Customer Reviews

Conga Drumming: A Beginner's Guide to Playing With Time

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been playing congas for 15 years and teaching for 3 years. I recommend this book to my students and to my freinds.

I agree with all the other reviewers... this is a great book for beginners and advanced (as well as folks somewhere in the middle, like me).

One thing I didn't expect to like, since I can read regular music notation, was their concocted music notation. To my surprise, I like theirs better. It's very intuitive, and after a while, you can pretty much sight-read the rhythms. If I hear/see a conga pattern I like in the future, I'll probably write it down using their notation.

Very recommended! I think Alan Dworsky used a very clear graphic way of teaching the Conga playing, without getting into music reading instead, he uses symbols for the diferent strokes, and easy numbers. It is great for begginers but stil a good book for advanced players, because it goes through many aspects of the conga.
If you are into conga playing, get this book for the price of half a conga lesson I am sure you will get some mileage out of it. I have been playing congas for years and I discovered a few things in this book I didn't know. Go for it! (...)

A really good book...the cd is excellent as well.

This is the beginner book I used, and I like it. It covers a good range of basic conga patterns to a medium level of difficulty. Be aware that it cannot, and does not pretend to cover all Latin music styles as it relates to conga. For a beginner, that should not be an issue unless you are interested in something unusual, like the folklorico drumming adapted from bata, or perhaps are only interested in learning one style in depth.

The CD is enormously helpful. In fact, it's laughable sometimes to try to work through a new pattern without listening to the corresponding CD track first. Guaranteed you will not have the emphasis or attack right!

I also fully agree with another reviewer that the notation is so good that I've adopted it for my own use. The downside is that this is NOT commonly-used notation for congas. As a result, when you pick up other conga books, you will have to adapt. That's not enough of a barrier to keep someone from this book though, and I should also point out that conga notation isn't exactly standardized anyway.

I found this book invaluable for learning the basics of conga drumming without a teacher. I used it for several months before hitting my first conga class, and was really glad I had worked with the book. I was able to pick up right away with the rest of the class on several of the rhythms. However, I will warn anyone using the book that this drumming world is steeped with "variations". That is, you'll frequently find that your teacher is using a slightly different variation than the one taught in the book. This is fine, however, since it's usually easy to alter what you're doing slightly.

One of the more impressive aspects of the methods in this book is the holistic approach, for example, teaching how to feel the clave underneath the rhythms you're playing. The book also does about as good a job as any book can at teaching the hand technique, although I highly recommend complementing this with good videos of accomplished conga players. Youtube, for example, is a great resource. Here again, though, you will find different philosophies of technique, and again your teacher may have his own emphasis.

This book is extremely readable and it teaches you terrific grooves right from the get-go. I'm a pianist who has decided to learn some percussion and I am having a blast learning to play the conga. Even my non-musician girlfriend has learned some of this stuff!

Great Conga book. Was recommended to me by others. The only thing that I don't like about this books is that it doesn't use standard notation.

As a beginning Conga drummer, I was not sure how much could be learned from a book. I keep playing the patterns over and over and I get a little faster and smoother all the time. The CD lets me match the sound. I am starting lessons soon but I know this book will be there during and after the lessons. It's like having a private, personal instructor. Excellent.

I recieved my order, book is great however they sent me a cassette instead of a CD, I don't own a cassette player any more. So its no use to me. I don't know why they would advertise that it comes witha CD and send a cassette. I will never use them again.