Year 7 Samba Batucada

Samba Batucada is a style of Latin American (South American) dance music played on percussion instruments, originating in Brazil. It developed from the traditional music of West Africa, particularly the drumming and dance ensembles of countries such as Mali, Guinea, Senegal and their neighbours. Try to recreate and better understand samba batucada by notating some of the syncopated rhythms commonly heard in this music to create your own composition.

Samba Batucada Polyrhythm Composition

1. Go to tiffin.sites.noteflight.com and login with your username: 20XX Surname Firstname (20XX = the year you joined Y7) and password. 

2.  Open the worksheet here: https://tiffin.sites.noteflight.com/scores/view/5ba549ed47c4c212df86b0de3897a5ebeb92d863

3. Follow the instructions above the staves (lines of music) to create your Samba Batucada composition:

4. In bars 7-14 compose your main rhythm: copy, paste and repeat (Ctrl C, Ctrl V, R) up to 8 rhythmic patterns from the rhythm bank to create your main rhythm. You may combine the rhythmic patterns in different ways to make your main rhythm distinctive.

5. In bars 15-18 compose a break in which all instruments / groups of instruments play the same rhythms. Use ideas from the Samba Batucada Breaks worksheet below.

6. In bars 19-26 copy/rewrite your main rhythm: it might be the same as or different from before.

7. In bars 27-30 compose a solo in which one instrument performs alone with syncopated rhythms.

8. In bars 31-38 copy/rewrite your main rhythm: it might be the same as or different from before.

9. In bars 39-42 compose a new break in which all instruments / groups of instruments play the same rhythms. Use ideas from the Samba Batucada Breaks worksheet below.

10. In bars 31-38 copy/rewrite your main rhythm: it might be the same as or different from before.