CLAVE & SONS

Tapspace™ is a publishing company specializing in creative percussion music. Formed in 1998 and stationed in Portland, Oregon, USA, Tapspace has a refined niche focusing on educational and appealing concert percussion ensembles, solos, duets, rudimental percussion music, steel band music, and other educational materials.

With a star-studded list of contributing artists, our works have been performed by thousands of percussionists around the world, and are being used daily to help shape and influence the rapidly growing percussive arts. This makes Tapspace a premier source for today`s most creative percussion literature.

Clave & Sons sets out to accomplish the following goals: (1) to expose the student to Afro-Cuban percussion instruments; (2) to give students an opportunity to learn about those instruments through their traditional musical roles; and (3) to have a lot of fun in the process. Latin-American music is a ton of fun to play!

Clave & Sons does not have any particular style associated with it. Instead of writing a piece that is strictly Rumba, Mambo, or Salsa, it is written to allow each of the Afro-Cuban instruments to “do what they do.” In other words, you are experiencing the patterns and functions that are most common to these instruments.

After you have worked up Clave & Sons, your students will not only understand how to play these instruments but also what their original purpose was. And because these rhythms and patterns are not part of our indigenous American music (presumably most of us grew up listening to rock music), our students will have an even larger rhythmic vocabulary.