improvising freely, you might note that it is not so easy to always breathe at the same point. It is best to breathe after the long tones, for instance after an oa, o.	A song is devided into equal sections called measures.The measure designation of most pop songs is 4/4 time. You simply count 1, 2, 3, 4 through the entire song. In the notation there is a line drawn at the end of the measure, at which point counting starts from the beginning again. I realize this doesn´t sound exactly sexy. Once you command a rhythm, you naturally play intuitively and will not "count" throughout the whole song. The notes consist of a head and a neck. These notes are called quarter notes. Each note counts one beat. In example 1 the rhythm consists entirely of quarter notes. In example 2 you will see two notes connected by a bar. These notes are eight notes and two notes make up one beat. The second beat is counted with the word "and" (+). If this is too complicated you can simply think of the quarter note as long and the eight note as short. This works a little like morse code. Example 1 would be: long, long, long, long Example 2 would be: long, short, short, long, long Example 3 would be: long, long, short, short, long The following six examples can be combined (e.g., 1,2, etc.). Enjoy trying it out!
Copyright: Michael David