[bright music] - Hi everyone.

My name is Yakir and I'm a teaching artist for National Dance Institute.

Today, I wanna create exciting beats with you.

We're gonna first start with a very basic, plain rhythm.

Then we're gonna learn how to create a musical lasagna and put all these layers on top of a very simple beat and make it more exciting, more flavorful, and more fun to dance to.

But first, before we start, let me introduce to you my friends.

This is Jasmine.

Jasmine is a dumbeck.

Isn't she gorgeous?

And she's originally from Egypt.

And a dumbeck is one of the most celebrated drums of the Middle East.

And I'm sitting now, it's one of the only instruments that you can actually sit on it to play it, on Claudio.

Claudio is like a horn, like a horn in a box.

As you can see, Claudio is basically a box, a beautiful box with a little hole to get the sound out.

But you sit on it and play it.

[rhythmic drumming] So Claudio and Jasmine and I are gonna take you on a journey, the musical lasagna journey.

Who does not like pasta, lasagna and sauce?

First, let's start with a very simple beat.

Now, I'm gonna play it from Jasmine and Claudio, but you can grab anything that you can find around the house that makes two different, distinct sounds.

In a drum, there is a low sound and a high sound.

Very, very different.

In Claudio, it sounds like this [drumming].

A low and a high.

And a beat is basically just a pattern that keeps repeating and makes you wanna move.

Let's start with a very simple beat that's gonna go like this.

Low, high, low, low, high.

Low, high, low, low, high.

A one sound and the other sound.

Let's try this on Claudio.

[rhythmic drumming] All right, that's a great start.

Now, grab whatever you have and now let's add to it.

Let's try first with Jasmine.

I have a free hand over here, so that hand is gonna play what I call running, where that's basically the sauce.

We have a plain pasta dish and now we need the sauce.

Here is our pasta dish [rhythmic drumming].

And now we have to decide what kind of sauce we're gonna put on that plain bowl of pasta.

So I'm gonna add these running sixteenths.

It just feels like running to me.

In music, you pronounce them like this, onie and a twoie and a threey and a fourie.

Onie and a twoie and a threey and a fourie.

Onie and a twoie and a threey and a fourie.

Like that.

Now let's see what happens when we take those 16 notes, which is our sauce, and add it to the main dish, to the pasta, which is [rhythmic drumming].

Okay, let's try it.

First, before that, I just have to comb my eyebrows to make sure they're pruned before the performance.

All right, here we go, on Jasmine first [running beat].

Woo hoo hoo, it's so exciting.

You know, those running sixteenth notes, they make the beat move forward, propel it.

Make it kind of like so exciting to follow and to move to.

Let's see how that sounds with Claudio.

I don't know why it helps but it does.

Here we go.

This is our plain dish of pasta [rhythmic drumming].

It's kind of cool on its own.

Yeah, we feel like moving but what happens [running beat].

Ah, this is great.

Now another important part about our dish or our musical lasagna or our pasta bowl is to add spices.

Now spices are a personal touch.

Some people like a lot of sauce, some people like no black pepper, and some of my friends just put a whole lot of Parmesan cheese on everything they eat.

But that's personal taste.

My favorite flavors come from cymbals and I have some with me.

I have a little, tiny finger cymbal and you kind of place it on your fingers like this.

And now, let's play the beat and see what happens.

We're gonna play our basic beat first and then add the running onie and a twoie in it.

[rhythmic drumming] Now that adds a lot more flavor, right.

Now we're gonna add the running [running beat].

Onie and a twoie and a threey.

It sounds good, right?

Now the truth is that many people like more than one spice on top of their dish.

So why don't we do the same?

I have another cymbal right here.

This one is for my foot.

Now I place it right here and now I can make part of the beat with my foot [bells clanging].

How cool is that?

Let's try that with the foot and a finger cymbal and Claudio at the same time.

Let's start from plain and build it up.

[rhythmic drumming] [bells clanging] [running beat] Woo hoo hoo, we are really creating all of these beautiful textures, layers, and spices.

Now that we have this flavorful bowl of pasta with sauce and spices, we're almost ready to eat.

But the most important thing for me when I'm eating is company.

So wait one second.

I'm gonna call my children to come and join us and add a little extra spice to the rhythms that we have so far.

Okay, I have my children here.

This is Robbie.

Robbie, what did you bring?

- I brought a box and an upside down plate and I've got two Sharpies.

And I'm going to make a running beat.

One high sound one [clanging] with the upside down plate.

And one low sound one with the cardboard box [thumping].

- Nice.

Can you do like a little bit on this and then switch, so we hear the difference?

[Robbie clanging and thumping] Yeah, it makes me wanna move.

Okay, Shaunie, what did you find?

Oh, this is Shaunie.

Shaunie, what did you find?

- I have a cheese grater and a fork.

- Okay.

You can grate all kind of stuff, not just cheese.

- Yeah, well yeah.

- Yeah.

- So I'm making these two sounds [scraping and tapping].

- It's like a slide, click, click, slide, click, click.

Nice.

I wanna play, you know what I'm thinking?

I wanna play my foot cymbal, my finger cymbal, and Claudio.

But I'm not gonna start right with all of that, I'm gonna build into it.

So now, we have to teach our friends that there is also another aspect of the beat that's called the drum break and that sort of signals when things start and when they end or when they kind of change and it sounds like this.

[rhythmic drumming] And now we'll cue when Robbie starts, he's gonna come in first.

And then we'll also cue when Shaunie comes in later.

And at the end, the third cue will be when we finish.

So you grab whatever you found and join us.

Here we go.

[rhythmic drumming] This is just a plain bowl of pasta.

Now I'm gonna add the running.

Robbie, won't you join me.

[Robbie clanging and thumping] I'm gonna add my cymbals [clanging].

Shaunie, won't you join us.

[scraping and tapping] Ah, this feels good.

Anything else you'd like to add?

- I love cheese.

- Oh, thank you for that.

Would you like to add anything?

- That was spicy.

- Oh yes.

Even Zoe thinks that, okay.

We had so much fun adding flavor and spices to our beat.

And now it's time to eat.

- It tastes like pee.

- [gagging] I'd much rather have a bowl of pasta.

See you next time.