7 reasons why playing percussion is going to change your life

First I have to say that Percussion Instruments were the first musical instruments used for mankind to make music, so they’re the best way to connect with our musical abilities.

No matter your age or musical skills, anyone can play percussion instruments and make music with them. 

When we grow up we disconnect with this intuitive way of learning and we start to use more rational ways to learn. Basically, what happens is that we stop playing and we start to learn with more formal and structured methods.

However, that natural bond with music doesn’t disappear. It is still almost asleep waiting for the chance to come alive again.

And, anybody can develop this ability. Anybody, so if you think you don’t have musical skills, or think that you don’t have a musical ear, forget about those beliefs and move forward with your desire of playing a percussion instrument and making music.

To sum up, percussions gives us a direct connection to our ability to play, to make music and what’s more important with our ability to have fun.

• PERCUSSION CONNECTS US WITH POSITIVE EMOTIONS

When we play percussion, we dive in a unique and complete musical experience. Body, Mind and Soul come together in a way that doesn’t happen with any other musical instrument, and that makes us vibrate in a unique and different way.

The key element of this experience is what I call The “Groove”, which is the exact moment in our playin in which Rhythm, Tempo and Energy align, and we connect strongly with the music that we´re playing and with all the other percussionists that are playing with us.

¡Yes!, When we arrive at that stage in our playing we are in control of the situation and that allows us to flow with our instrument and also let us focus on developing and releasing all the music that we have inside us.

• PERCUSSION FACILITATES MUSIC LEARNING

My mantra as teacher and facilitator is that: Percussion for everybody and everybody can learn to play percussion.

And that is so because Percussion allows anybody who wants to learn and make music to achieve that goal, no matter your age, skills and musical background.

Rhythm and Percussion is part of our DNA, so any of us can perform simple actions such as play the pulse with a bass drum, play a shaker along a song or play a simple rhythm with a drum.

Percussion instruments activate our musical instincts, allowing us to connect naturally with the musical knowledge and facilitating our learning process in music.

That is why Percussion Instruments are ideal for beginning musical learning and practicing. No matter your age or musical background, all you need is to have the desire to learn.

So cheer up!

• • PERCUSSION PROMOTES DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

There is a huge diversity of percussion instruments that you can play, some of them are simple and others complicated. Some are small and some are really big. Some are hard to play, but others are really simple. This makes it easier for us to find the right instrument that suits our skills and needs to express our musical ideas.

Being, the percussion instruments, so many and diverse, the percussion ensemble is a space of diversity in which different instruments such as: Conga, Bongo, Djembe, Cajón, Bass Drum, Shakers, Cowbells, Claves, among others get together and shares a musical conversation in which each of them contribute with their own sound and identity.

The Percussion Ensemble allows everybody to join in and participate in a collective symphony.

So, we can draw two conclusion: first, everybody is welcome to percussion, It´s not just a place to enlightened people. And second, everybody can learn and play percussion.

So again, cheer up!