Table-top drumming is a grassroots, spontaneous artform. It requires no expensive equipment or expertise—just hands, a surface, and some imagination. With just a few basic skills you and your grandchildren can discover and play rhythms whether you are together in person or sharing the screen long-distance.

Jewish culture has always celebrated the rhythmic cycles of the world—seasons, holidays, life-cycle, the Torah reading, daily prayer. This video series by Joey Weisenberg can help us appreciate the smaller cyclical moments of time and family togetherness too.

The simple and fun exercises can infuse time together with grandchildren — or even multi-generational gatherings — with vitality, playful fun, and even a sense of unity.

Try the exercises on tabletops, floors, doors, books, pots, even chairs. You may discover something new about your environment—the volume, echoes, and tones of different surfaces and how they can change the mood.

Watch this video to see Joey introduce tabletop drumming. 

Watch this video for the basic strokes of tabletop drumming.

 Click HERE to find all the videos in the series.

 Joey Weisenberg is Founder and Director of Hadar’s Rising Song Institute. He teaches master classes in Jewish song & prayer at joeyweisenberg.com