 Hey everybody this is Blessing Bleach Manga. I am from Zimbabwe and I'm so excited to be part of to give you a little lesson on the instrument that I play called the marimba. This is our national instrument in Zimbabwe. Remember to press like share and comment on this amazing lesson that we have and a big shout out to Natanio Music School for giving me this opportunity and I hope you're going to learn something. So a brief history about me. I'm a drama first rather let me say I was a drama for 10 good plus years as a session drama and so I learnt a lot about you know your drum pertences and routines and exercises and how to play with your sticks and things like that and it was easy for me to transfer that same concepts for example paradiddles to the instrument and now use that concept of drumming on this instrument. Actually the marimba is in the percussion family so they actually go hand in hand and the advantage that you now I have on the marimba is you can now play melodies you can now play chord progressions and things like that and these are some of the things I'll be sharing in this lesson. Remember to share and like and subscribe to this channel. So let's go this is the marimba it's tuned to C minus tuned to C I got C D E F F sharp G A B C C D E F F sharp again G A B C so I can basically play in two major scales that's my C major and my G major and of course I've got the minors in there that's your sixth your A minor and your E minor if I'm playing in G and I can mess around with the F sharp as much as I can especially when I'm in G so I can do a lot and today in our day and age we are trying to use this instrument in your jazz in your R&B and different genres and playing the concepts that I use in those genres for example in blues when I'm in G I've got the the advantage of playing that F as my seventh and so you can make use of this instrument in as many genres as possible I'm going to start with a typical Zimbabwean groove that's in six eight so I'm counting one down the three one and the two and the three and the four and the five and the six and the tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata tata and I'm gonna play something for you and then start to break it down and show you how I've taken drum concepts into the instrument so I'm playing so what am I doing here with my right I'm I'm doing my doubles on my right tata and on my left I'm playing singles so my left is keeping it's on the one two three four rather it's on the beat and I'm doubling my beat on the right so and this is a common common drum exercise whenever you're trying to exercise your right sometimes most of the times you're told to play as many doubles always much speed with the hand that you want to improve your speed so here I just took the same concept and I put it on the marimba and you'll find a lot of this on our six eight typical zimbabwean grooves again I said I'm playing and for the chord guys what I'm basically doing is I'm coming down from my top C coming down in every note of course I'm skipping my F sharp because I'm in C for now and still my right is on the C so I'm playing sorry my left is still on the C tata come down come down come down and then from here that's when I changed the whole thing and I now move my right to my F which is my four and it goes there now when I'm putting it in six eight I'm now playing even more beats than just the doubles I'm now adding them to become four on my right hand but my basic countings are one and two and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and one and two and four and five and six and seven and you want to count zero and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and one and two and four and in there I can even start to so that's about six eight let me play something in four four and I'm going to use a common exercise for drums and that's paradiddles our parties are right left right right left right left left now you're going to hear me putting it in a progression I'm playing cfg and hear me putting those paradiddles in a progression so for example how as you know as a drummer it's not in you can't pay paradiddles the whole song paradiddles are there to help you to throw in maybe as a feel or maybe as part of your opening of the song or something that is the same thing I do on the marimbas I may be playing something simple like so I'm developing I'm using the paradiddle as part of my development of the variations rather than just playing four minutes off so that's paradiddles and of course closing my lesson one of the critical things for me was uh just learning how to do speed as a drummer and I think the times I was a drummer that's the era when chopping and all these things came and inverted our music industry even in Africa and what I learned about speed is when it's appropriate to use it and that's the message I want to leave with all the rhythm players and especially drummers it's good to have speed it's good to have the technique but no where to place it when you're playing and for me even now when I play marimba I'm the lead instrumentalist and the lead vocalist in my band but because I know there's so much that's happening in the music I know when to put that speed especially when it's time for my solo because the rest of the band is keeping the rhythm is keeping me tight I have freelance now but imagine if the song is happening then it's it doesn't have order so that's my last message to you make sure that when you have speed on whatever instrument that you're playing especially drummers and percussion players know when to use it so for example I don't have the band with me today but I'm gonna play four bars for example keeping tight keeping the rhythm going before I start messing around and going around with speed and all that stuff so big advantage now is a marimba player because all this speed I learned it when I was a drummer so you have advantage when you have some of these instruments that are in the same family because you can take those concepts that you learned in the other sibling and use it on the other sibling and for me I'm taking a lot of drum patterns drum grooves drum thinking drum exercises and putting them on the marimba especially with this was now you've got some weight coming on the mallets so there's a lot of practice that you have to do consistently so you can get used to the stick size gets used to the bouncing that you don't have on the drums and perhaps match up with the speed and the happening of a drummer my name is blessing bless him again I'm from Zimbabwe remember to keep on loving following and liking this amazing channel and a big shout to Nathaniel music school for having me all the way from Zimbabwe to give this topic remember to subscribe and we continue to give you good different and amazing music from Africa from all over the world we love you and see you soon