My Approach to Learning the Bongo Drums

Part way through 2009, I devoted a few months to getting some skills on the bongo drums. I had been a musician a long time before then, originally playing trumpet and then moving to guitar. I thought I would write an article on the approach I took to getting some skills on the instrument. This is not really a conventional approach, but is simply something that worked reasonably well for me. The two main resources I used (apart from a set of Bongos) was an online metronome and YouTube videos. As I was already a musician I was able to search for some of the great Bongo resources on YouTube and study them enough to pick up on some of what they were doing. My playing basically developed into three main areas: Semi-quaver pulses with various accents on the different pulses, fast finger rolls, and the Martillo and variations on it. These areas are basically as follows: Semi-quaver pulses: the notion here was to develop some speed an proficiency at playing semiquavers, alternating my left and right hands, primarily on an open tone. I made quite extensive use of an online metronome while developing this and slowly built the speed as I did. As the technique became more relaxed I would focus on accenting various pulses of the semiquavers. These accents started to give the playing some character, particularly with syncopated accenting thrown in. I would then experiment with placing rests at various points of the bar and introducing slap tones for a stronger accent. Finger rolls: the notion here was to be able to build passages of greater speed through the use of finger rolls. With the semi-quaver pulses described above, I would start to play two or three notes per semi-quaver by rolling the fingers of the hand that was playing the current semi-quaver. I could then integrate these rolls at different points to add some flurries to the playing described above. The Martillo: The Martillo is the main Afro-Cuban pattern on the bongos. It has a lot more tonal variety than the techniques I was describing above and there are good introductions to the pattern on Youtube. The Martillo has also has a lot of variations and fills based on it. Once developing some basic Martillo variations and fills from YouTube, I found a book called "The Bongo Book" by Trevor Salloum. This book among other things has a lot of material on the Martillo and variations. By mixing up Martillo variations with the techniques above, the playing was given a lot more variety and tonal range.