Have Fun Playing Hand Drums: A Book and Cd for Playing the Djembe, Conga, and Bongo Drums

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book and CD for learning and playing along with
Review: As a teacher of hand drumming to kids, I found this book to be a wonderful guide/reference for breaking down playing and rhythm concepts for kids. You could teach the book as-is sequentially as a course, or pull from different parts as you choose.

Rating:
Summary: Serves its purpose well!
Review: As a teacher of hand drumming to kids, I found this book to be a wonderful guide/reference for breaking down playing and rhythm concepts for kids. You could teach the book as-is sequentially as a course, or pull from different parts as you choose.

Rating:
Summary: This is a book for beginning hand drummers.
Review: Have Fun Playing Hand Drums was written especially for hand drummers who want to learn how to play proper tones and creative rhythms on conga, bongo, and djembe drums. This book also teaches basic rhythmic principals such as downbeats, upbeats, multi-part rhythms, and soloing approaches. A unique type of box notation makes reading music very user-friendly and is an excellent introduction to understanding traditional notation. If you have a hand drum but have never really figured out the proper playing approach, I invite you to check out this book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book and CD for learning and playing along with
Review: The book is well illustrated and the accompanying CD is excellent for learning and playing along with - the exercises are played several times so you can get the feel of the sound and practice with the CD. The exercises and patterns are carefully graduated. There are also a number of play-along tracks to get more experience. I would also recommend this book for players of other instruments to get a good grounding in rhythm sense. This book followed by Richie Gajate-Garcia's "Play Bongos & Hand Percussion Now" is the best course for learning bongos I know of. Gajate-Garcia's book will take you to more complex rhythms and patterns useful for nearly every setting.

Rating:
Summary: Not for experienced musicians.
Review: This is probably a good book for children and/or complete musical novices, but those with even minimal musical experience might better look elsewhere.