Tips for surdo players

Small guide with tips for surdo players, including avoid injuries, tuning, choose drumheads and mallets...

Avoid injuries

Believe it or not, a musical instrument can cause injuries and in the case of surdos can include: ear, legs and hands. Injuries to the ear are to some extent common to any musician, and to avoid simply must be protected with suitable caps for it. We will have to get used to hearing the sounds a bit off, but it will be no problem.

Leg injuries occur when walking, from the beating of the lower edge of surdo in the shins, and the body of the surdo in the knees. To avoid this simply use a more or less thick kneepads (for example, those used in volleyball) and a hard shin as those used by a football player. I do not advise wearing kneepads as skate because they are too bulky.

Finally, the hands can suffer blisters after spending time playing. In my opinion, the best option is to use the gloves used by cyclists and bodybuilders, but any kind of gloves can be used. 

Tuning
 
When tuning the surdo, we must follow the same steps as for most drums. It is best to loosen all the nuts on the tension rods until we can roll them with your fingers, once done we press until we can (so that all will be approximately equal and then we are going round a turn at a time with the key. It is important to follow a specific sequence to go tensing each rod surdo:

Tuning sequence for a surdo with 8 tension rods

Tuning sequence for a surdo with 10 tension rods

While we tightening is advisable to check the tension on the drumhead is distributed evenly across all points. To do this simply hit the drumhead with a stick near each point of tension and notice that the sound is the same in all.

There is no special note in which tuning a surdo, but it must be borne in mind that the range of sounds between different surdos (1st, 2nd and 3rd) is a fourth or a perfect fifth.

Drumheads

Surdo heads can be synthetic, leather, or korino or napa. The korino ones incorporates a layer of napa above the normal synthetic head. The napa is a kind of tanned cowhide or sheep used in clothing, coats and accessories. 

Personally, I prefer the korino heads because they produce a much warmer and softer sound than synthetic ones. Many surdo players instead of replacing the synthetic head, put a piece of napa covering the whole patch and caught under the rim, so that it has the same effect as a korino head.

Mallets

The mallets we will choose to play the surdo depend on the sound that we want to produce and the usability of the same.

If you play a surdo 1, it is best a mallet that has a large head and low hardness to produce a warm sound. Conversely, if we play a surdo 3 the mallet should be harder to cause a dry and clean sound that highlights over the sound of the other surdos.

Another important aspect that we must take into account when choosing mallets is the length. This will depend on the height at which we hang the surdo. Usually the mallets used in the Axé and Samba-reggae rhythms are longer (approx. 38 cm.) since the trend is to bring surdos below because it is more comfortable to play with two mallets (typical of these styles).

Source: Mundo Percusión