Transcription - Marcelo Costa, tamborim on "A Vizinha do Lado"

Continuing on with our look at telecoteco and other Brasilian comping rhythms here is a tamborim transcription from "A Vizinha do Lado" on Roberta Sá's record Braseiro.

Just as with jazz or any other style of music, one of the best ways to learn how to execute these rhythms in a stylistically appropriate fashion is to go straight to the source and listen and transcribe.  In this case we hear percussionist Marcelo Costa on tamborim starting about halfway through the tune.  This one will require some serious listening as there is a lot of shape and articulation that is not notated.  I intentionally did not write any articulation A) so as to make it clearer to read, and B) so anyone following along and/or trying to play this wouldn't get bogged down by notation, but rather, would simply listen.  That said, there are a couple of things worth drawing your attention to.

What I've notated in the transcription are just the notes played by the stick on the head of the tamborim.  Quite often, with the hand holding the drum, the underside of the head is tapped with the a finger in between the notes played with the stick.  So, a stock telecoteco pattern would look like this:

Almost 100% of the time when you find two 16th notes side by side, the first is a pick-up note played far more quietly than the second note, which is then accented.

Note that Marcelo is improvising here, but he is always on the correct side of the rhythm.  If you play any stock telecoteco pattern (see the "up" side of the sheet linked here) through the whole tune you will notice that it never crosses the melody or anything that Marcelo is playing.  This is extremely important when improvising in this style, and we'll chat more about how to do this next time.

Finally, remember that these rhythms are completely transferrable.  You don't have to be a tamborim player and/or percussionist for this transcription to be useful to you.  Try orchestrating it a number of different ways while playing along to the recording.  Here are a few ideas to get you started:

*Read the transcription on rim click with any of the right hand and feet ideas from the samba starter
*Play 16ths notes with brushes and accent the notes of the transcription, again with feet patterns from the samba starter
*Play the transcription on the ride cymbal, and fill in the gaps with ghost notes on the snare.  Feet, samba starter.  You get the idea.