Mastering Finger Cymbals

Title	Mastering Finger Cymbals
Author	Mary Ellen Donald
ISBN	None
Publisher	Mary Ellen Books
Category	Nonfiction: Finger Cymbal Instruction
Shira's Rating	(On a scale of 0 to 5)

What It's About

This 75-page book is a tutorial on how to play finger cymbals, written by master percussionist Mary Ellen Donald. It opens with basic technique, and then moves on to address how to use them to play many different Middle Eastern rhythms. If you don't read music, you don't have to be intimidated by the musical notation in the exercises, because the book comes with a companion CD that lets you hear what the exercises should sound like and play along.

Even someone who already feels reasonably proficient with finger cymbals is likely to learn something from this book. That's because in addition to providing a variety of rhythms that sound good with typical 4/4 rhythm, it explores rhythms to play with chiftetelli, karsilama, 6/8 (for Moroccan, Armenian, Persian, and Greek music), 7/8, 3/8, masmoudi, and 3/4. For each rhythm, she introduces simple finger cymbal patterns at first, and then shows how to build and embellish them.

Its Good Points

This book is truly educational, and even an experienced dancer who is already proficient with finger cymbals will probably learn something by going through it. Mary Ellen starts out simple, with basic rhythms introduced at a level that even novices with finger cymbals can manage, and then builds on it with embellishments and more complex rhythms.

The companion CD is an excellent accompaniment to the book. It illustrates what the exercises sound like, so you don't have to guess whether you have correctly interpreted the musical notation in the book. Nor do you even have to know how to read musical notation!

In an appendix, Mary Ellen lists a number of popular Middle Eastern songs that are representative of each of the various rhythms. Unfortunately, because the book was written in the 1970's, many of the specific records she recommends are now out of print. But the song titles are still valid, because for the most part she recommended songs that are well-known and widely-recorded.

On The Negative Side....

This book was self-published, originally appearing in print in 1976. Although it is well organized and laid out clearly, it could benefit from being re-done using modern desktop publishing technology. For example, it would be nice to have an index and varying font sizes and effects like bold and italic for the headers. However, the content is so solid, and arranged so logically, that once you start working with the book it's easy to forget about its typographical shortcomings. Obviously, if that's the worst thing I can find to say about this book, it is done very well!

To purchase a copy, contact:

Mary Ellen Books
P.O. Box 411562
San Francisco, CA 94141-1562
U.S.A.

Phone: (+1) (510) 654-DRUM, or (+1) (510) 654-3786

Web Site: www.maryellendonald.com