How to practice Miudinho on a real berimbau
Play this toque on a real berimbau. Allow the microphone, calibrate your tones, then follow the scrolling note track. The app scores pitch in cents against your calibration and whether you hit on time. Microphone audio never leaves the browser.
Exercises use the three core berimbau tones: ◯ dom (open, stone off the string), ⊗ chi (buzz, light stone), and ⬤ dim (closed, stone on the string).
The base is two buzzes, a closed tone, a buzz, and a closed tone (chichi Dim chi Dim). The next exercise keeps that cell and adds the variation that opens the fourth note (chichi Dim dom Dim). Keep the glued chi pair even, and land each capitalized Dim on the beat.
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What is the Miudinho berimbau toque?
Wikipedia and CapoeiraWiki credit the Miudinho toque to Mestre Suassuna of Cordão de Ouro. He said he made the toque because players were standing too far apart: he wanted the game smaller and closer, not a new capoeira, but an older close game shown another way — as the games of Iuna and São Bento Grande exist, so does the game of Miudinho. CapoeiraWiki links that style to jogo de dentro: intricate, close-range movement. Cais da Bahia lists Miudinho as the toque for the miudinho game, cadenced and a little faster.
How does Miudinho feel in the roda?
Fluid, low, and fast, with many circular movements and without sweeps and hits. Clapping and singing are only sometimes part of the roda. The name comes from Suassuna telling students to play smaller and closer.
Sources
Paraphrased from Wikipedia, CapoeiraWiki, and Capoeira Shop (Regional). Schools differ on how each toque is played; this is not a teaching method.