Zills

How could I have forgotten to mention how my bellydance class is coming along? :) At the end of last week's lesson, I bought zills (aka finger cymbals) from my instructor, with the instructions that I should put them together sometime during the week since we would learn how to play at the next lesson. While I did practice some of the bellydance moves this past week by walking around my apartment with a yearbook on my head while carrying a pumpkin on my hip (gets you to feel the natural movements) I managed to forget about the zills in my purse until an hour before I needed to leave for class. Whoops! Luckily they were easy to assemble. The most important thing is marking them so you know which finger they go on. They're placed on the middle finger and thumb of each hand, and since your thumb is fatter than the middle finger, you need to make sure you have the right cymbal fit for each finger! Because another important thing is making sure they're tight on the finger.... you don't want them flying off as you're dancing, that would not be good. :)

I was surprised to learn that there is more to playing the finger cymbals than I thought. First of all, you need to have them correctly on your fingers so that there is a 30 degree angle between them on the thumb and middle finger. This is so that they don't clomp together, like castanets. Correctly played, they sound like bells, which they should, since zills is the Turkish word for bell. Also, you want to play them by keeping your thumb relatively steady, while sliding the cymbal on your middle finger down over the cymbal on the thumb. Luckily, this is less complicated than it sounds! And the last thing is that you want to play most of the rhythms with your dominant hand. And so, with all this in mind, I can actually play the zills rather well! We learned how to play a very common rhythm found in bellydance that I'm practicing this week. The hardest part now is trying to play these rhythms while also trying to perform bellydance movements with the rest of my body. It's pretty funny to see, but as they say, practice makes perfect! :) I'll try to update next week on my progress!