congaplace.com

Hi,

So I started playing congas 6 months ago, but have been playing drums for 15 years or so. I play congas in a band, and it sounds fine to me on the recordings. But here's my problem, every time I play a fast song the skin on the middle and index fingers of my right hand cracks and opens, yesterday I was literally bleeding on my skins.

Is this normal? What am I doing wrong? Any piece of advice

Thanks in advance,

./\lex.

Well speed on the drum has nothing to do with your skin...you might want to try putting on some skin cream for your hands before playing....i have been playing for 45 years and my fingers still split and crack even with skin cream...so use one inch bandaids for your fingers when playing ..i also do that...this may help you..."JC" Johnny Conga

Ouch!

Santababeech! I hate those splits!
They happen to most all players from time-to-time. The more you play (hopefully executing good hand technique), the more calloused you hands and fingers become, the less likelihood of splits. I concur with brother JC, taping your fingers, or applying some creme, lotion, palm oil to your hands before playing will help decrease the chances quite a bit.

I think that there is an old thread on this subject here somewhere. Either way, I carry a small container of palm oil when I play out and apply it liberally on my hands and congas when I play. This also decreases the desire of other congueros who aren't familiar with this, to want to sit in and play my drums, he! he! he!

Suave!

Onile!

Ah! Memories - Those were the days. Playing in the park all night with bleeding hands - blood on the heads. Then showing off with my taped up fingers pretending to be Candito. But, not anymore. No sense-numbing substances, using hand cream, hitting carefully and not too hard. No more bloody hands for me - but, I sure miss those days.

Hi Alex,
As you have only been playing for 6 months I think it's likely your technique (or lack thereof) is damaging your hands.
Before you even think about using creams and tape and everything else - you should first learn better technique on the congas.
Try and find someone to study with who really knows what they are doing on the congas. They can show you how to play without damaging your hands (depending on where you live maybe you can find a teacher from congaplace).
There are ways of playing the drum where instead of injuring yourself, the force you apply to the drum head goes into creating sound... instead of injuring your fingers.
I have seen players in Africa and in Cuba who can play the very drum hard and loud when needed, they can also get the most amazing sounds out of the drum without their hands bleeding or being injured.
BTW most of them even have fairly soft skin on their hands - and they are heavy weight hitters and players. Look at Giovanni Hidalgo as just one well known example.

I liken it to learning to walk: if you slammed your feet or toes into the ground you will likely injure yourself, however if you learn to walk properly, then later you will be able to run for miles and run fast if you want to.
Pavlo

+1 on technique. You say the problem is worse after playing fast songs. That tells me you are not hitting the drum right. 6 months playing time is very short to be playing with a band already. When you are on stage you don't think about technique, so you need to practice a lot to make sure you hit the drum correctly without thinking about it. When you practice at home (which you should be doing every day), slow it way down. As an exercise, practice playing your tones and especially slaps softer and softer. Try to get the clearest, purest, most musical, and loudest sounds playing as soft as possible. Once you can get good clean slaps using just the weight of your hand falling on the drum, you can start to practice a little faster and a little harder, but you will find you don't need to play much harder at all to get slaps almost as loud as when you slam the skin hard. You reach a point of diminishing returns pretty quickly, and staying below that saves your hands (and your ears). If you can't be heard over the band with soft to moderate slaps in the rooms you play in, you need a good mic, placed in the right location, with the right gain settings on the PA. It is likely that just playing harder, without a mic, you still won't be heard well, and you risk injuring your hands. Some drummers like Mongo Santamaria developed hard hitting styles so they could project over an amplified band. Hitting hard was popular with audiences, but Mongo paid a heavy price for playing so hard, he had many problems with his hands for most of his career. Technique, technique, technique, and a good mic, for amplified bands.

All good advice i reckon . I played in a large rock type group for years and had endless problems being heard .One thing that always pissed me off was the total ignorance of sound engineers who would mic up each and every drum of the drum set including toms , bass drum , cymbals and snare , then move to timbales ! By the time he got to me he would say " Oh ive only got 1 mic left for the congas " and i was sometimes using 4 drums . Just total ignorance as to what it takes to play these drums , i see it as an overall strange attitude towards hand drumming in general , its almost looked down upon by other musicans and sound engineers alike In the end i just put my foot down and said ok fair enough im off home and as it was a santana tribute act they couldnt go on without me so i got my way

Despite my calluses I always tape in the winter in the dry cold air to avoid nasty splits. The technique comment is right. One slap practice I've used: work on slaps with your hand starting no more than a couple of inches above the head, even reducing that distance as you start producing crisper notes. The other thing I have done to avoid the sound-tech issue when gigging is purchase of a small 4 channel mixer for my mics, giving the sound tech or the power amp only one premixed input. If you can spring for some clip-on mics and a mixer it will go far to bring you level up while simultaneously saving your hands.

