Conga Tuning and Son Clave Challenges

[Bongo Boy]

I recently retuned my congas...and think I have them tuned a P4 apart. Does it sound that way to you? Thanks for the help.

[potshot]

Bongo... nothing to do with the topic, sorry, my ear training is virtually non existent. But you know when you see a movie of a book you've read, and they get the wrong actor, and it's just not right because the person you're seeing isn't the person you imagined. Well, now I have that with your voice... nothing wrong with your voice, it just doesn't fit my imagination! :p

Ok, I'll take my ravings elsewhere...

[Koala]

Hey Bongo, first of all im just surprised to know you have congas, never wouldve thought of it. Second, yes thats a P4, and some nice sounding congas.

[Koala]

IM sorry Bongo but i just couldnt help myself, your mp3 was just inspiring,heres a tuning aid in case youre ever in doubt again. :)


-DJ KOALA-

[Bongo Boy]

...LOL. Perfect!! That's now my new intro for ALL of my Las Vegas Carribbe! shows in the future. :D


..of course, I'll cut you in on the deal.

[Bongo Boy]

...and you know, when white boys from Michigan get to messing with the clave, you can bet they'll f**k things up pretty bad. But when they attempt to put a 3/2 clave with a slapless tumbao (because it overloads my mix) AND try to add a kinda 60s bass line and can't move too much on the fretboard, THIS is the chaos you get!!!

[Koala]

LOL Bongo, I must admit Im surpried by your knowing what clave and tumbao mean lol, not many white boys from michigan do.lol I have to be a pest and say the clave was way off :D.
just to add some closure to the post, I thought our musical explorations would raise a bit more interest lol :)

[Bongo Boy]

I must admit Im surpried by your knowing what clave and tumbao meanClearly I don't! I think way off is a bit of an understatement. I STILL can't figure out what the heck I was doing. Utter chaos. I've never been able to do a clave with a foot pedal and put a tumbao on top of it (at the same time)...just got no ritmo. But I thought it would be easier to do 'em separately and mix; not so!

I'll just have to dig out my Bobby Sanabria tapes again.

[Bongo Boy]

Well Duh. A good part of the problem is that I wasn't playing a clave at all (either 3/2 or 2/3), by my understanding--regardless of where I placed that 'rhythm'. I have the '3' coming on the beat (well, almost), and I'm attempting to syncopate the '2'--bass-ackwards. So, it's poor execution of an incorrect rhythm--a lot of fun, but not a recipe for success in the local salsa band. :)

Thanks Koala...but in defense of the entire Afro-Cuban rhythmic universe you really should have been more brutal! Anyway, I have to use this forum as a surrogate for playing in front of others live, and I think it provides a similar 'sting' of total embarassment that serves so well as a learning aid. :)

I did NOT grow up with this stuff playing the streets, obviously. Back to work!

[Bongo Boy]

Well okay so I got out my conga videos and other dusty materials and was shocked to realize that I'd never practiced doing a tumbao over a standard 3/2 son clave. You got your golpes and your ponches to keep straight, after all. :)

So here's another attempt. This is your basic tumbao with two open tones which are supposed to occur on beat 4 of the 2nd bar of the two-bar pattern. The single open hit is supposed to happen on the ponche, in this case, the last beat of bar 1 of the two-bar pattern, coincident with the 3rd clave click in the set of three.

The clave this time is a MIDI because my foot and my jam block just couldn't lay down a reliable ritmo, man. Thanks again to Koala for highlighting the outrageous blasphemy of my first attempt! My hat is off to anyone who has developed the independence to do this with a jam block--I sure can't.

[Bongo Boy]

Originally posted by potshot
you know when you see a movie of a book you've read, and they get the wrong actor, and it's just not right because the person you're seeing isn't the person you imagined. Well, now I have that with your voice...I totally understand, potshot. I'm not the person I would've cast for the role of Me, either--but it was a low-budget play, and my rates were affordable for the producers.

But rest assured: I'm just as much the dumb-*** as I sound!!

[potshot]

Well I didn't understand a single word you said in your previous post, so I'm the dumbass here :p

The only clave I know of is the autoclave type, which I use to ensure my guitar remains free of nasty bacteria :p

[Bongo Boy]

Here is a MIDI file of a "3/2" clave (klah-vay). This is a two-bar pattern in 4/4, with the 2 beats you hear in the 2nd bar occuring on beats 2 and 3 of that bar."Clave is the glue that holds cuban music together." Bobby Sanabria

[Bongo Boy]

...and here is a particularly handsome African-style clave ('clave' is a term for both the instrument and a family of rhythms it is used to produce):

[Koala]

Hey Bongo....you useless piece of michigan rythmless whiteboy trash....LOLOL :D that better, theres the beating you asked for.
To tell ya the truth I couldnt be too harsh on ya, i really am amazed by the fact that you at least know the words clave and tumbao, lol, many people in the music world are not aware of their existence.

I am still to listen to littleconga2 and see how its all coming along, but this puter dont have a soundcard so ill check it out later at the studio or at home.

Its funny you bring up the 2/3 clave, many important people in the world of son cubano, believe only in 3/2, anything apart from that is crap, and youre just playin it backwards, so watch it if youre trying to get into the son world and you play a 2/3, you might get shot lololol.

Actually theres also the rumba clave, but thats another story.

What you quoted about the clave being the glue to cuban music, thats absolutely right, some people find it hard to believe that two little sticks do it all. I played tres cubano (cuban instrument 3 pairs of strings tuned to open D) wiht a son orchestra for a while, and the director, at any time would come up to you and asked for you to sing the clave, if you didnt know where it was, or didnt do it as soon as he said it you were out, he even kicked people off stage on big shows....lol, yes he was evil, but the best pianist ive ever heard.

Ummm one more thing, do you know the cascara? It goes over the clave.... cascara stands for shell, its serves like the clave casing....you hear it a lot played on the rim of the pailas during the chorus of son tunes, better known as montuno.

Ill shut up now

:D

[Bongo Boy]

Thanks for the kind complements :D

I like the rumba clave a lot; because my ears have so much to learn, I need to be told explicitly how to play over these rhythms though (or see it in notation)--just listening isn't enough for me yet. On the other hand, notation certainly isn't enough--I think I've seen at least 2 or 3 different notations for identical 3/2 claves.

You'll probably find my tumbao sounds more like a construction crew removing an old sidewalk than it does a conguero. In part because of no experience, in part because I had just put about a litre of crema de manos on the heads. A bit tacky.

The cascara thing is interesting--myunderstanding is that the words 'cascara' and 'paila' can be used interchangeably to mean the shell of the timbale itself, and 'cascara' is also used to refer to the either the sound of hitting the timbale shell, or the rhythm played on the shell.

So, you're talking about a protective, hard shell that fits over the clave striker itself? I thought English was ambiguous!

[Koala]

Originally posted by Bongo Boy


So, you're talking about a protective, hard shell that fits over the clave striker itself? I thought English was ambiguous!

Yup thats right....check ou J.A`s article on Zen Son!

:D