How to use electronic percussion sounds, conga, agogo,djembe etc.

I own a DTXPress IV and like many other electronic kits it has lots of electronic percussion sounds such as conga, timbal, surdo, guiro, agogo etc . I would love to know if there is a basic guide on how to use some of these samples of percussion sounds effectively ? Even if there was a basic guide to using these as acoustic instruments that would be a start and perhaps I could try and adapt the patterns for use on my kit ? It seems such a waste to only use the standard kit sounds but I have very limited idea of how to use these electronic percussion sounds effectively. Would really appreciate some suggestions books, DVDs or other internet resources ?
Thanks for reading this.

You can really take this as far as you want. There are tons of books on African-Diaspora music all over the place. Tons of books of how these specific styles apply to the drum kit.

Timbale usually plays mambo bell, clave, cascara, and the abanico leading back into the one... There is no cascara sound on e-kit timbales. Just the drum.

Conga sounds on e-kit are very one dimensional. There are tons of specific rhythms, but you can't play correctly with sticks on e-pads. I would use them as a sound effect.

Surdo is more of a bass drum or dun dun type of sound. Played for samba/samba reggae, but again probably best as an effect.

Guiro is a very cool instrument, but there are actually 3 different sounds which make up the pattern. I think again you are limited electronically with this instrument. Played with salsa, merengue, "guiro", cumbia etc...

Agogo is another samba instrument.

These instruments are very commonly found throughout all music now, but they have very specific cultural and musical contexts and histories. Throwing all of them together (tabla included) on preset e-kit settings has always seemed really gimmicky and lame to me. I would suggest building a custom kit using the sounds which make sense to you for the music you are playing. Maybe throwing a timbale, or agogo on one of the cymbal pads makes sense. But I think it is a backwards approach to assume that you must use those sounds. If nothing else, it is a good start point for learning about some of the history of these percussion instruments.

Thank you for your considered reply. I will indeed try a timbale, or agogo on one of the cymbal pads and see how I go. I accept that stuffing all these percussion sounds onto a sound module is somewhat gimmicky and my results may sound quite unlike the authentic acoustic instrument. However, these sounds have been included on drum modules and drum machines since I can remember, Roland TR 727 being the first I ever came across. I guess that some drum machine programmers must come up with results that they find quite acceptable. Perhaps this is where I should start, looking for patterns that drum machine programmers typically use and working around these ideas ?
Thanks again for your suggestions, any further comments from anyone would be really welcome.

harryconway said:

This guy's good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJSchB0lyhA&NR=1[/INDENT]

Click to expand...

Whoa... That is crazy. I would never imagine in a thousand years that there was anything like this. Bata is very difficult to play correctly. You have to seriously know your s*** to get anywhere near them. This is just.... Wow.

There are people who would find this unappealing in the Afro-Cuban community, but I'm really open minded about peoples use of this music in a secular context. Very progressive. I'm blown away right now. Definitely outside of the box, and executed well.

Here's a clip of some contemporary bata drumming. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH5SBktNZK4

Here's the more traditional stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id8E60-n2x8&feature=related