CongaTick wrote:Despite my calluses I always tape in the winter in the dry cold air to avoid nasty splits. The technique comment is right. One slap practice I've used: work on slaps with your hand starting no more than a couple of inches above the head, even reducing that distance as you start producing crisper notes. The other thing I have done to avoid the sound-tech issue when gigging is purchase of a small 4 channel mixer for my mics, giving the sound tech or the power amp only one premixed input. If you can spring for some clip-on mics and a mixer it will go far to bring you level up while simultaneously saving your hands.

I hear what your saying about the mics etc but these were pretty large venues with lots of decent equiptment and out of principal i wouldnt bring my own , instead choosing to make the engineer do his job properly and take the congas seriously instead of the usual " oh how many bongos do you have " .Ive been gigging for 16 /17 years and it dosent seem to be any clearer to them

I hear ya. My nickname in my groups is "Bongo Boy", the running joke being all the people who come up after a gig and compliment me on my "bongo playing" or occasionally those "cool congos". Always assume that your sound needs will get no respect and prep for that. Anyway, not to hijack thread into amping--- best of luck...

Hi Congatick and Niall,
Bros, seems like it's the same all around the world - percussionists usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to being miked up and getting sound needs met. Last gig I played the sound guy wasn't even going to mic me up - "...because they might get noise complaints from neighbouring buildings..." (?) Yet bass, guitars and keyboard were all amplified. Go figure! I had to insist they mic me up.
CT even down here in Australia people still call 'em 'bongos' and 'congos'.

cheers and drum on
Pavlo

my hijack ends here

In addition to the discussion on proper technique….

I’m no skin care expert, but some years ago, when I suffered from cracked skin on hands, (unrelated to drumming, mostly from working outside in dry cold), someone told me the best time to apply moisturizer to hands was not when they are already dry (although that helps)…. but when they are wet.
…really wet…saturated wet…like when you get out of the shower or bath.
At that point your surface skin cells have a high moisture content, and the objective of most moisturizers is to retain the moisture your skin cells are holding.

Putting moisturizer (oil, cream, emollients, lotions, etc) on dry hands just before playing helps keeps dry hands from drying any further, and lubricates skin, but if the idea is to retain moisture in the skin cells, the best time to do it is when the skin has a high moisture content.

Try putting a dollop of your favorite moisturizing product on you hands immediately after showering (as well as before hand drumming).
A regular regimen of after shower treatments can yield some long term results.
I’ve got calluses, but haven’t split my skin since.

A short article on moisturizing.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/moisturizers/SN00042

Joseph you are exactly right, the best time to apply skin creams and lotions is after bathing or showering, washing dishes, or washing your hands. Good article from Mayo Clinic. The skin creams and lotions are better at preventing rapid moisture loss in dry air than at actually moisturizing the skin. Think about a conga skin, soak it in oil for days and it doesn't get much softer. Soak it in water for a few hours and it becomes soft and pliable. Water softens better.
Urea is a very useful ingredient to prevent dry skin from the dry winter air. The urea actually gets into the skin cells and actively draws water into the cells. Although this is the same urea molecule found in urine, the urea in skin creams like Eucerin is synthesized in laboratories, not derived from actual animal or human urine. The age-old wisdom of drummers urinating on their hands to keep the skin soft is physiologically valid, and has been utilized by the pharmaceutical companies in producing urea based skin moisturizing creams and lotions. The modern method is a bit more hygienic, especially when in social situations. Look at the actual ingredients list, eg, some formulations of Eucerin contain urea and some don't. You want the one with urea.

Try sport tape!
Get some of that cloth sport tape from any sport supply store or even the bandage/tape supply area of many other stores.
Forget the medical supply kind of tapes and get the sport tape.
Don't get any fancy waterproof stuff ... I'm talking about the same tape used to wrap hockey sticks and stuff like that.
It's typically white ... but I've also seen black and bright blue.
It is thin, easy to tear, and is form fitting so wrap it carefully and it conforms to every knuckle.
It comes in two-inch wide rolls with about a 3 inch diamer.
You can roll it onto your fingers full width or you can easily tear it into thinner strips, down to a 1/4 if you like, to custom wrap just a portion of a finger or an old injury.
It takes about three layers to hold and protect you ... it sticks to itself better than it sticks to your finger.
It won't stick to your skin at all if any lotion residue is present.
Typically two rolls come in a package for three bucks or so.
All that advice on lotion is good too ... but the tape is an easy quick fix.
Tape up before you play ... before you are injured ... practice preventive medicine.

That said, the tape best works to prevent cracking along the fingers. If you roll it onto the finger too close to the hand, it may bunch up and just become a foreign object between your skin and your drum making things worse. So with the location of your cracks, tape may not help. But check it out ... it works great to prevent finger-tip cracks and mid-finger cracks. The sport tape is also washable on your hands and dries quickly. So if you tape up carefully for a session, you can still go regularly about activities that come up, and then go back to playing.

Cheers!
BMac