Isla Percussions New Location - Belize

    I have several drums by Isla Percussions, run by Mario Punchard, and I love playing them. They have a unique feel and wonderful sound. Previously Mario Punchard's shop was located in Los Angeles but Mario Punchard has now relocated Isla Percussions to Belize, as I wrote about previously in Vaya con dios Isla Percussions.

   Mario Punchard's passion for the music and his drive and ambition to obtain the most beautiful and authentic sound caused him to pursue access to honduran mahogany, the original wood of the conga drum. This has led Mario Punchard to relocate his entire Isla Percussions operation to the country of Belize in order to obtain this goal. Well now Mario Punchard and Isla Percussions are up and running and making instruments. Isla Percussions now has a new website, with new information regarding Isla Percussions instruments and ordering them as well. It must be a very exciting and rewarding time for Isla Percussions. I wish Mario Punchard and Isla Percussions all the best.

  Visit the new Isla Percussions Website

Afro Blue Project

    This is a little recording I made with my friend and excellent flautist Oliver Hunt. I've always appreciated Mongo Santamaria and his version of his classic composition Afro Blue. I wanted to gain some more recording experience and also make my own version of this song. In this version I am playing a bembe rhythm on 3 congas with a few varations. I leave the improvisation to the flute as I wanted to keep the song simple. Making the recording was a lot of fun, and I learned a little more about micing instruments and mixing digitally.

Anyways, here is my amateur recording of Afro Blue and my first try at sharing a recording with Divshare.

Let me know how you like it.

Shekere for Sale. - SOLD.

     I'm putting this shekere up for sale. It was intended to be part of a set, but between selling the littlest shekere of the set to my close friend because he REALLY wanted it, and my frustration with beading the middle gourd, it is time for this one to move on.

  This is a really excellent sounding shekere. The open tone has a great voice, and I've used some larger beads that give the shake sound a nice deep and solid sound. This shekere has an old schoolsound, like the shekeres you hear in the Mongo Santamaria recordings on Afro Roots.

  I was able to get this gourd very very clean on the inside. I don't cut my gourds in half to clean them. I painstakingly use a variety of home made tools to clean it. The inside gets a light coat of polyurethane for strength and to increase the volume, but not so much to increase the weight. The outside gets a coat of Danish Oil for protection and to improve the appearance. Finally, the thicker rope with the tassles, kind of a trademark of mine, is there to provide a kind of cushion, to keep your hands from striking the beads when playing an open tone on the bottom. That can be painful

    I take PayPal and ship overseas.

101 Rumba Clave Exercises!

 

 

Well actually it is only 18 rumba clave exercises, but that doesn't make as catchy a title....Anyways I've been working on the 6/8 coordination exercises on Micheal Spiro's The Conga Drummer's Guidebook and I noticed that the book did not have similar exercises for rumba clave! So I made my own. The 6/8 exercises have been challenging and rewarding, and now looking at the rumba clave exercises I just made, well I'm wondering if I've created a monster. Never tested, nor approved by anyone! I'm willing to experiment on you; my faithful readers. You have my permission to copy these distribute them and to knock yourself out practicing them. Please give me feedback on their success, difficulty or failures

Hopefully if you make it through all 18 exercises you'll be able to do something like this; introducing the one the only Piri Lopez Herrera:

The Rebite

Pronounced with a Brazilian accent as "he bee chay" or something similar.

A friend of mine came across a video of a famous Brazilian musician on a Brazilian late night talk show. Anyways, this musician was famous for the pandeiro and gave a demonstration on the show.

Later, the musician being interviewed, pulls out this metal bucket with screws attached to it and starts playing that, which the audience thought was really funny. My friend fell in love with the idea and since I had made him a shekere and had the tools he asked me to give him a hand.

So we used a one gallon paint can which gives a great sound when the bottom is struck, kind of a metallic "prang". I think he's is going to be experimenting with muffling it a bit. The screws give a lovely shaking sound, which changes depending on the direction you shake it.

It was a fun project and ended up really well in a nice little instrument. Kind of a cross between a shekere and a pandeiro. Took about an hour to make and cost less than $10.00. It kind of reminds me of the early metal maracas that Los Munequitos de Matanzas used to use, or some of the funky instruments like car brake drums that they use in Comparsas de Carnaval in Cuba.

