Sher Music Co.

"The Conga Drummer's Guidebook" is the only method book specifically designed for intermediate to advanced conga drummers---packed with exercises on every aspect of the craft!

Includes complete chapters on:
> a clear, lucid explanation of clave
> exercises on playing quinto
> correct phrasing concepts
> revoicing ideas to give more depth to your playing
> 12 coordination exercises
> explanation of many different rhythmic styles
> stamina exercises
> agility exercises
> heel-toe technique, and much more!

Spiro goes behind the superficial licks and shows you how to approach any Afro-Latin rhythm with the right feel, i.e. he explains the concepts of HOW to play correctly, not just WHAT to play.

About Chuck Sher: Chuck Sher is a California based jazz musician and internationally-known jazz book publisher. The first Saturday of each month he shares his amazing jazz CD collection with (radio station) KRCB listeners, everything from Bill Evans to Coltrane, Celia Cruz to John Scofield, and featuring the current crop of jazz composers from Europe and Latin America.

A word from Chuck regarding piracy: Musicians - beware. There are CD-ROMs being sold on the internet with scanned versions of the old "Real Book" and also Sher Music Co.'s The New Real Book series. ALL these CD-ROMs are completely illegal. Sher Music Co. had nothing to do with them and neither should you. Here's why.

Sher Music Co. remains what it was when it started 24 years ago---a small business by musicians, for musicians. Putting together a legal, accurate, high-quality fake book (such as The New Real Books) takes us about two years of intense effort and expense: countless hours of finding and listening to records to discover the best tunes to include, then tracking down the publishers, doing all the business negotiations, meticulously transcribing the tunes, and re-working each chart until it is the most complete and useful version of the tune possible. Then we painstakingly copy them, proofread them, and road-test them with our musician friends at jam sessions and rehearsals. We often consult with the composers to get any feedback they might have, then revise them, re-copy them, paste them up in book form, and proofread them over and over until they are perfect. And that doesn't include the effort and cost of creating esthetically-pleasing book covers, promoting the books once they are out, and the daily hassles and expenses of running a business. There are blood, sweat and tears on every page. (And great joy too, of course. We love what we do!)

If you produce, copy or buy a pirated version of our books, you are stealing the fruits of years of effort that went into creating them.You are also stealing money from your favorite jazz artists. Every six months we faithfully send fair royalty payments to all the publishers and composers of the tunes in our books. By buying these pirated copies (or the old, illegal "Real Book"), you are stealing from Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Richie Beirach, McCoy Tyner and hundreds of other less-well-known composers who count on these royalties to pay their bills. You wouldn't walk into their living rooms and take their stereos, even if you knew you could get away with it, right? Well, these illegal CDs are just as much an act of theft as any street crime. And in the worst-case scenario, these bootleg CDs could put us out of business and then there would be no more New Real Books.

How can you tell if a book is ripping off the composers' right to benefit from their creations? Just look at the bottom of each tune. If no copyright notices are there, then the book is illegal, plain and simple. Again, Sher Music Co. has never authorized a CD version of any of our books---they are all illegal. And let me publicly thank the musicians who have alerted us to where these bootleg CDs are being sold. We greatly appreciate your loyalty.