Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Surdo levels

I thought some people might benefit from some 'goals' for various instruments. Here's a first attempt to document the levels for surdo players. Use it to set goals for yourself, or to plan where you want to be X months from now. Note this is not intended as a 'must achieve', the bateria can do with all levels, e.g. there's nothing wrong with someone who stays a 'level 1' surdo player and is able to play a strong 2nd surdo!

Here they are:
  • Level 1 - able to maintain a strong rhythm on 1st or 2nd surdo, with little slowing down or speeding up
  • Level 2 - able to confidently play the intro of a samba on 1st or 3rd surdo, as well as the most common breaks
  • Level 3 - able to confidently play the common 3rd surdo rhythms
  • Level 4 - able to play surdo solo, playing both 1st and 2nd surdo patterns, as used at the start of many sambas when there is just surdo, cavaquinho, and vocals
  • Level 5 - able to play 3rd surdo improvisations that 'fit' within the context of the song
Each level implies complete mastery of the previous levels.

Comments please - does this help? Are the levels reasonable? If enough people like this I'll do the same for the other instruments!

4 comments:

Marcel said...

you forgot to appreciate the ability to distinguish Boom from BoomBoom songs, Remko!

Brian D. said...

Just an idea, may be you could incorporate the definition of the levels with some video clips of the techniqes/feels of the rhythms. Save you from repeating yourself to the beginners and give the sambistas an idea of what the expectation is from the Samba School.Especially the difficult techniques of tamborim and caixa.

Perhaps the website need a new section on " Grading & Brisamba techniques".

Remko said...

Brian, I have considered this for a long time, and concluded it would be a waste of time. Unfortunately it appears most people, unlike yourself, don't want to learn outside of the regular Thursday night sessions. Given the effort that would go into this, it would appear to be an enormous waste of my time.

Thanks for the thought though. And, there's still a goat on your back.

Remko said...

Give the lack of response to this post I think I will give this a miss.