Tuning and relationship to song key

[Anonimo]

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[vxla]

Sure, the congas can be tuned to some semblance of a specific note. It's an approximation of a specific pitch, but the fundamental note is only slightly more prominent than other partials in the overtone series. Much like timpani, there are many variables that depend on the quality of the specific note one is able to achieve on the drums. However, you'll never get as true of a pitch as you will with other tuned drums (roto-toms, timpani, etc.).

vxla
You can not compare a timpani to a conga drum , a timpani has harmony a conga does not . A timpani is a tuned instrument a conga is what is called an un tuned Instrument. Ask you self when you hit the conga drum does it continue to vibrate or does it stop vibrating after you hit it . A conga drum does not have the resonant to create harmonization. You can tune a conga to a degree but to say a set note ,no

Get from library books I recommend see for your selfs.

Thank you for your advice, but I'm talking about two membranophones (a family that both timpani and congas are a part of). Stewart Copeland of The Police was always known for tuning his snare drums to the pitch of a particular song in recording--I propose that a snare drum has an even shorter duration than most conga tones.

However, your terminology is incorrect. A single membranophone will never produce "harmony" itself as harmony requires two distinct fundamental pitches (by most western music definitions). I can definitely produce close to a harmonic interval by tuning two congas near to specific pitches. Further, a conga resonates differently based on the environment it is in...but it *does* resonate.

A conga resonates a specific sound in which many of the partials above the fundamental pitch are prominent. Please stop recommending books without doing the research yourself, first.

Thanks.

[Anonimo]

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[vxla]

I think you need to do more research . Know you are talking snare drums , A drum that has a snare batter and resonant heads on it for only one objective, to
resonate the snares ,

You are correct. The snare drums batter head is another example of a membranophone.

A conga has one head which is considered a batter ,There for there is no harmonic pitch. So read a few books and then come back with an intelligent
response.

Any frequency produced by a vibrating mechanism has pitch.

If the best conga play's in the world, have not been able to produce harmony from a conga drum what make you an authority in saying such, yet you are looking for teacher's to teach you the instrument. If GReat conga Players like Mongo, Patato, Giovanni, Tata, Almando, Candito, and the list goes on and on have not been able and Mind, these are greats. They have created melody's with the drum's and this take at less 4 to 5 drums but never a harmony .You need to do your home work, Then Come back with an intelligent response.

You've now just contradicted what you've said... previously you said that congas cannot be tuned to a particular pitch. Yet now you claim they can be. Two pitches equals harmony...at least to the rest of us.

''You Quoted ""(a family that both timpani and congas are a part of)'' Yes they are part of what is called the Percussion Family. One is a tune instrument the other an UN tuned yet of the same family you hit them both making them Percussion instruments. You really need to read these books. As a person that is a beginner in conga paying you should find out the dynamic's of the instrument Before you comment .

When did you decide I'm a beginning percussionist? I'm not.

What are tuned and Un tuned instruments: Percussion family can be divided into two children, or branches, tuned & non-tuned.. Tuned means the tones of the instruments produce particular notes of the musical alphabet &/or contain a musical scale. Xylophones & vibraphones are examples of tuned percussion; generally, they possess all notes of the musical alphabet, A-Ab, the entire chromatic scale. Steel pan, chimes, gongs & bells are also tuned percussion instruments.

You're contradicting yourself again. Above, you write that there are conga players who are able to tune drums.

Which story are you standing by, "Leedy2"? Are congas not tunable to a specific pitch? Or are they? How about clearing that up for us?

[jorge]

Leedy2, you have to admit that a conga drum can be tuned to different pitches. That is why we have drums with tuning lugs. I think the confusion going on here reflects a lack of precision about the word pitch. Pitch is fairly well understood by the physicists, who have analyzed it in great mathematical detail, and Helmholz wrote the classic book on perception of tone over 100 years ago. Even so, you are correct in the gist of what you are saying, the pitch of a natural skinned conga drum is not well defined. It is clearly not a simple single frequency sine wave. It includes many harmonics, as well as other pitches that are not mathematically harmonic frequencies. The fundamental frequency (I mean the lowest of the mixture of different frequencies, not the bass note of the drum) may or may not be louder than some of the other frequencies. A good skin will give a pretty well defined fundamental note, and can be perceived as low, medium, or high pitched, and we often say a drum is tuned too low or too high and change the tuning. The exact pitch of the fundamental, again, is not as clearly defined as say, a violin note or a trumpet note. The vibrating string has a well defined single fundamental pitch and other harmonics. Same with a resonating column of air in a tube like a trumpet. A circular drum skin has many unevennesses, due to thickness variations, vein impressions in the skin, differences in tension across the diameters in different directions, imperfect circular shape of the drum shell bearing edge, differences in flexibility and water and oil content of different areas of the skin, and other variables. For these reasons, it is not a perfectly isotropic (even in all directions) membrane and can resonate at several different fundamental frequencies plus harmonics of those frequencies.

Richard Feynman, the Nobel laureate physicist who also played congas, worked out the equations of motion of a drum skin many years ago. Although he was a hell of a lot better physicist than conga player, others have taken it further and elaborated on his mathematical solutions and described the first 14 modes of vibration of an ideal membrane (eg, figure 3.6 in chapter 3 of Fletcher and Rossing "Physics of Musical Instruments, 2nd Ed"). A vibrating drum skin is not an ideal membrane, it has characteristics of a stiff vibrating plate as well, which has different modes of vibration. In addition, the cavity of the drum has a strong influence on the vibration of the skin as well as the sound that is emitted from the bottom hole of the drum. So you can see many factors that make the pitch of a conga a mixture of different notes.

