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conga + bongos

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jimmy

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Apr 14, 2009, 1:20:15 PM4/14/09
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Pure rookie here. I have an opportunity to trade a guitar for a 11"
conga & a set of bongos. Is this a usable setup? I think I've only
ever seen congas played in pairs.

thanks

Gerry

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Apr 14, 2009, 4:36:34 PM4/14/09
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If you've never played conga before, it's the place to start--a single
drum. Most who specialize in conga have a set of two or three, it's
true. But it's not against the law to play single drum.
--
Dogmatism kills jazz. Iconoclasm kills rock. Rock dulls scissors.

Benj

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Apr 16, 2009, 1:30:12 AM4/16/09
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Very useable. In fact it's the recommended setup for learning.
Teachers will tell you if you can't make one conga sound good, you
won't be making two or more sound good. So they always like to start
newbies on one conga first to get the basics down. A conga and a set
of bongos can keep you practicing for quite a bit. In fact it's a
setup that will always be useful no matter how long you've been
playing.

Gerry didn't say it, but I'd like to urge you to start out with a
teacher if you can. Hand-drums take a certain amount of technique to
get the sounds out of them. A teacher can just look at you play and
immediately tell you what to do. A video can't do that. The important
thing is to get the basic tones and hand technique down correctly
first so you won't have to "unlearn" bad habits later. Then later
once you've got that and you want to save some money, you can practice
on your own because by then it's just a matter of building speed
(slowly!) and learning lots of new rhythms.

Good luck.

jimmy

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Apr 16, 2009, 10:58:32 AM4/16/09
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On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:30:12 -0700 (PDT), Benj <bja...@iwaynet.net>
wrote:

Thanks to both of you. Great answers!

tony

jimmy

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Apr 15, 2009, 1:09:40 PM4/15/09
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On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:36:34 -0700, Gerry <some...@sunny.calif>
wrote:

>On 2009-04-14 10:20:15 -0700, jimmy <bigto...@hotmail.com> said:
>
>> Pure rookie here. I have an opportunity to trade a guitar for a 11"
>> conga & a set of bongos. Is this a usable setup? I think I've only
>> ever seen congas played in pairs.
>
>If you've never played conga before, it's the place to start--a single
>drum. Most who specialize in conga have a set of two or three, it's
>true. But it's not against the law to play single drum.


Hey, thanks! I didn't really expect an answer since the traffic here
is so light.


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