A steady metronome and a count to eight play. Press Play and clap on every beat: that is the first exercise. The others are below, each started by its own button.
Once installed, SalsaBeat opens from your home screen like an app and works offline.
A sense of rhythm is the ability to hear a steady pulse in music, anticipate the next beat and land on it with a movement. Almost everyone hears a steady pulse in music, and the accuracy of landing on it grows with practice: repetition on simple material, from slow to fast. The exercises below go in order; move to the next one when the current one works without mistakes for several phrases in a row.
Bounce at the knees or tap your foot on every beat of the metronome and count aloud to eight with the instructor; clapping works too, but moving the whole body ties the rhythm to the dance better. Make sure the movement lands with the sound rather than chasing it. A tempo of 110–120 is close to the one people walk and clap at by themselves, about two beats a second, which is why it is a comfortable start.
▶ Metronome and count, tempo 110
The instructor says only “one” and “five”; count the other numbers yourself. If you arrive at “one” together with the voice, the count holds. Being very slightly ahead of a metronome is normal: almost everyone is. The mistake is a gap that grows from phrase to phrase: then you are rushing or dragging; slow down.
▶ Metronome and the count “1, 5”
The campana plays an open stroke on 1, 3, 5, 7 and a muted one on 2, 4, 6, 8. Clap only on the open strokes, then only on the muted ones. This teaches you that beats are not all alike and how to find the strong beat by its sound.
The clave is five strokes in eight counts, and some of them fall between the beats. Listen to the count and clap with the clave without losing the numbers. This is the first step from a steady pulse to real rhythm, where the strokes don't coincide with the count.
In the simple tumbao the congas play a sharp slap on 2 and 6 and a pair of ringing open strokes on 4 and on 8. The instructor says only 4 and 8. Your task is to feel these places as a pause before the next half of the phrase: in the dance there is often no step on them.
Now the whole rhythm section plays without the count. Find “one” by the campana and the bass and count to eight aloud. After a few phrases switch on the Instructor card and check whether your “one” matches.
▶ The whole rhythm section, no count
Step in place on every beat, then move on to the salsa basic step: steps on 1-2-3 and 5-6-7, a pause on 4 and 8. Movement tests a sense of rhythm more strictly than clapping: the body has to shift its weight in time for the beat. It also helps you hear: the beats you bounce or step on change how you perceive the rhythm.
▶ Step count, clave and congas
When an exercise works for several phrases in a row, add ten beats per minute with the “+” button. The usual party tempo for salsa is 180–200. If mistakes start at the new tempo, go back ten: steady and slow beats shaky and fast.
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, while the piano montuno turns its rhythm round and keeps the chords in place. 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 | ||||||||||||||||
| Campana campana | ||||||||||||||||
| Mambo bell campana | ||||||||||||||||
| Congas tumbadoras | ||||||||||||||||
| Bongos martillo | ||||||||||||||||
| Güiro güiro | ||||||||||||||||
| Maracas maracas | ||||||||||||||||
| Cáscara cáscara | ||||||||||||||||
| Piano montuno | ||||||||||||||||
| Bass tumbao |
Yes. Almost every adult hears a steady pulse, and the accuracy of landing on the beat grows with practice: simple exercises at a slow tempo, speeding up gradually. Rhythm develops more slowly than, say, an ear for pitch, so regularity matters more than long sessions.
Most likely you do; it just hasn't been trained. True “beat deafness”, where a person cannot find the pulse in music at all, is very rare: studies describe it in only a handful of people. Usually what is missing is practice: start with a steady metronome at a slow tempo and work up to the harder exercises.
Switch on the metronome with the count, clap along, then mute the sound for a few seconds and keep clapping. Switch it back on: if your claps still match the beats, you hold the pulse. If they drifted apart, start with the first exercises on this page.
First a steady pulse and a count to eight, then strong beats, syncopation and pauses, then finding “one” in full music without help and, finally, steps to the count. The exercises on this page go in exactly that order, and each one plays right in the browser.
Little and often works best: several short sessions a week give more than one long one. Move to the next exercise when the current one works without mistakes for several phrases in a row.
A sense of rhythm is landing on the beat and keeping the tempo. Musicality is wider: hearing the parts, accents and changes of section in the music and showing them in the dance. There is no musicality without a sense of rhythm, so that is where you start.