Even so, most of us can hear a piano note and a conga note and tell whether one is higher than the other. In this way, we can tune most congas to specific pitches. When you listen to some recordings, you can hear the conga in good harmonic tune with the bass, piano, and other instruments. In other recordings it is very dissonant and does not sound good. In a live playing situation, sometimes the room acoustics make it difficult to hear from the stage how the pitch fits or doesn't fit.

So bottom line, I disagree with some of what Leedy2 is saying, and think that most great conga players would agree that a conga drum can be tuned, approximately, to a given pitch of a piano or bass, and can be in tune or out of tune with a particular chord progression of a song.

[Anonimo]

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[vxla]

Do You know physicist are people that are look for ways to drive you crazy with Ideas that do not exist so they keep working at thing that later have no results.

Physics of sound is a proven phenomenon since ancient Greece. Those "crazy ideas" led to the development and refinement of every single instrument we play, today. In your world, does the Universe revolve around the Earth, too?

[bongosnotbombs]

I remember as a young teenager enjoying playing the timpani in junior high. I recall some songs would require different tunings in different sections. My school had pedal tuned timpani; you pressed the pedal to change the pitch, and there was an indicator on the side telling you what pitch the drum was at, A, B, G etc. I can see in the studio using the practice of tuning the drum to a certain pitch for a given song, but in a live performance situation given the congas construction, it would be very challenging to tune the drums for a given song.

[tigre77]

Disclaimer: I speak mostly theory and from what I have read on this post and elsewhere. Reading the responses is informative but exhaustive at the same time. I have no formal music training, granted. I gather (speaking in terms of conga tuning) that the width of your tuning between drum A & B is dependent on the number of band members and put to a more complicated equation what instruments they are playing. In a quartet a hand percussionist has more leeway to widen the range of their A/B drum tuning, further apart. When there is a larger number of band members, for instance a 14 piece band, the drummer must narrow his scope of drum tuning so as to not clash with other instruments yet being distinctive in their own subtle way to where an appreciative listener will be able discern the overall tonal ranges individually. In otherwords, there is no definitive answer to the post of what fits in the song in a pleasurable sounding way. Ultimately music is art and individuality within the frame of cohesiveness under the umbrella of a band. I might be wrong but this is what I understand. Less members more tuning leeway, more instruments less tuning division.

Tigre77

[jorge]

Leedy2, can you hear when the tres dos and the tumbador are the same pitch? How about after you tune up the tres dos and it sounds higher than the tumbador?

[elolotsa]

In my 20+ yrs of tumba/congo playing, i have come to believe that tuning congas to the music is not that necessary.I find it alittle awkward that everything has to almost sound the same.Infact i tune my congos to my liking of the tone on that day.There is other/some music chords tha need tunning but most i would rather not do it.

[Jerry Bembe]

I agree this type of tuning is primarily a studio thing and not for everybody. In the live setting tuning to the acoustics of a room and to blend with the other instrumentation is most commonly the case rather than the key.

Before amplified bass, bass drums were the only way for bass to be heard in a big band setting. These bass drums were tuned. The tuning would fluctuate due to skin being skin but it would still fill the role well.

Enjoy your own method for tuning.

[Anonimo]

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[jorge]

So we agree that you can tune a conga to a higher pitch or lower pitch, judged by comparing with another conga. What we are hearing is not one single frequency but a mixture of different frequencies, with one being the main sound, what you are calling "distortion". Changing the tension (or back in the Sterno days, the dryness/humidity content) of the skin changes the frequencies of the main sound and all the other sounds. Someone with a good ear for pitch can pick out the main frequency of the conga and compare it with a much "cleaner" sounding note played on a piano or bass. By playing a note on the other instrument and judging if the conga sound is higher or lower or the same pitch, we can tune the conga skin so its main pitch matches that of the other instrument. When it matches, we can say that the conga is tuned to the note of the other instrument. Of course you are right that this is not as exact a tuning as tuning a bass to a piano, for example, but you can hear if the conga is in tune or out of tune with the particular note. Up close, like when you are the one playing the conga, it is even more difficult to hear the main frequency, because all the other frequencies (some louder than others) are happening at the same time and interfering with your perception of the main frequency. Maybe this is what you are referring to as "un tuned". Out in the audience, you don't really hear the other softer frequencies, you just hear the main one, and the perception of pitch is easier and clearer.

Some pitches of the tuning are more resonant with the shell of the particular drum, so it seems that each drum "likes" certain tuning pitches better than others. This is because the resonant notes of the drum shell, which don't change when you tighten or loosen the skin, reinforce the sound of the skin when it is tuned to certain notes, and work against the skin when it is tuned to other notes. Barretto, in his quest to be heard over the band, must have figured a bigger drum would make a louder sound. Using a tumba for his conga forced him to tune the skin higher than the resonant pitch of the tumba shell "liked" and the result was that dry hollow tone I think you are referring to. Actually, I think that sound became part of Ray's "sound" for a while, and others have copied or rediscovered it. I actually kind of like the sound, the tone has a shorter sustain and even more ambiguous pitch. I don't use it much because it requires a higher tension on the skin, which I find makes the drum more painful to play for long periods of time every day, and wears out skins faster.

[Anonimo]

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