I went to the second session of the conga drumming class I’m taking with Geoff Johns. We’re learning the conga parts to a Rumba rhythm I think is called “Rumba Guaguanco.” It is a really cool, really challenging rhythm.
This weekend I worked on approximating it with GarageBand, Apple’s easy music player. It’s a rather pathetic approximation, but you can kinda get the idea what’s going on.
To play the rhythm, there’s three drummers and a different part for each drum. One thing I learned in the conga class is congas usually are played in sets of 3 and they all have different names. The high conga is called a quinto, the middle conga a segundo and the low a tumbadora or tumba for short. A clave usually goes along with these three drums.
So, anyway, I input the parts and then put together and exported a little song file. To give you an idea of what the different parts sound like, I made the file so the basic parts play separately at first.
Hear it … (2.5 MB) That link will pop-up in a new window and hopefully your media player can handle an mp3!
Keep reading while you’re listening for an explanation. The rhythm starts with the clave. Then the basic tumba part plays. The tumba stops and the basic segundo part plays. The tumba stops and then the two basic quinto parts play one after the other. Right after that, with no break, the three drums play their basic parts together, and then go right into the first, then the second variations. I think it stops after that.
The parts sound so basic alone, but man, when they all play together, it sounds so cool! In the rhythm arrangement we’re learning, I think there’s like 6 variations for each drum. I haven’t gotten to those yet! They are all a bit more complicated, but are similar to the same basic parts for each drum. And there are lots of really cool conversations that happen between the drums and make it really interesting. I wish Garageband had a better set of congas!
The class is fun. Challenging, as I’m not used to the hand drumming technique at all yet.
What a parade it was this year! Saturday started off quite dreadful. The whole week before had been gorgeous weather. Not a drop of rain and barely a cloud in the sky all week. Saturday was nothing but rain, rain harder than it had been in months. But, it just so happened that about 45 minutes before we started jamming on the route, it started clearing up. By the time we started Samba Reggae to begin our part in the parade, the sky was clear and blue and it was beautiful. I think this year will be remembered for that. There was a great turn out too. So good to see so many people out enjoying the sun and the procession.