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Is there a good way to build up your weak hand heel toe and slap while playing.


thanks


Ian

Practice, practice, practice so you do it naturally and effortless. (I practice it everywhere so my hands do not get "rusty." It annoys some people...but again...that's me).

Saludos

Raymond wrote:Practice, practice, practice so you do it naturally and effortless. (I practice it everywhere so my hands do not get "rusty." It annoys some people...but again...that's me).

Saludos

Yeah, it helps when you have a desk job. My desk is a nice practice surface no doubt.

Try a one handed tumbao to strengthen your weak hand - heel, toe, slap, toe, heel, toe, tone, tone. Start slowly, that's the important thing, then try to go for five minutes at a comfortable pace. Then up the pace a little, hold for 30 seconds and come back to the comfortable speed. Lather, rise, repeat.

Try this exercise...

h h t h h t
L R R L R R etc.

Then this...

h h t t h t
L R R L R R etc.

After this switch the hands over.
Concentrate on getting each stroke to sound even.

Hope this helps.

Fish

I LOVE IT!....all Great advice.....what can I say?......JC JOHNNY CONGA...

One teacher once told me that while doing any kind of excercise and to achive perfect sound balance between both hands (L R), you have strike the conga a little bit harder with your weaker hand. Anyway I love Changuito´s excercise ####, slap,open,muff. Also, it´s an excellent excercise to play normal tumbao with the tumba (or conga, if you play quinto - conga) on your weaker side. And if you have the patience, you can try all the ryhtms you know played this way. This will help you also to develop left hand transition and movility, if you are planning to play with three or four drums.
Good luck and... practice!!!!!! thas the ONLY way.

What you want to do is try this basic funky pattern in which the hands mirror each other - I made it up myself, I'm sure many others have come up with something similar:

h t h t o h t s h t h t o h t s

[r r l l r l l r l l r r l r r l] and repeat!

Then put any variation in you like, e.g. substitute last six strokes for

o o s s o o

[r l r l r l]


Simon B

I'v been doing the following one-handed exercise that my teacher gave me. I take special care not to be slopply with the first slap and making sure that it sounds like the following slaps which aren't preceeded by heel-toe.

h t h t h t h t s s s s s s s s

( 4 pairs of h/t followed 8 slaps )

also, I'm not sure how common this is (or not) for everyone else out there but my teacher emphasizes that "heel" is really a "palm" quite similar to the bass tone. The only difference being the the palm is not centered on the head as is the bass tone. This teaching is consitent with Changuito's "Evolution" video/booklet (the booklet uses the term "palm", not "heel") and I believe it improves sound quality. However, I have observed that when playing at high speeds the palm becomes a heel motion... even for the great players like Changuito.

chris



Edited By CongaCaja on July 08 2003 at 03:01

I learned that practicing some basic rhythms left handed, if you are rigth handed, and viceversa for left handers, significantly improve and speed up the learning process of your weak side.

I learned this tip from Alan Dworsky book, "A beginners guide ...". Hope I got Alan last name correct.

Hope it helps,

KinoConga