Percussion Workshop

Last Tuesday we had a Percusion workshop in the music room. Dave was teaching the workshop and he brought loads of djembe drums and other percusion intruments with him. We learned about where the djembe drums come from and how they are made and also how to play different beats on them. For the first while we just played with the drums and experiemented with different beats but after break he picked people to play the bass drums and we put the bass drums together with the djembe drums to make a song. It sounded really good! After lunch we watched a documentary about the djembe drums and other intruments for West Africa. It was really interesting! Then we played with some of the other percusion instruments and we played a samba song. It was really good and we learned alot about the djembe drums. We learned that they come from countries in West Africa like Ghana and Guinea. They are made of wood and goat skin is streched over the top of it. Sometimes cow skin is used but this is thicker and doesn't make the same sound. Cow skin is used to make the bass drums. One of the percussion instruments that we used is called the Asalato. These are two wooden balls on the end of a string. The balls are filled with seeds or small pebbles. It was a really great day and i would definatly recommend it for next year! :D