You did what??!?

I've been playing out with my set of Skin on Skin congas pretty frequently lately and I missed the fact that they didn't have any handles. So I called up Jay Bereck and his apprentice Josh in New York and asked them about it. Jay Bereck doesn't actually make handles for his congas, but he has installed them on his Skin on Skin congas before. Jay Bereck is always an amazing man to talk to. He told me how Ray Barretto would bring him handles from whatever congas he had just broke or whatever to have installed on Skin on Skin congas Jay had made for him.

Skin on Skin congas are probably the best congas being made. The design is so clean and advanced. So to say it was a bit daunting to drill some holes into my beautiful perfect congas is a bit of an understatement; I was terrified.

Anyways, I eventually found the right handle: a stainless steel handle from Ace Hardware that matched the stainless steel bands the Skin on Skin congas come with, and after some careful measuring and planning the handles went on straight and strong. I guess all those years of Architecture school were worth it, eh?

I'm really happy with how it turned out. I had inspiration and some advice from Mark Sanders over at Fidel's Eyeglasses . He actually had owned a Skin on Skin requinto that he recently sold with a handle installed by Jay Bereck, the only picture I've seen of a Skin on Skin conga with a handle, which encouraged me with my project. I'm kind of wishing I had bought this little drum when he sold it a while back. So cool!

    So my conga project is done, the handles work great, and I'm really happy to have them. It makes moving the congas around much easier. Jay provided me with some really excellent instructions. and I kind of like how they look a little more now. They have an old school look like the Vergara and Junior Tirado congas you see in pictures.

 

Skin On Skin Hand Made Congas

(607) 639-2417

1618 State Highway 41
Afton, NY 13730

A moment of doubt...

Well bloggers, let me tell you something very personal. A month or so ago I was seriously considering giving up the tumbadoras. Now why would I ever consider such a thing? Well, a big part of being a musician is practice, and the congas are a loud instrument, and I was finding it very frustrating to not be able to practice any time I like, as some of my other musician friends can.

I am able to go to Golden Gate park and practice there, but I can't bring my charts or my drum machine. Also the park is a "public" zone, so I have to contend with parents showing their babies the drums, people wanting to chat, or take pictures and worse, the occasional djembe player of dubious ability sitting next to me and tapping away. At home, I wrap a towel around the drums with a bungie cord and practice away, but of course you don't get the real sound. My guitar playing friends and flute playing friends don't have that problem.

What I also found frustrating was the necessity of having so many other people to put together Afro-Cuban folkloric music and rhythms. The congas are also not in such large demand as say a trap-drummer or the guitar. So I was starting to feel limited in places, genres and musics I could play.

So I was considering a switch....to the upright bass. Now the upright bass is a beautiful instrument if ever there was one. A very versatile instrument as well, jazz, bluegrass, rockabilly, classical, Cuban son; well it's a long list. Lots of my favorite musicians are bass players; Charles Mingus and Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez. If you play an upright bass, you are in DEMAND! You have to turn people down because you have too many chances to play.

Well it looked like a good choice, beautful, versatile and quiet enough to play in my San Francisco apartment. I went so far as to join an online bass forum, researched basses suitable for beginners, etc.

So what happened? Why am I still here writing about rumba and congas? Well, I was in the park, practicing some 4/4 rhtyhms; songo and pilon, when this beautiful young couple passing by heard the drums and started dancing. This was a young white couple, dressed casually for a day in the park, but something was up. They knew how to dance! I suspect they have been taking salsa lessons and hitting up the salsa clubs around San Francisco. So there we were, playing at the Conservatory of Flowers, with the palm tress and flower beds in bloom the sound of the congas in the air and the two dancers dancing.

Well I kind of forgot about the bass. I have a lot of respect for that instrument, but in my experience, no other instrument reaches out and grabs people somewhere in their bodies and gets them moving and dancing as the congas do. I've seen it happen time and time again, from respectable businessmen to tragically cool hipsters to homeless bums. There is something about the sound of the congas that compels them, drives them, possesses them (for better or worse!). And that's really why I got into the instrument. It makes the frustration, and even what sometimes feels like persecution, worth it.

