In today's lesson, I wanna go over a couple of simple ways that we can adapt our one-drum tumbao pattern to two drums.

Now, the most common way we can do this is by adding two low-drum open tones on the "and" of two and beat 3, on the three side of the clave. This is the conga pattern that's used as the basis for what's often played in the "up" section of son-derived music, which means any musical styles that draw largely from the Afro-Cuban son, such as genres like salsa or timba.

Now, the "up" section of an arrangement can refer to any louder dynamic section, like a coro, a mambo section, or parts of an instrumental solo, where the timbale player moves to playing the contracampana, and the bongo player moves to playing a handheld cowbell. So, let's hear what this conga pattern sounds like as a two-bar phrase in 2-3 clave.

So you can feel free to play your left-hand stroke after the right-hand tumbadora, on the "and" of three, as a slap or a tip. It's really up to you, and how you want the pattern to feel. Of course, we can also work on this same groove as a four-bar phrase, by simply playing the tumbadora once every four bars.

Now, another simple way that we can create a variation on this pattern is by applying some of the concepts for playing our one-drum tumbao "in clave," like we covered in the last lesson. So, let's hear what it sounds like if we use our modern one-drum tumbao from the last lesson as a foundation for this groove. We'll play three bars of the modern one-drum tumbao, then the same tumbadora pattern we just worked on, to create a four-bar phrase.

I decided to keep the two open tones in bar four, after playing the tumbadora, just as a matter of personal preference. You can certainly play just a single open tone on beat four instead, like we did in the second bar, or only play an open tone on the "and" of four. These choices are ultimately something that we'll start to develop a feel for the more we listen to and analyze different players and recordings, and begin to expand our musical language as we build our own personal taste.

So let's work on one more pattern that can help us play this two-drum groove more comfortably at a bit faster tempo. So, to make it a bit easier to get our right hand over to the tumbadora, we can simply shift our right-hand slap on beat two over to the "and" of one. So instead of starting that bar by playing palm, tip, slap (that's left, left, right), our first three strokes will be palm, slap, tip (that's left, right, left). Let's hear what that sounds like as a two-bar phrase in 2-3 clave.

Now let's hear that at a bit faster tempo, so you can see how just changing a couple of notes can really help us play this groove more comfortably. And let's work on this over one of our exclusive CongaChops practice loops. And feel free to clap the clave along to this and every example, so you can start to understand how the conga patterns we're learning work in respect to the clave.

So far in this lesson, we've worked on every pattern exclusively in 2-3 clave. So, for this last example, I'm gonna play this same exact pattern we just learned, this time in 3-2 clave. We'll play it as a four-bar phrase, playing our tumbadora once every four bars. But this time, the tumbadora open tones will take place in the third bar, which is now the bar that coincides with the three side of the clave.

So, all we had to do to play this pattern in 3-2 clave was start with the bar that coincides with the three side of the clave. And to make that very clear, I made sure to play just one open tone on beat four in the first bar, to really emphasize which side of the clave we were on. So, let's hear that pattern one more time up to speed, over a bit more modern-sounding CongaChops practice loop, in 3-2 clave.

So those are just a few common ways we can incorporate a second drum to create a groove that works great in a variety of different musical styles. But remember, it's really important to listen to music from different genres and eras to understand where it can feel appropriate to use this type of groove.

You also want to make sure that you're deliberate in terms of how long you want your phrases to be. Are you looking to create longer four-bar or eight-bar phrases that'll free you up to play some variations in between? Or do you want to really emphasize the feeling of a more constant two-bar phrase that can add some intensity in certain sections of an arrangement? In any case, these choices will be totally up to you. And that's why it's so important to not only play along to our favorite recordings, but also to listen to and analyze how these different grooves are used, so we can start to develop an idea of what context they can work really well in, and when it feels natural or unnatural to use them.