The congas and the clave play. Press Play and hear how the slap and the two open tones fall on the count.
Once installed, SalsaBeat opens from your home screen like an app and works offline.
This is how the parts of the rhythm section fall on the dancer's count: eight beats over two bars, steps on 1-2-3 and 5-6-7. Clave 2-3: two strokes in the first bar, three in the second; in 3-2 the pattern starts from the second bar, and both bells and the cáscara shift with it. The timbalero plays the mambo bell instead of the cáscara in the loud sections, together with the bongo bell.
| Count | 1 | & | 2 | & | 3 | & | 4 | & | 5 | & | 6 | & | 7 | & | 8 | & |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clave clave | ||||||||||||||||
| Bongo bell campana | ||||||||||||||||
| Mambo bell campana | ||||||||||||||||
| Congas tumbadoras | ||||||||||||||||
| Bongos martillo | ||||||||||||||||
| Güiro güiro | ||||||||||||||||
| Cáscara cáscara | ||||||||||||||||
| Piano montuno | ||||||||||||||||
| Bass tumbao |
The tumbao, or marcha, is the basic conga rhythm in salsa. Each bar has eight strokes, usually like this: a ringing slap on the second beat, two open resonant tones on the fourth beat and the “and” after it, and quiet strokes with the palm and the fingertips in between.
On the dancer's count that is a slap on “two” and “six” and pairs of open tones on “four”, “four-and” and “eight”, “eight-and”.
The two open tones at the end of the bar can be heard even in dense music, and “one” or “five” comes right after them. The slap falls on “two” and “six”, the second step of each three.
Try it: switch the clave off, leave the congas alone and count aloud.
The tumbao has four. The open tone is resonant and long. The slap is sharp and ringing. The palm stroke and the fingertip stroke are quiet: they fill the gaps and keep an even pulse.
On the scheme above the open tones are green, the slaps orange and the quiet strokes small grey dots.
The pattern stretches over two bars: in the bar with three clave strokes the low drum answers with two open tones. In the 2-3 direction they sound on “seven” and “seven-and”.
SalsaBeat has three patterns to choose from: Tumbao, Simple tumbao, which keeps only the slap and the open tones, and Tumbao, two drums.
More topics: Salsa rhythm · Clave 2-3 and 3-2 · Counting in eight · Salsa metronome · Campana · Timbales: cáscara · Montuno and bass · the whole trainer and general questions