Drumming w/ Jen - Deepening
This is a space to go further.
Five modules. Your own pace. Completion of Drumming w/Jen - Foundations recommended.
From advanced hand technique and odd meter sequences, to making your own rattle and beater, chanting and toning, self-led journeying and deepening your ceremonial practice.
The rhythm is already in you. This is where it grows.
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Advanced strokes
In Course 1 you learned five foundational strokes. Each one a distinct sound, a distinct gesture, a distinct quality.
This lesson introduces three new strokes that build on what you already know. They are not separate techniques so much as evolutions - deeper possibilities within the vocabulary you have already developed.
In Course 1 you learned five foundational strokes. Each one a distinct sound, a distinct gesture, a distinct quality.
This lesson introduces three new strokes that build on what you already know. They are not separate techniques so much as evolutions - deeper possibilities within the vocabulary you have already developed.
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Odd meter sequences
In Course 1 all four sequences were built on even meters - patterns of eight beats that resolve symmetrically and settle naturally into repetition.
This lesson introduces something different.
In Course 1 all four sequences were built on even meters - patterns of eight beats that resolve symmetrically and settle naturally into repetition.
This lesson introduces something different.
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What is a rattle
If the drum is the heartbeat, the rattle is the breath.
They are companion instruments - often used together, each doing something the other cannot. Understanding what makes them distinct helps you understand when and how to use each one.
If the drum is the heartbeat, the rattle is the breath.
They are companion instruments - often used together, each doing something the other cannot. Understanding what makes them distinct helps you understand when and how to use each one.
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Rattle technique and rhythmic vocabulary
The rattle looks simple. It is deceptively demanding.
Unlike the drum, which has a natural rebound - the hide springs back, the beater bounces off, the hand finds its rhythm through that physical return - the rattle offers no such feedback. The seeds move after the hand moves. The sound arrives slightly after the gesture. Learning to play the rattle well means learning to work with that delay rather than against it.
The rattle looks simple. It is deceptively demanding.
Unlike the drum, which has a natural rebound - the hide springs back, the beater bounces off, the hand finds its rhythm through that physical return - the rattle offers no such feedback. The seeds move after the hand moves. The sound arrives slightly after the gesture. Learning to play the rattle well means learning to work with that delay rather than against it.
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Rattle in ceremony and journeying
This lesson is where technique becomes practice.
Everything you have learned about the rattle so far - the grip, the motion, the vocabulary of strikes and shimmers - now finds its purpose. This is the practical application: how to actually use the rattle to prepare a space, support a journey, and move between instruments without breaking the container you have created.
This lesson is where technique becomes practice.
Everything you have learned about the rattle so far - the grip, the motion, the vocabulary of strikes and shimmers - now finds its purpose. This is the practical application: how to actually use the rattle to prepare a space, support a journey, and move between instruments without breaking the container you have created.
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Making your own rattle
There is something that happens when you make your own instrument.
Not just the satisfaction of having made something - though that is real. Something more specific. The rattle you have laced with your own hands, filled with objects you chose, finished with a handle you found - that rattle carries a different quality of relationship than one you purchased. It knows you before you know it.
This lesson is an invitation to that relationship.
There is something that happens when you make your own instrument.
Not just the satisfaction of having made something - though that is real. Something more specific. The rattle you have laced with your own hands, filled with objects you chose, finished with a handle you found - that rattle carries a different quality of relationship than one you purchased. It knows you before you know it.
This lesson is an invitation to that relationship.
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Making your own beater
Every beater from this studio begins the same way - not at a craft supply store, but outside.
A windfallen branch. A pruning from one of the trees on the property. Something that has already left the tree by its own accord or with permission. This is where the beater begins, and that beginning matters.
Every beater from this studio begins the same way - not at a craft supply store, but outside.
A windfallen branch. A pruning from one of the trees on the property. Something that has already left the tree by its own accord or with permission. This is where the beater begins, and that beginning matters.
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Chanting with sequences
The voice and the drum are older partners than any instrument combination in human history.
Before notation, before melody, before harmony - there was rhythm and voice together. This lesson is a return to that pairing. Not as performance, not as song in any formal sense, but as a natural extension of the practice you have already been building.
The voice and the drum are older partners than any instrument combination in human history.
Before notation, before melody, before harmony - there was rhythm and voice together. This lesson is a return to that pairing. Not as performance, not as song in any formal sense, but as a natural extension of the practice you have already been building.
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Toning and vowel sounds
If chanting is about what you say, toning is about what you become.
Strip away the words, the melody, the rhythm, the meaning - and what remains is pure vibration. A sustained sound moving through the body, resonating in the bones and tissue, doing its work without needing to be understood.
This is toning. And it is one of the most powerful tools you can bring to your drum practice.
If chanting is about what you say, toning is about what you become.
Strip away the words, the melody, the rhythm, the meaning - and what remains is pure vibration. A sustained sound moving through the body, resonating in the bones and tissue, doing its work without needing to be understood.
This is toning. And it is one of the most powerful tools you can bring to your drum practice.
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Self-led journeying
In Course 1, the guide track did the driving. Your only task was to lie down, close your eyes and receive.
In this lesson, you move into the driver’s seat.
Self-led journeying asks you to be both the drummer and the traveller simultaneously - to keep one part of your awareness maintaining a steady, reliable beat while another part detaches and moves freely into the inner landscape. It is one of the most challenging and most rewarding skills in this practice.
In Course 1, the guide track did the driving. Your only task was to lie down, close your eyes and receive.
In this lesson, you move into the driver’s seat.
Self-led journeying asks you to be both the drummer and the traveller simultaneously - to keep one part of your awareness maintaining a steady, reliable beat while another part detaches and moves freely into the inner landscape. It is one of the most challenging and most rewarding skills in this practice.
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Drumming for specific intentions
Until now the drum has been a general instrument - something you play for meditation, for ceremony, for journeying, for the pleasure of the rhythm itself.
This lesson asks you to use it differently. More precisely. With a specific outcome in mind before you strike the first beat.
Until now the drum has been a general instrument - something you play for meditation, for ceremony, for journeying, for the pleasure of the rhythm itself.
This lesson asks you to use it differently. More precisely. With a specific outcome in mind before you strike the first beat.
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Post-journey integration holding
When the drumming stops, the work is not over.
A person returning from deep trance or significant emotional release is in a highly open and malleable state. Their psychological boundaries are temporarily softened. The way you hold those first few minutes - what you do, what you say, what you refrain from saying - determines how well they anchor what they received.
This is where a drummer becomes a facilitator.
When the drumming stops, the work is not over.
A person returning from deep trance or significant emotional release is in a highly open and malleable state. Their psychological boundaries are temporarily softened. The way you hold those first few minutes - what you do, what you say, what you refrain from saying - determines how well they anchor what they received.
This is where a drummer becomes a facilitator.
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Cultural appreciation and lineage
This lesson is not a warning. It is an invitation.
An invitation to step more fully into your own authenticity - to find a practice that is genuinely yours rather than borrowed, and in doing so to honour the ancient roots of what you are doing rather than diminish them.
This lesson is not a warning. It is an invitation.
An invitation to step more fully into your own authenticity - to find a practice that is genuinely yours rather than borrowed, and in doing so to honour the ancient roots of what you are doing rather than diminish them.
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