Sydney Recording Studio Timbales instruments are percussion instruments brought to Cuba almost more than 200 years ago that is closely connected to the history of Cuban rhythm. The actual ancestors of the timbales instrument are European Timpani those brought their traditional music in Cuba and make development in these instruments.
Sydney Recording Studio: Timbales cultural significance
Since 1792 several African slaves and Afro-Haitians came to Cuba along with their culture and musical tradition which they place at every possible way to practice their religious music. So, as timbales instruments are playing widely in several countries of Latin America, you will found deep influenced by the European and African culture in Cuba music because these slaves and Haitians still have European traditional even settling in Cuba. They influence the Cuban rhythms and musical style into European traditional music.
Sydney Recording Studio: What do Timbales look like
Timbales instruments are single headed drums. These drums are made of steel but rarely will found of wood drums with two different sizes.
Hambra is the larger size drum. Spanish people use the term of female for this larger drum.
Macho this term is used for male drum in Spanish and is smaller in size than Hambra.
As these two drums are different in their size, are different in sound affecting too. The hembra drum that is representing the female drum produces many warm and low sounds and the Macho drum represents as male drum produces higher and aggressive sounds.
Sydney Recording Studio: Timbales Playing Technique
The people usually plays timbales are commonly known as Timbalero, who play the timbales drums with the pair of two wooden sticks altogether. The playing procedure of timbales is just alike the Piano techniques, even there are not special technique or tricks to play timbales. If you play timbales, the playing method is same as piano lowest note on the left hand, keeps the highest note on the right hand, and beat the drums in different patterns.
Sydney Recording Studio: Types of Timbale Music
There are many different types of pattern timbale instrument have:
Son Cubano is a musical timbale pattern. The Cuban folk plays this music and dance on this rhythm. Son is actually considered the Afro-Cuban percussion music that is structured and combined from Spanish cancion.
Rumba the term “rumba” synonym the word “party” on the northern side of Cuba in the 19th Therefore, the uses of rumba music refer to a wide variety of different and complex musical patterns.
Clave the temporal organization of African Cuba music widely uses this rhythmic pattern as a tool for a musical Clave has 5 stroke pattern that is representing the core structure for Cuban music and having many musical genres like rumba, conga, jazz, salsa, timba and much more.
Sydney Recording Studio: Structural Effect
Timbales are shallow single-headed musical drums, the metal casing increases the capacity to tune these drums higher than others. The timbale players use different types of sticks according to their percussive expressions or traditional musical sections, these are:
- Rim shots
- Tools
- Stick strokes
- Sometimes uses cowbell/cymbal according to different songs patterns.
