Customer Reviews

Mel Bay The Bongo Book

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a guitar player. Recently someone I respect suggested that if I studied a precussion instrument it would improve my guitar playing. Initially I wanted to study congo drums but realized quickly that they were not only very expensive, but a little intense for the condo in which I live. I settled on bongos both for their portablility and for their less intrusive tone. Now the challenge was how to learn them. I've had a lot of pleasure learning guitar from DVD and video tape so my first thought was to find a DVD that taught bongo drumming. Unfortunately the two offered on Amazon had fairly poor customer comments. I always go by the customer reviews because customers have no axe to grind. I find the truth generally come out in these reviews. Finally I hit on Trevor Salloum's The Bongo Book which had rave reviews. I was so enthusiastic I bought the 'better together' deal and also got Beyond Basics. Let me tell you, it's going to be months if not years before I need that second book. I've never worked with a more comprehensive music book than The Bongo Book. The Martillo and its variations are challenging and also so much fun to play. I go into another world while I'm hammering these tattoos. I just love it. I'm currently on page 15 of 37 musical pages and I already feel like I'm a bongoseros. I've really become obsessed with these things! I've never been attracted to drums before. I'm doing this entirely as an educational adjunct, and it's absolutely changed my image of myself. I'd recommend that anyone learn these little drums before they take up any other instrument. Rhythm is the foundation of all music and once you've got this you can apply it to everything, be it music, dancing, loving or fighting. It's really infectious. There are a couple of suggestions I'd make for future editions: The included CD was among the reasons I initially opted to buy the book but I found this CD not to be very useful or even necessary. I expected it to be a CD I could play along with, but it isn't really. It amounts to a demonstration of how each of the drummed measures is supposed to sound. If you know how to count a musical measure, you really don't need these demonstrations. And if you don't know how to count a measure, these demonstrations are not going to help you to play them. More useful would be a two-page explaination of how to count 4/4 time, 1 and 2 etc, and-a, e-and-a, trip-pel-let etc. I already knew this from studying guitar so had no trouble adapting, but a complete musical beginner would find this kind of explaination useful and essential. This way, the CD could contain play-along rhythms which would be more fun and interesting. I'm buying Jack Costanzo and Armando Peraza CDs to play with and as an example of how the bongos sound in context and this would not be as imperative if the CD contained more of that type of information. Another wonderful thing about this book are the interviews at the end with famous bongoseros, a great opportunity to learn about the significance of this instrument in jazz and popular music as well as the great recordings of bongos that have been made during the 20th Century. I recommend this book without reservations. Learning to count musically is not a great challenge. You can learn the entire concept in under an hour if you don't know how to do it. Salloum's stroke notation is brilliant and easy to memorize and use. For me, I couldn't be happier with a learning tool than I am with The Bongo Book.

While the rhythm variations are plentiful in this book, there is scarcely little helpful instruction describing technique. For a book that purports to introduce bongo playing, one would expect more than three pages of striking instruction and technique description. Photographs of individual techniques are limited to one page of vague, grainy, black and white photos. No illustrations or step-by-step technique descriptions are provided. The CD is nice, but without better description of the individual techniques, it proves but a frame for guesswork.

I bought this book shortly after I started playing bongos about 6 years ago, and it is still a great source of rhythm patterns and overall inspiration. You can find rhythms in this book that will apply to any style of music. It is true that there is not much on technique. But I suggest to anyone who is frustrated to just keep trying! Read this section over and over, LISTEN closely to the CD, get your hands on those drums and eventually it will click. (If you still need help, get on the usnet group rec.music.makers.percussion.hand-drum or do a Google search in this group. Any question you can think of has been asked and answered already :-)

There is even a section on re-skinning a bongo head. You do-it-yourself'ers and drum tinkerers will LOVE this. It's easy and fun to put on a new head -- especially if you put goatskin on the macho (small bongo head).

If you have some bongos, thinking of buying some, or know an aspiring bongocero, this book is a MUST.

I thought it was a book for beginners starting from scratch. Unfortunately, I got it, and to my surprise, it didn't say much about the very basics of bongo playing in a way that was understandable. It jumped right into the music. It would help to know how to read notes and probably some basic hand positioning before getting this one. However, looking through it, I think it's probably better for someone with intermediate knowledge of playing

Really a great book with a lot of martillo variations and many different fills. The audio CD makes it easy to figure out how it must sound, and there is an interesting section on non-traditionnal rhythms. I recommend it even for advanced players!

This is really the best book out there for the beginner bongo player. Lots of rhythms and exercises. And the CD is pretty good. For novice percussionists this book is best used in coordination with a music teacher that knows the feel of Latin grooves.

Criticisms: The CD only has one bar of each rhythm so it's difficult to get the 'feel' of the rhythms with so little being played... that's why you need a teacher.

This book + lots of practice = GREAT bongo playing!!!

This is a good primer for Bongo's, understand that this is a afro-latin, Hispanic instrument and the applied rules are steeped deeply in those roots. And, this instruction delves the musician in exactly those techniques at the root level. It will require study and lots of time to incorporate the presented material into ones muscial psyche. The CD has become a staple of instruction material as of late, and that is the GOOD news. A great teaching aid and one (perhaps the only one for Bongo) which should not be ignored. The tools are here. Like all musical studies just add diligence and practice time and you won't be disappointed.

The item description doesn't say that this book is for beginners. But based on the reviews I read it seemed like a good book for beginners. That was a horrific assumption. I don't blame the publisher for this, I blame other reviewers who lead readers to believe this is a good book for beginners.

From the beginning this book uses all kinds of terminology that I've never heard of before (and I have played some keyboard, drums and guitar). Which leads me to wonder who this book is for because, in my opinion, anyone who can understand the terminology probably has no use for such a book.

I do fault the publisher for the terribly exposed, grainy photographs. I also fault the publisher for allowing several interviews with bongo players which, in my opinion, do not belong in a book like this. The whole book just feels cheap as if it was quickly thrown together.

As an absolute beginner what I would have liked to see is a more detailed explanation of technique along with photos (this book has a few photos, but most of them look the same, and the photos do not correlate with the techniques described in the text). I would also have liked to see more description of how to read the notation used in the book. And while I understand musical timing due to my previous experience an absolute beginner will have no clue as to what tempo the notes should be played, this is not described anywhere in the book.

This is a very poorly executed and frustrating book about bongos. It borders on useless for a true beginner. If you are a beginning bongo player do not buy this book it will not help you learn to play the bongos and will give you nothing but frustration.

I have no idea how a book like this ever made it to print.

Starts with the basics and quickly gets the beginner up to speed. The best kind of instructional book as it starts with the assumption of no knowledge on the part of the reader but quickly establishes the theory, notation and rythmic foundation for advanced and creative extrapolation! Bottom line? You'd be nuts to play bongos without having this book!

This is a very good book/CD set. Not great, but very good. The CD that accompanies it is extremely helpful in finding the tones and timing, but a little more instruction would have helped. Had the CD been a DVD/CD with a few instruction tracks on it, I doubt you could beat this set-up.

There are a lot of good exercises in here, and the notation (which in the percussion world seems to be written in as many variations as there are players) is easy to follow. If you have to pick one starting instructinal book, you will not go wrong with this one!