Lace: How to Make Your Zils Interesting, Not Overwhelming

Now that I have retired, my goal is to make sure that my work stays available to the next generation of dancers. So we are offering the entire Belly Dance Geek® catalog with "pay what you want" pricing here on Gumroad. Please note that all of our offerings are fully DIY, and do not include personal support.

- Nadira

Are You Feeling Uninspired with Your Zils?

Maybe you’re bored with playing the same old patterns.

Learning a set pattern is the first step in learning to play finger cymbals.

That’s an important skill to have, but when you ONLY repeat one pattern over and over, it can get a little monotonous…

Or maybe you’re “overstuffing” your zils.

Adding more “stuff” feels badass, but busy zils aren’t always more interesting. In fact, the opposite is true: when the audience can’t follow your zils, they can’t enjoy them.

And you end up alienating your audience instead of drawing them in.

So how do you find the balance between boring and busy?

Claude Debussy said “Music is the space between the notes”.
 In Lace, we’ll make our zils more musical by introducing more space.
(That rhymes!)

Instead of adding more “stuff”, we’re going to incorporate silence. 

And we’ll do it in a systematic, interesting way that makes the silence as much a part of the music as the zil strikes.

Just like a piece of lace, it’s the holes that make it interesting!

What you’ll learn:

At Belly Dance Geek®, we never just feed you material to copy, we geek out on how it works, so you can create it for yourself.

In Lace, you’ll learn:

• How to use simple patterns you already know to create intriguing lace
• How to branch out into longer, more sophisticated patterns without getting overwhelmed
• How to use lace patterns to call attention to different aspects of the music and your dancing
• How to incorporate the lace technique in performance (no “armchair zils” here!)
  

How it works

This 4-part self-paced DIY course includes:

• 4 downloadable video lessons
• PDF reference notes
• 12 homework assignments (about 20 minutes each)
• My Zils Resource Guide
• 31 "Finger Cymbal Karaoke" tracks to help you get the concepts into your muscle memory.
• Q&A call recording from a live offering of this course

Suitable for (almost) all levels

We’re going to cover easy ways to make your zils more interesting, but not how to play them in the first place.

So we won’t be covering the absolute basics in this course. (How to fit zils, how to strike them, etc.)
 

If you have very basic zil skills

You have everything you need to get started. All you need to create Lace is a couple of simple patterns, like threes or beledi.

• You don’t need to be able to play them perfectly
• You don’t need to be able to play them fast
• You don’t need to be able to play them while dancing

You can work up to all that later. And the Zils Resource Guide has some links to tutorials that you can use if you need a refresher.
 

If you’re an experienced zil player

The Lace approach will give you a fresh jolt of creativity, as well as an approachable way for your students to be more adventurous with their own zils.
 

But if you’re a total zils newbie…

This program will be pretty frustrating for you if you’ve never played zils before. You can absolutely start learning the concepts now (and sing along or play “air zils”), but actually playing them on your zils will be tough until you have a little experience with the basics.

If you’re feeling adventurous and want to try it anyway, be sure to check out the included Zils Resource Guide before you start.

Please Note: This is a fully DIY course

Since Nadira is retired, we are no longer able to offer personal support or discussion groups for our courses. We have revamped the materials to be fully DIY, but if you do have questions, we encourage you to reach out to your teacher or dance colleagues.