Can you play bongos with sticks

Bongo playing position The bongos are a pair of small drums that are connected and played as a unit. Traditionally, you hold the bongos between your legs with the smaller drum on your left. The open tone: Hit the edge of the drum with the knuckly part of your palm and let your fingers bounce off the head.

Can you play bongos with drumsticks? Can you use drumsticks on a djembe? Do you need to tune bongos? How do they make bongos? What is the difference between congas and bongos? Are LP Matador Bongos good? What skin is used for bongos? One can use mallets, brushes, spoons and forks and even sticks and stones on congas, if they provide the desired sounds. Basically, the limit for what one wants to do does not exist. There are many mallets to choose from. The main difference between congas and bongo drums is obviously their size.

Also, their shells are much longer and have a unique barrel shape. Using a stand is very useful if you play several instruments — you can push the stand slightly aside if you need to play something else.

How Hard is it to Learn the Bongos? In summary, the bongos are one of the most accessible instruments on the planet. It is relatively easy to pick them up and learn basic rhythms that you can even play in a group. Within a month you will surely be able to play at the very least a few rhythms.

The open tone: Hit the edge of the drum with the knuckly part of your palm and let your fingers bounce off the head. Experiment by moving your fingers about 4 inches in from the center of the drum and see how the sound changes. There was very little projection.

But the worst part is, a bongo hoop doesn't have a rim; the heads curve around the bearing edge. Thus, your drumstick can do damage to the bearing edge after even just a little bit of playing. I wanted to verify my suspicions, so before I played too much, I disassembled the drums to check out the bearing edges.

Sure enough, I had caused a bit of damage, though, luckily, not too much. A little sandpaper took care of the problem. My excitement about using these as concert toms was short lived, however, as the drums still had very little projection. I thought about having the bearing edges recut to a standard 45 degrees, but, after throwing the idea out to the Rogers guys, decided against it, as this would devalue a great set of bongos, and consensus was I still wouldn't get a good sound out of them.

Conclusion: save your bongos and stick with true concert toms. Here's what my setup looked like with the standard rims and heads:. Inspired by that album, I decided to add bongos to my set for playing a conga drum rhythm on certain Latin tunes with my jazz trio. They did indeed add the Latin flavor that I was looking for and they did project satisfactorily.

I'm not a hard hitter so this worked out fine for a while as long as I stuck with conventional sticks. By the way, this was an inexpensive set of bongos made in Japan. I agree with the others who suggested synthetic heads. If you're not a real hard hitter, you can certainly incorporate your bongos to add flavor to your Latin rhythms. I can think of certain Santana tunes where they'd fit in great. I often wish I had them along for use in my big band gigs but I just can't afford the time to set up or tear down any more stuff.

As it is I'm the first to arrive and the last to leave. Sometimes you just need a different sound. Never been a problem. I Hit Things said:. Billy Martin uses a set on his kit at least some of the time I think Good enough for him. He does have a pretty light touch though and he's probably get 'em set up with the right heads and such.

Still, from my perspective, unless I was planning on playing ;em with my hands for some of the tunes as well, it seems that some small drums with real rims and synthetic heads would make more sense. If you ARe playing them with your hands some of the time though, then it would maybe be worth the possibility of damage to play 'em with sticks for a couple of tunes SwivoNut said:.

This from one the greatest latin percussion records ever made. Last edited by a moderator: Oct 12, Played this set up tonight on a jazz gig. Really fun! No bongos were harmed during the playing of this gig! Spooky Very well Known Member. Hi, I played mine, set up like you describe, and they were fine, until one day I did get a bit carried away and put a hole in one! I did hit it very hard though, and they were not really expensive ones,.

If that helps?! You must log in or register to reply here. Similar threads. First experience with Regal Tip Jazz. Phantomlimb Yesterday at AM 2.