ChoomBoonk is a music instruction book intended for those musicians whose instruments demand that they use up to all four limbs, simultaneously and independently.Its purpose is to develop an exceptional ability to perform music which has four horizontally independent parts, but it can be used as an easy, happy and efficient way to develop control and technique as a basis for traditional two-handed drum study. The book is a comprehensive study of rhythmic coordination. For ease and convenience in reading across the drums, it is spiral bound and printed in large type on uncrowded pages. Written by Jack Van der Wyk.
The principle of ChoomBoonk is similar to the method used to teach Indian tablas. Vocalizable syllables designate each of the 15 basic coordinations possible with four limbs. After difficult coordinations are systematically mastered in ChoomBoonk without the visual burden of traditional notation, exotic cross-rhythms as well as readings in standard drum books become easier to play.
ChoomBoonk is enjoyable and effective from the very beginning. Students of all ages enjoy the exercises. Coordination and control studies, which are often tedious when presented in standard notation, become intriguing diversions if expressed in ChoombBoonk because ChoomBoonk gets right down to the basic problems of coordination which the percussionist can solve one at a time in a systematic way, free from the irrelevant visual obstacles of conventional notation.
ChoomBoonk permits a systematized study of coordination and cross-rhythm as respects problems which usually are overlooked. After the student feels comfortable with the ChoomBoonk hands-alone exercises, he progresses to the use of the right foot; first by itself (in between hand executions, but not at the same time), later playing the right foot simultaneously with the right hand is studied, and then the right foot simultaneously with the left hand, etc. Step by step, increasingly difficult combinations of the use of the right foot are presented until the student has sufficient command and balance to proceed with the unprecedented and unparalleled series of graduated coordination exercises for the left foot.