How to Slap & Mute a Conga

Video Transcript

"RYAN LARSON: All right. So, now we're going to go over some more basic techniques, slapping and muting. Now, a lot of conga playing--especially if you're playing in--with just a guitar, there's some nice, sentimental atmosphere, you want to just play light and you don't want to project as much. So, you want to just--a lot of musicians just keep one hand on there. And for a slap, just keep it muted. And if you loosen your hand and slowly pick it up, you can get different color tones. So, I'm changing the amount of pressure I put on the head. So, I'm muting it and you get more of a slap tone out of it. You can mute with just one hand too by putting a hand here and going--so it's kind of a lazy technique. So, just play it like your hands are heavy. Notice, my hands are straight like this, really slouched. And you can get different ring tones out of the middle too by--so there's all these different color tones you can get out of the instrument by applying your hands in different pressures, in different positions on the instrument."