Drum Circle

Hand drumming is an ancient art form, and the conga is no exception. The term 'conga' is an American translation for the Cuban drum term 'tumbadora'. Popularized when Latin and salsa music made its way into America, the conga drum is an easy to enjoy instrument. Anyone who picks up a conga drum will want to spend hours tapping away and experimenting with sounds. Although it may look like a simple instrument to pick up, playing the congas requires a certain technique that you can learn through practice.

Choose your conga drum by experimenting with several different types. You can buy wood or fiberglass congas. There are also different sizes of congas, and each size will produce a different sound. A Conguero will play up to 3 congas at a time, and each drum will have a different chord.

As you play your conga drum, you will find that you can create several different sounds and pitches. Begin learning to play by experimenting on your own. Slap down on the drum in the center with your palm, or tap the outside edges with your fingertips. You'll develop an ear for pitch and different sounds as you progress.

There are 5 simple strokes for playing congas. Using 4 fingers near the rim of the drum, you can create a clear, melodic sound. If you strike the same 4 fingers against the drum and hold them, you create a slightly muffled sound. These tones are otherwise known as open and muffled strokes. To achieve these tones, you can also hit the drum in a similar fashion with your knuckles, recoiling upward as you rhythmically beat the drum.

Bass tones are slightly different in that you use your full palm while beating the drum. Striking in this way can produce a low register, quiet sound. Alter your beats with finger taps to produce rhythm.

Slapping the drum creates a loud, snapping sound. Slapping is one of the hardest strokes to master, as you must cup your hand a specific way in order to create the right sound. Slapping can involve your fingers as well as the heel of your hand, and you can alternate fingers and heel to create a fast beat.

Touching is the last stroke, and involves simply touching the drumhead. As with slapping, you can alternate the fingers and the heel of the hand to achieve different sounds.

When playing the conga, you can get your entire body into the mix. Bend forward with your elbows to allow more pressure on your hands and you can create new sounds.

As you progress as a conga player, you can learn to use several congas together. Conga players have been known to beat on three drums and a bongo, creating a symphony of sound.

By tuning your conga, you can create different pitches of sound. Congas of the past were tuned by heating the skin on the drumhead. Fiberglass congas now have a screw and lug system, and you can adjust the tightness by adjusting the screws. Tune your conga in a clockwise rotation, adjusting for tone and pitch.

Practice is the key to becoming a successful conga player. Hand drumming has the reputation of looking simple, but to achieve a rhythm and accompany other musicians you will need to learn how to play properly. Remember, master conguero Armando Peraza, in an effort to fill a spot in a New York band, picked up the conga in one afternoon. Let yourself experience the music, and you will pick it up in no time.

Photo credit to Flickr member matravnos

Labels: Armando Peraza, conga, conga.drum, conga.drums, congas

With origins from African and Cuban traditions, conga drums are probably the most popular hand drums today. Made from a variety of wood or from fiberglass, congas are available in different shapes and sizes.

Here are just a few features that set Toca Congas apart from other brands and create the "Toca Difference" and unmistakable Toca look and sound.

Toca Heads:
Toca conga heads are 1st quality bison skins that are graded and sorted by thickness for each particular size drum. This grading process ensures the best tonal response from each different sized drum. All Toca heads are tucked rather than sewn to prevent "pull out" and are mounted wet, to assure the best contact (or seat) between the bearing edge and the head.

Toca Hoops:
Toca offers two very different types of hoops for our professional series congas. Toca hoops are composed of thick metal allowing more rigidity to the hoop and even tension at all points.

• Toca's Traditional-Style Hoop is found on the 3900 Traditional Series drums and features lightweight construction to "free up" sound. This Traditional hoop holds the head close to the shell and gives the drum a more authentic Cuban sound.
  
  
• Toca's Exclusive "Easy Play" Hoop was designed with a very low collar to keep the hoop away from possibly injuring the player's hand. Toca's Easy Play hoop also stretches the conga head over the bearing edge of the drum to increase the resonance and tone. These hoops are constructed from top grade, 3 mm thick steel then plated to a high gloss finish.
  
  
• Toca's Player's Easy Play Style Hoop performs much like our professional model by giving added protection to the player and is 2.6mm thick to give that added strength.
  

Toca Shell Construction:
All Toca wooden shells are constructed from slats of Asian Oak hardwood. Two wood slats are glued together to form a very strong stave. The wood staves are then formed into a shell that can hold its shape indefinitely. The double-ply shell construction combined with the process of finishing the inside of the shell help to make the drums light in weight and very resistant to changing weather conditions.

Toca Shell Shape:
The shape of the drum bowl determines the tonal characteristics of a particular style or brand of drum. Toca uses two different bowl shapes, the "Traditional Afro-Cuban" shape and the "Contemporary Afro-Cuban" style bowl.

• Traditional Afro-Cuban bowl shape has a very sharp taper at the bottom of the shell. This creates a strong bass tone in the drum, which is the "Afro-Cuban" sound that many Latin players prefer.
  
  
• Contemporary Afro-Cuban bowl shape has a larger belly and less taper than its Afro-Cuban counterpart with a much bigger hole at the bottom of the drum. This shape produces more volume with less effort. The Contemporary bowl shape (more volume with less effort) coupled with the easy play hoop (more resonance) makes this drum ideal for most live playing situations where extra volume is needed.
  

Toca Tuning Hardware:
The tuning hardware, coupled with the hoop, is what holds the head on the drum and keeps it in tune.

• The Tension Plate is at the heart of this process and takes the brunt of the abuse in keeping the drum in tune. Because of the enormous amount of pressure placed on the drum bowl during tuning and playing, Toca has designed all of their drums with an exclusive 4-bolt tension plate. This helps spread the tension over the entire shell making the tuning more stable and preventing tension plate "pull-out" or "cave in" that occurs on some drums as a result of the constant pressure.
  
  
• The Tension rods, which connect the hoop to the Tension plate, are made of hardened steel to prevent bending when the drums are tuned to a high pitch. The rods are held away from the shell with a special cup washer that not only aids in the ease of tuning, but also helps prevent the wrench from damaging the tension plate and the shell.

Labels: afro.cuban, conga, conga.drum, easy.play.hoop, style.hoop, tension.plate, toca.conga, toca.heads, toca.shell, tuning.hardware