Hi everybody, as I mentioned in other thread, we got set of Pacific Coast shekeres and started to learn playing them. As we don't have any teacher here in CZ, we are left to learn from youtube and other videos (Thomas showed us something on shekeres when we were in Hamburg, but that was the first time we ever saw the instrument and so we didn't grasp much from that)...
I would need help with technique for the open tone. I'm not sure which part of the hand should strike the gourd. Here's
http://pracovni.vasik.net/shekere.mov Michael Spiro's technique as he teaches on congamasterclass (I made a short clip just to demonstrate his technique, hope this won't be any copyright issue) - you can see that he's striking the gourd with the very heel of the hand, actually with the bone, with curved fingers. On the oposite side Jim Greiner in this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k5UkMTskio video and Yosvanny Terry here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmJm91UPGfs don't seem to curve their fingers and they are striking the gourd with the whole hand. Michael Pluznick here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA81d3MAb0E seems to play somewhere inbetween those styles...
I would appreciate any help on this, as in the future we would like to workout those basics to be able to go to Holland to Martin Verdonk to learn more shekere and we don't want to loose time on basic technique...