Mad Drum Circle Skills: Fundamental Concepts and Foundational Drillz

This book provides the aspiring drummer with a clear explanation of the foundational concepts underlying world polyrhythmic music, with examples and drills to develop an embodied understanding of these ideas and techniques--all notated in the intuitive BeatBox^(c) Tablature and supported by over 350 audio practice tracks. The chapters take readers from the basics, like Talking about Rhythms and Hand Technique, all the way to more sophisticated topics like Clave and Polyrhythm and Improvisation & the Solo. Foundational cadences and clave patterns are included, along with rules of rhythmic transformation that allow coherent improvisation in a drum circle setting.

Wolf's style of teaching has always had a strong focus on speaking and counting the rhythms being played to situate each rhythmic part in the ostinato or groove. In addition he learned and invented drills for developing hand technique and precision in the context of polyrhythm and polymeter.

In this volume he explains the fundamental ideas underlying world polyrhythmic percussion grooves, with examples both notated in the accessible BeatBox Notation and included as audio practice tracks.

Here are the Chapter titles to illustrate the scope of the book:

Chapter 1: Talking About Rhythms
Chapter 2: Vocalizing and Counting
Chapter 3: Learning Complex Cadences
Chapter 4: Hand Technique
Chapter 5: Common Cadences
Chapter 6: Building Speed and Developing Rolls
Chapter 7: Polyrhythm
Chapter 8: Rhythmic Transformations
Chapter 9: Clave
Chapter 10: Where's the "1"?
Chapter 11: Orchestrated Rhythm Sets
Chapter 12: Finally Improvisation & the Solo

This volume is 166 pages with over 400 illustrative notations and 350+ Audio Practice Tracks. The Audio is available as a digital download, files on a DVD, or as 4 playable CDs.