Guaracha
Aleteo, zapateo and a four to the floor kick, out of Medellin and Cali.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
The kick is four to the floor and there is no way around saying so: 118 on beats 1 and 3, 110 on 2 and 4, exactly as a house record would have it. What makes it guaracha is the tom lane above it, on the a of 1, the and of 2, the a of 3 and the and of 4, at 96 and 80. Those are dembow positions and the resemblance is real; the difference is that a dembow has no kick on 2 and 4 and this one does, so the toms fall between kicks instead of syncopating against a gap. Clap on 2 and 4 at 104. Hats sit on the offbeat sixteenths at 44 with the offbeat eighths at 62, and the open hat takes the and of 4. The guiro scrapes the offbeat eighths. Bar two adds a kick and a clap on the last sixteenth, an extra tom on the e of 4, and two more guiro strokes into the turnaround. The tom lane exports as one mid tom and is meant to be three. The whistle that punctuates every eighth bar has no lane here at all; it is note 72 if you want to add one.
What it is
Colombian DJs started calling it guaracha around 2016, which annoyed a lot of people because the word already belonged to a Cuban song form from a century earlier. The music has nothing to do with that. It is a club style built out of Latin tech house and the older Mexican tribal records, with a four to the floor kick, a hard tresillo running through the percussion, and a vocal chant or a whistle sample on top. The dance that goes with it, aleteo, is arms out and flapping, and zapateo is the stamping half of the same thing. It moved out of Medellin and Cali into Spain fast, and it is now the default sound of a certain kind of Latin club night on two continents.
What it sounds like
Compressed to within an inch of its life. The kick is short, clicky and sidechained to everything, and the bass under it is a single detuned saw playing one note. Percussion is loud and dry: toms, a scraper, a whistle, a cowbell, all sitting between 1 and 6kHz. The lead is usually one riff played by a plucked synth or a sampled brass patch, repeated for the whole track. Vocals are shouted phrases, chopped and pitched, often a single word. There is almost no reverb, a great deal of limiting, and an arrangement that resets every eight bars.
Key elements
- The aleteo tresilloToms on the a of 1, the and of 2, the a of 3 and the and of 4. Those are the same four positions a dembow snare uses, played here on drums rather than a snare.
- Four to the floorA plain house kick on every beat, which is what separates guaracha from the Caribbean styles it borrows percussion from. The syncopation lives above the kick, never in it.
- The whistleA referee whistle or a piercing synth blast used as punctuation on the turnaround. It is a rave signal borrowed straight from tribal and it is not optional.
- One riffA two bar melodic hook that repeats for three minutes with no development. Guaracha arrangements are built from mutes and filters rather than from new material.
- The eight bar resetSomething drops out or comes back every eight bars, always. It is a very simple structure and it is played very hard.
How to get them
- KickShort, 55Hz fundamental, decay under 180 milliseconds, with a clicky transient at 3kHz. Sidechain the bass, the toms and the lead to it with a fast release so the kick punches a hole every beat.
- TomsTwo or three pitched tom samples, gated to about 150 milliseconds, on the tresillo positions. Pitch them down across the bar so the figure descends and put a short slap delay on the last one. The lane exports as one mid tom, so spread it over your own toms once it is in the DAW.
- GuiroA real guiro, note 74. Put it on the offbeat eighths, high-passed at 1.2kHz, and pan it about twenty percent. A long scrape sits better here than a short one, because it fills the gap the kick punches every beat.
- ClapOne clap layered with a short noise burst on beats 2 and 4, high-passed at 300Hz. Keep it drier than a house clap; guaracha claps do not have a tail.
- Vocal chopsTake a single shouted word, pitch it up three or four semitones, and place it on the offbeat before each turnaround. Print the effects so the chop cuts the reverb tail off.
- SwingStraight, at 130. The tresillo in the toms carries all the lilt, and adding swing on top pushes those hits late and they stop landing against the kick.
Reference points
Kaleb Di Masi, Dj Alexis, Dj Alex Suarez, Faster Dj, Cristian Devil, Yeison Jimenez on the vocal side, and the Mexican tribal producers the style borrowed from. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.