Bongo Drums Tutorial

Bongo drums are a pair of hand drums: One small on your left side, and one big on your right side. You play with both hands: l and r for left and right on the small drum, L and R for left and right on the big drum. The "normal" way to strike is to bounce off near the border; the flat version (underline, lrLR) keeps the hand on the drum, and the silent version (strikethrough, lrLR) is just the fingertips staying on the drum.

Drum sets

All tacts are 4/4 and counted "one and two and three and four and". But in reality, nobody strictly adheres to 4/4; in every one of the videos below you can hear dramatic mini pauses between notes (called "syncopation"), otherwise it would sound somewhat mechanical.

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• rlrlrlRl - Calypso with Al Dworsky [vid]
• rrR-llRR - easy1/5 with Kalani [vid]

Some drum sets have double length.

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• r-rlrlrlRlRlrlrl - groove2/2 with Al Dworsky [vid]

Faster drum sets use a 16er spacing, not an 8er.

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• R-l-R-llRl-lR-ll - Samba 2/2 with Mikhail Nikolaev [vid]

Hope you have fun drumming!