CONGA SOLOING 101 | PREVIEW

LEARN HOW TO PLAY A CONGA SOLO FROM SQUARE ONE

15 VIDEOS

Now that you’ve had some time to work on developing your fundamentals and you’ve started build up your arsenal of grooves with our first three Conga Courses, its time to take your conga playing to the next level and dive into one of the least covered and most daunting topics when it comes to this instrument, how to take a conga solo!

Its all mapped out in this course from square one. With a focus on developing the strong foundation that every improviser needs, using our sound, ideas, and influences as a vehicle for self expression. All while relying on a few legendary conga solos rooted in the Afro-Cuban percussive tradition, to give us a solid and actionable framework for learning how SPEAK on our instrument. In addition, find an extensive list of exclusive Playlists containing hundreds of seminal and iconic conga solos.

We’ll start the course by learning some essential patterns and phrases much like in our Bongo Courses, to help us develop our rhythmic vocabulary through the use of “locks” and language based phrases deriving from the quinto drum, and their function in respect to the clave. This’ll help us not only strengthen our sense of time and pulse, but also give us a solid frame work and reference points, to help us develop of our musical ideas. We’ll then work on some short phrases based on eighth notes, triplets, and sixteenths, how to create variations on them using different sounds, shapes, and displacements, and later how to combine them to create longer, more fluid phrases. Lastly we’ll put it all together as we breakdown and analyze some of my favorite conga solos, and do our best to piece together what they all share in common.

This course is designed to help you learn how to develop a conga solo from square one, but it also assumes that you’ve spent some time developing basic fundamentals on the instrument, such as your sound, technique, and the ability hold down a groove while keeping a steady pulse. So if you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to spend some time with our Congas 101, Conga Fundamentals, and Groove Toolbox Course, working lesson by lesson, as that’ll give you a great foundation for everything we’ll work in on this course.

So get ready to dive deep into the roots of the language of this incredible instrument with the most comprehensive guide ever put together in our Conga Soloing 101 Course!

In This Course We'll Work on:

• Building our rhythmic vocabulary from square one

• The essential quinto “lock” and how to use it to develop solo phrases

• Language based solo phrases and how to combine and expand on them

• Classic sixteenth note and triplet based conga chops

• Analyzing four iconic conga solos with full PDF transcriptions

• Getting in the minds of our favorite conga players and soloists

• And SO MUCH more...

Let's get started!!!