Dear IanB,

The suggestion "until it sounds right" isn't a bad one at all!

You can, of course, tune both congas and bongos to suit the predominant keys the other instruments will be playing in. Convention tuning of congas is that you tune the conga to a key compatible with the rest of the ensemble, the tumbadora (the biggest drum in the normal set of quinto (highest), conga (middle) and tumbadora (lowest)) is then tuned so that, on playing both you get a "here comes the bride" interval between the two (haven't got my musical head on... this being a drum thread!) but would that be a fourth? The quinto is tuned a similar interval above the conga.

I tune my bongos so that I get a "pleasing" scale rising from tumbadora up to the higher bongo! Don't ask me what the notes are! Conventionally your higher bongo is an octave above the lower one but I tend to tune for a pleasing progression rather than rigidly following this rule.

Hope this helps a little (I suspect not!)

mooman

P.S. You've probably guessed by now I "moonlight" in the Latino music genre as well as my usual Irish/Scottish, blues and folk modes (runs for cover...ducking the hurled tiples and noseflutes...!)