Salsa Foot Clave Exercises-Cascara to Mambo

Salsa Foot Clave Exercises expands on my previous post: Clave with Meinl Pedal Mount and incorporate various Salsa patterns on drum set: Cascara Drum Set Style, Campana Drum Set Style and Mambo Drum Set Style. Along with discussing the Son clave in Afro Cuban Clave Essentials. I combine these postings and developed a series of drum set practice exercises.

One of the challenges I faced, was starting and stopping the various Afro Cuban patterns. I would get the pattern started and I was OK. But then if I would stop (break) or add a fill, it was difficult to fluidly resume the pattern. Always maintain the two measure clave pattern – even when an odd number of measures phrase turns the clave around. You must always maintain the clave pattern. These exercises address these challenges.

Each exercise has the bass drum on the first beat of the pattern and then continue with a traditional Afro Cuban Tumbao bass line. There is an exercise using the Cascara, Campana (Bongo Bell) and Mambo bell patterns in both 3-2 and 2-3 Son clave patterns. Each exercise has an open vamp (repeated) pattern followed by a one measure break. The one measure break causes the clave pattern to turn around from 3-2 to 2-3 or 2-3 to 3-2. I decided to use the same conga style snare and tom drum-set pattern for each exercise. Practice different (simpler) conga style patterns . Finally, I used only the Son clave since it is a very common pattern used in contemporary and popular Afro Cuban Salsa music. I play the clave rhythm using a Meinl Pedal Mount and LP Medium Jam Block.