[jeremyjenks]

I am a conga player who has been learning djembe technique for some months now.I have had good progress on my slaps playing with the bottom of my Knuckles just over the bearing edge. The slap has a nice cracking sound with a little ring to it. I have found that to produce a good sounding tone I have to move the the hand back a little towards the rim having the bottom of the knuckles right over the bearing edge. So the challenge is keeping my hands in the same spot changing from slap to tone.

I believe I have bigger than average hands (measuring about 8 inches from the bottom of my wrist to the longest finger) I was wondering if this could be contributing to this challenge or is it purely my technique? I hope the question was clear, thanks for any input!

[Dugafola]

i have big hands. ideally, you do not want to moving your hand all over you drum to make basic tones and slaps. it's a waste of energy and it becomes more difficult as tempo increases.

how big is your drum? our hands are about he same size. all of my personal drums are at least 14" outer diameter. bigger drums help keep you hands in an ideal position for your tones and slaps not to mention the overall ergonomics of playing drums.

also, keep working on your tone technique. a nice meaty consistent tone is harder than a slap.

[jeremyjenks]

Thanks Dugafola. Sound advice. My drum is a little hard to measure exactly because the bearing edge is pretty rounded but it's about 12 to 12.5 inches. I just got it a couple of months ago, so I'm a little bummed to think I got the wrong size. When looking for the next djembe, I'll look at 14 inches+.

[Dugafola]

wow. that drum is waay to small if you're at all somewhat serious about playing/studying jembe.

[jeremyjenks]

I found out I was measuring the Djembe incorrectly. The outter diameter is exactly 14 inches. In class tonight, the teacher was helping me with my technique and my tones are starting to sound better. Regardless, I will try a bigger drum next time.

[Waraba]

14 is fine. I play a 13" and it's perfect. My hands are 1.5 iPhones long. iPhone 4.