Miami drums

Playing your djembe standing up, as you should instead of sitting down, is by all means a much enjoyable experience, and also, an exhausting one.
Looking to purchase a strap for my djembe I looked first on the musical stores online. Remo has a djembe strap for about $28, Sageman Drums has another option for $30, theirs “is available in 3 types of trim: Brown & Yellow, Blue, and Rasta” [Mmmm Rasta straaaap, yes, finally a rasta strap] Ebay had two options, but both didn’t look like anything very special, some nylon strap with green, black, and…yes, rasta themes. There were some more artistic versions such this one but by this point, I was determined to make it myself.
So I went back to Google, and found this two invaluable sources of strapping knowledge:

Rhytm Traders – They also sell Djembe straps
Djembe Straps’s FAQ – All you ever wanted to know about straps and were afraid to ask 🙂

After reading trhough all the posts, I went ahead, and order some nylon webbing from Onrope1.com. I wanted to get the tubular webbing, my idea was to get a wide one and then fill it up with some sort of foam to make it easier on my arms [Imagine holding a big djembe’s weight, plus hitting on it hard while playing! :S]
I finally got the 2 in wide seatbelt nylon webbing, tubular was much expensive, and I imagine that filling it out with foam was not the best solution, it’s better a wider material than narrow one. FAQ refers to the karate belts as one of the best options, problem is, karate belts are not as long as you would hope for this job…

Editor’s side note:I try to get nylon webbing locally. I could only find a store that had something like this down here in Miami. I went to West Marine, both stores on Biscayne Blvd. They weren’t even aware that they did have nylon webbing. They had also tubular webbing, but on an absurd price, so I ended up buying it online.

When I got the strap, I realized that the Rhytm Traders tutorial is as confusing as the ascii drawing on Djembe Straps’s FAQ. Not sure why the pictures are so focused on the character doing the tutorial instead of the djembe/strap itself. So I asked Mark to show me how to create it, an it’s a very simple thing if you know what are you doing 🙂

I’ll promise to post some picture of how it works…