The Bongo Book Paperback – June 15, 1997

This book is a good introduction to the bongos. It is well written and covers many styles. I didn't use the audio files much because many audios are grouped together in the same file. But he does have some videos on YouTube. It would be great if the book were updated with videos for each exercise.

Well written book, easy to read. Full of bongo rhythms and variations. Ideal size and shape to put on a stand to practice.The downside: The stroke pictures are really bad, useless for beginners.If you're like me, beginner and want to learn alone, I suggest start watching some videos. and then buy this book. Video and book complement each other. But a book puts you at a higher level.Musical notation looks hard to understand, but the included CD makes it easier. Once you learn notation, your evolution becomes faster. Trust me!

It offers decent instruction, especially for anyone with some ability to read musical notation. Amazon’s description is accurate. The forty printed pages of martillo variations, rhythms, fills and exercises are succinctly and clearly demonstrated with the Audio-CD tracks. No elaborations, just cut and dry.The really, really poor production quality of the photos showing hand positions and technique is shameful; these black and white pictures are just a very narrow range of dull shades of grey requiring careful reading of the narrative and a good deal of imagination. Twelve of the sixty-four pages are relegated to biographical sketches by question and answer interviews with Costanzo, Peraza, Mangual and Camero; somewhat interesting if you get bored or your hands tire.

This is a good primer for Bongo's, understand that this is a afro-latin, Hispanic instrument and the applied rules are steeped deeply in those roots. And, this instruction delves the musician in exactly those techniques at the root level. It will require study and lots of time to incorporate the presented material into ones muscial psyche. The CD has become a staple of instruction material as of late, and that is the GOOD news. A great teaching aid and one (perhaps the only one for Bongo) which should not be ignored. The tools are here. Like all musical studies just add diligence and practice time and you won't be disappointed.

This book came recommended as being more concise than any other book on bongo drumming and I have to agree. The explanations are clear and easy to follow. The Included CD gives you the sounds you are learning clearly. The author definitely has experience playing bongos and is not just some "confirmed" expert by his own definition. I like how he uses different types of notation to explain the sounds. An overall great book for anyone needing a comprehensive guide that is easy to learn.

This book contains pages and pages of variations for the Martillo pattern. You can realy only benefit if you read music or tablatures pretty well. In that case the book is very useful for adding variety to your accompanyment or for creating solos.

This is an overlooked instrument and there isn't too much material out there to cover it. The effort alone is respectable, however the result is lacking. There isn't enough about acquiring the techniques and the correct sounds.It feels like the author is mainly looking for online students that will pay per lessons.

They are excellent for beginners and sound great!

Tutor books come in different styles, some very informal and humourful, others very dry and earnest... and a whole heap in between... this book falls squarely into the dry and earnest group. It's clear the author knows his stuff and can play it, but surely drums should be more fun than this?!!So 90% of the tuition part of the book is given over to a couple of hundred examples of different two measure latin rhythms. They are played on the CD too... but there's nothing else on the CD: no backing tracks to play against, just example after example after example of two bar rhythms. Each is played just once on the CD - but don't you really need to hear them repeated several times in order to get their feel? There's very little tuition in the book beyond these endless examples... you are told that you can get different sounds from each drum by hitting it in different ways, but these techniques aren't introduced gradually but all at once, on just one page, with the briefest explanations of each, alongside low quality black and white pictures. You'd have to want to learn very badly to master these skills with them presented in this way... so I'm just focussing for the moment on learning a handful of the key rhythms and maybe I'll build from there - but it would take an age to learn them all by heart... and another age to know when to use them - but there's no advice on that.In fact only about half the book's 64 pages are actual tuition (there's 12 pages of interviews with players and also a lengthy glossary and index) and most of those tuition pages are just lines and lines and lines of those two bar rhythms. As this is quite a critical review, it's only fair to point out that lots of people on the US Amazon site (www.amazon.com) reviewed this book very highly, but one or two did feel like me. If you go to that site, you can "look inside" the book and then you'll know what I mean about all the non-tuition stuff it contains (though you do see the first tuition pages too, but be warned, these are by far the best, you don't see the endless pages of dry examples).Anyway, in summary, the book's title made it sound fun and relaxed, but I's disappointed, because it's not and I think learning the bongos should be. I will get some basic basics out of it, but it's way too dry for me to go beyond that. But if that's the style of tutor you like and you're prepared to work harder at it than I am, then go for it: the author certainly knows his stuff and the book would be useful to those who know the fundamentals and simply want to build more rhythms... but for me, I just want to have a play and develop into a competent beginner... and for that I need to find something a bit more user friendly and fun.

Book it says, more like a magazine? not many pages. Not sure if the content is good or not as its for a xmas present.

The kindle edition does not allow scaling. This means that it is unreadable on small format devices. I cannot comment on content yet. I have now ordered the paperback edition.

Great information just like others say The photos in this book are beyond bad,Really needs to be updated with better photos , the ones in the book are b&w and really faded .

I am very pleased