Bachata

What it is

For thirty years the Dominican middle class called it amargue, bitterness, and radio would not play it. Bachata came out of the countryside and the working districts of Santo Domingo in the sixties as guitar music about heartbreak and drinking, recorded cheaply and sold from stalls, and it was treated with open contempt until Juan Luis Guerra put a version of it on a huge record in 1990. The rhythm section is a bongo and a guira, and the guitar does the rest: a lead requinto answering every vocal line, a segunda playing the chords, and a bass that follows the guitar rather than the drum. The Aventura generation in New York added an r and b sensibility and the whole thing became global. The bongo did not change.

What it sounds like

Two or three electric guitars with the treble up and a lot of chorus, playing clean and close-miked. The requinto is nylon-string or a hollow-body with the tone rolled bright, and it plays constantly. Under it a bongo, dry and small, and a guira scraping sixteenths. The bass is round, low and simple. In older records the whole band is in one room with one reverb; in modern bachata the drums are sampled, the guitars are doubled and panned hard, and there is a kick and a sub that a 1970s record would not have had. The voice sits right at the front and cracks on purpose.

Key elements

• The martilloThe bongo's hammer: eighth notes running through the whole bar, low drum on the beat, high drum in between, with the accent falling on beat 4.
• The beat 4 accentEverything lands there. The dance step marks it with a hip movement and the guira and the bongo both hit it hardest, which is why bachata feels like it is leaning forward.
• The requintoLead guitar answering the vocal in every gap, arpeggiated, with heavy chorus. In bachata the guitar is the second singer, not an accompaniment.
• Guira sixteenthsFaster and busier than the merengue pattern, with the scrape running continuously and a long stroke at the top of each half bar.
• The derecho and the majaoBachata has two gears: the light verse pattern and the heavier one for the chorus, where the bongo switches to a four-stroke saltos and the guira doubles up.

How to get them

• BongoThe two lanes export as hi bongo and low bongo, notes 60 and 61, which is the actual instrument rather than a pair of congas standing in for it. Run eighths with the low drum on the beats and the high drum between them, and put twenty velocity extra on beat 4. Keep both very dry.
• GuiraBoth percussion lanes here are bongos, so the guira stays on the hi-hat rows: closed for the sixteenth strokes, open for the long scrape at the top of each half bar. The kit does have a guiro pair at notes 73 and 74 if you would rather move it, but the guira is keeping time and the hat rows are where a reader looks for time.
• RequintoNylon or hollow-body, a stereo chorus at slow rate and shallow depth, plus a short slap delay. Write the line as an answer to the vocal and leave it silent while the vocal is singing.
• Kick and bassModern bachata wants a short kick on beats 1 and 3 and a sub under it. Traditional bachata has neither, and if you are going for the older sound, delete the kick lane rather than turning it down.
• Second gearWrite the chorus version of the drums as a separate pattern: bongo on all four beats, guira louder, a rim on beat 4. Switching between the two is most of the arrangement.
• Tempo128 is a middle-of-the-road modern bachata. Older records sit around 110 and the fast ones push past 145; the bongo pattern survives the whole range.

Reference points

Jose Manuel Calderon, Luis Segura, Blas Duran, Anthony Santos, Raulin Rodriguez, Juan Luis Guerra, Monchy y Alexandra, Aventura and Romeo Santos. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.