And there you have it. I was saved from years of blistered fingers, charts and scales, keys and intervals, strings and bows, and from lugging some huge beast of a bass around town by a couple practicing their dance steps as I played my drums in Golden Gate park.

RE: Guemilere: Study Guide for Afro-Cuban Percussion - A note from Scott Wardinsky

    Visitors to my blog may have come across an earlier post of mine Guemilere: Study Guide for Afro - Cuban Percussion : (Jimenez / Wardinsky). In that post I write about a recording intended for the study of Afro-Cuban rhythms. Today I just received an email regarding that recording from one of its authors, Scott Wardinsky, who asked me to post the following message:

This is Scott Wardinsky writing. The reason it is so hard to find this recording is because we decided it did not meet the artistic or technical level of what we wanted to put out. However many copies managed to leak out after we gave a few away for criticisms. It went viral.

   I have a new, much better project similar to Guemilere but in DVD format with performances as well as instructional tracks. It is called Mabague which Regino told me means Remember or Don't Forget in Lucumi. It features Lazoro Galarraga, Sandy Perez, Teresita Perez, Michael Spiro, Jose Barroso, Nengue Hernandez, Joey de Leon muself and a bunch of other great artists. There are 18 rhythms. Much more comprehensive than the first. With some killer performances that include the singing, dancing and drumming. It includes a booklet with transrciptions, lyrics and photos. It will be out in 3-6 months ( or when I get the $$$ to pay for mastering and manufacturing). In the meantime if you would like to donate to Reginos' estate in Cuba ( his wife and children) for the download available here you can contact me at odua88@yahoo.com.
                   Thanks, Scott Wardinsky

    Scott Wardinksy, also mentions that he appreciates the recognition and does not mind me making the recording available in the manner that I have approached it.

    So thank you very much for your visit and approval Mr. Wardinsky. I am sure my readers will be eager for the release of the new material. I will continue to make the Guemilere recording available for download and I hope my readers will find the generosity to make a donation to Maestro Regino's estate.

The Gourd, The Bead and The Agbe.

   I just finished another shekere for this agbe set of 3 shekeres. The one I just finished is the caja, or lowest pitched shekere. I used the large round beads that sound great. I have one more shekere to finish before this set is done. Traditionally 3 shekeres are used to play for guiro and sometimes bembe. The shekeres are tuned just like drums; high, medium and low. The size of the gourd determines the pitch of the shekeres open tone, I also try to control the pitches with the size and number of beads on the gourds to try and create a higher pitched shake sound for the small shekere and a lower pitched shake for the larger one.

  Anyways, I'm going to be selling this set, if anyone is interested please contact me. I'd like to try and sell it as a complete set of 3. These three gourds have an almost perfect set of open tones when played together, with the tones almost perfect intervals apart. They sound really cool. Also I'm kind of designing them to go together as a set as well. But if they don't sell as a set, I might break it up; or keep them, we'll see.

  This is the last gourd of the set. I know it looks like I haven't started it, but I've actually started it twice, and getting pretty far along too. However, each time there was something I didn't like, either my bead arrangement, or how the beads and net were actually laying on the gourd. There is something a little challenging about the shape of this gourd, that I have to adapt for in beading the net. That gourd really has a nice sound and feel. I'll be finishing it soon, but I was a little frustrated with it, so I moved onto the caja, which came out really well. It's a nice shekere, and this guiro set is going to come out great.

4 Guaguas, Catas or Palitos just finished

  
      Call them what you will, these guaguas (catas) are recently finished. They are sanded, wrapped and just waiting for the coat of Danish Oil to dry. Which might take a little while considering how gloomy and cold it is here in San Francisco.

    Sorry rumberos, but these are all spoken for. The first one on the left is off to a little island in England. The second from the left is going to a rumbero in Phoenix, Arizona and the last two are for me.

    Why do I need two guaguas? Well these instruments take a lot of abuse getting banged on with sticks; even though I do my best to make them durable, they are a natural material after all.

    Also I've been bringing the instruments to the local rumba lately. Congas, claves, campana, shekere and the guagua. Can you imagine how sad this rumbero would be if I showed up without a guagua?

   Now imagine how sad I would be when this rumbero starts playing palitos on the side of one of my tumbadoras instead of the cata because I didn't have a backup!