Merengue

What it is

Two instruments do almost all of it. The tambora is a small two-headed drum laid across the lap and hit with a stick in one hand and the bare palm of the other, so it produces a stick pattern and a hand pattern at the same time. The guira is a sheet of metal punched full of holes and dragged with a stiff wire brush, and it never stops. Around them, in the traditional tipico line-up from Cibao, sit an accordion and a marimbula or a bass. Trujillo made merengue the national music by decree in the 1930s, which is a complicated inheritance; the orchestras of the 1970s and 1980s added horns and a conga and pushed the tempo up until it became the fastest popular dance music in the region.

What it sounds like

Fast, dry and relentlessly bright. The tambora is small and tuned tight, so it barks rather than booms, and the stick strokes on the head and rim have almost no low end at all. The guira is pure noise between about 3kHz and 12kHz, and in a modern mix it is loud enough to be a hi-hat, a shaker and a snare at once. Saxophones play in unison, fast and staccato, over horn stabs. The bass moves in a bouncing two-feel. Nothing has much reverb on it, because at this tempo reverb turns the guira into a hiss and the tambora into mud.

Key elements

• The tamboraOne drum making two parts: the palm on the low head marking the frame, the stick rattling a figure into the second half of each beat. Any single drum sample will only give you half of it.
• The guiraA long scrape on the beat and two short ones after it, over and over. It is the timekeeper, and its long stroke is the closest thing merengue has to an open hi-hat.
• Speed130 to 160 is normal and merengue de calle goes further. The tambora figure only reads as merengue when it is fast enough to gallop.
• The jaleoThe second half of a merengue, where the arrangement opens up, the bell comes in and the band plays call and response until it stops. It is a structural gear change, not a chorus.
• The two-feel bassThe bass bounces between root and fifth on the beats rather than walking. It is the reason merengue feels light under a very busy top end.

How to get them

• Build the tambora from two samplesA low tom or small kick for the hand strokes and a rim or high tom for the stick. Put them on separate lanes and let them overlap, because on the real instrument they do.
• GuiraGM has a guiro pair at notes 73 and 74, and this still uses the two hi-hat lanes instead: the open one for the long downward scrape and the closed one for the short returns. The guira is the timekeeper in merengue and the hat rows are where a reader looks for time. Swap both for a real guira sample and the pattern lands immediately.
• Do not swing itEverything stays on the grid. The gallop in merengue comes from the tambora hitting the a of the beat, not from a shuffle, and swinging it turns the scrape into a triplet.
• SaxophoneWrite the sax line in constant eighths with no rests, in unison or thirds, and articulate every note short. This part is percussion that happens to have pitch.
• Bell for the jaleoBring the campana in only when the section changes and mix it forward. It should sound like an extra player arriving, which in a live band is exactly what it is.
• Top endLeave room above 4kHz for the guira by rolling the cymbals and the horn top off. If you EQ this record like a pop record the scrape disappears and merengue goes with it.

Reference points

Tatico Henriquez, Fefita La Grande and Francisco Ulloa on the tipico side, Johnny Ventura, Wilfrido Vargas, Fernando Villalona, Milly Quezada, Juan Luis Guerra, and Omega on the merengue de calle end. Named as reference points, not as endorsements.