Saidi Patterns 2

This is the second pattern I learned to play, SAIDI Patterns #1 from Omar Kattan:

This pattern lets me practice:

• doum
• slap
• kah
• tek
• rak (one-handed roll)

In the video, Omar emphasizes how to do the rak’ka roll.

When I was first trying to find a good pattern to start with, I had watched Kattan’s video about the “rak” sound, no speaking, just demonstration. This was one of those “my world is upside down” moments, because my body desperately wanted to play the rak with my right hand (the stronger and more dexterous of the two). It took a week of practicing this a couple times a day to convince my body to do this the correct way.

Performance

Here is me doing Saidi Patterns #2, performed at a few different tempos, and then both patterns 1 and 2 played in sequence.

Reflection

Reading the staff notation is getting easier. I’m also finding myself introjecting his verbal depiction (“doum slap rak’kah doum doum slap tek-kah-tek”) of the rhythms, so when I’m playing them I can internally hear him reciting the pattern.

I remember hearing an account of how tabla (the Indian hand percussion instrument) would be taught through oral tradition: the student would accompany the instructor during the day, and the instructor would occasionally recite a rhythm (similar to this) and the student would be expected to memorize the rhythm and then practice it on their own later.

The new rak'ka technique is, even after 2 weeks of practice, still very challenging! Some of this might be joint stiffness in my middle-aged hands, though. When I go more slowly, or faster, I can usually get an evenly-spaced finger roll, but the middle tempos are tricky – my fingers want to strike at the same time and it ends up sounding like 2 taps instead of 4. Also, Kattan notes that the 4th strike of the rrrak part is almost a glancing strike, to allow the drumhead to resonate, but the glancing direction is at an oblique angle away from the body, even though the finger roll occurs towards the body. I’ll get there eventually, but it’s one of those things where I can feel my body re-training.

This pattern was much easier to pick up than the first one, both in execution and also in internalizing the sequence.