The tamborim

An earlier blog considered the samba drum with which most people are familiar, the large surdo. In this blog, we will turn to the opposite end of the scale and discuss the tamborim, a shallow, single-headed drum only six inches in diameter.

In many styles of samba music, the tamborim is played with a wooden stick. For the style of music known as batucada, it is played using a beater that ends in several flexible nylon rods that produce a dense cluster of sounds when hit against the drum. In Worldwise Samba Drummers, our hand percussionists always use these nylon beaters whenever they are playing tamborim. The beater is held in the stronger hand and the drum is held in the other hand with the thumb on the outside edge of the rim and the fingers curled inside. Some tamborim players will place their index finger on the underside of the drum skin in order to change the pitch.

Worldwise Samba Drummers. Photo by Phil Longfoot

The tamborim can be used to play short looped patterns along with the rest of the band but other tamborim patterns will be longer, faster and more syncopated. In order to play the rapid series of notes required for these patterns, tamborim players make use of a technique known as virado. For a virado, the first note in each group of four is struck as usual, on the second note the beater carries on downwards and the drum is angled slightly downwards, on the third note the beater comes up hitting the drum on the way past, and the fourth note is struck as usual. This allows rapid series of notes to be struck. Playing the virado will naturally guide tamborim players towards the samba swing where it is being used. Many tamborim players, including those in the Worldwise Samba Drummers, put their little finger on the outside edge of the rim which better enables them to turn the drum for the virado.

The tamborim players are often placed at the front of a performing samba band. Free from having to carry larger instruments, tamborim players are able to move more energetically if they choose to and, in the case of Worldwise Samba Drummers, sometimes have more intricate stepping patterns.

When new people join the band, we often start them off on the tamborim because we have plenty spare, they are easier to hold than the heavy surdos, and they don’t require the hand-to-hand coordination of the caixa (snares) or timba (hand drums). However, they do have the longest and most intricate patterns to learn and the virado can take a long time to perfect. This means the easiest tamborim patterns are the easiest in the band to play but the more difficult patterns can be a challenge for even experienced drummers.

In Worldwise Samba Drummers, the players who make use of the tamborims sometimes switch for agogo bells and these will be the focus of the next blog. 

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