Tribal Guarachero

What it is

Erick Rincon was fourteen when he started making these, on a cracked copy of a DAW in Monterrey around 2009, and by sixteen he was playing them in Los Angeles. Tribal guarachero took the Mexico City tribal house of the previous decade, kept its cowbells and its African and Latin percussion samples, and added two things: a tresillo kick instead of four to the floor, and melodic samples of Andean flutes and ocarinas that had nothing historically to do with the rhythm underneath. The dance came with pointed leather boots two feet long. The whole scene ran hot for about three years, and its rhythmic decisions turned up afterwards in a lot of records that never mentioned it.

What it sounds like

Bright, cheap and shuffled. Everything is sampled from something, often audibly. Toms and congas are the main percussion, tuned high and gated short, with a cowbell riding above. The kick is punchy rather than deep. Flute and ocarina samples sit right on top with a long delay, usually pitched to a minor scale and often slightly out of tune with each other. There is a shuffle in the sixteenths that is unusual for a club record at this tempo, and it is what makes the toms roll rather than tick. Loud, limited and mixed on headphones.

Key elements

• The tresillo kickBeat 1, the and of 2 and beat 4, rather than all four beats. Three kicks a bar, unevenly spaced, and everything else has to fit around them.
• The shuffleA real swing setting, around 56 percent, applied to the whole grid. This is one of very few club styles that shuffles its sixteenths on purpose.
• Flute samplesAndean panpipes, ocarinas and clay flutes lifted from library records, pitched into a minor key. They are a deliberate borrowing and the producers were open about that.
• CowbellInherited straight from Mexico City tribal house, marking beat 1, the and of 2 and beat 4 with the kick and reinforcing the tresillo.
• Tom rollsSixteenth runs across toms into every turnaround, which at 56 percent swing come out as a lopsided gallop rather than an even roll.

How to get them

• KickAround 60Hz, short, with a hard click. Place it on beat 1, the and of 2 and beat 4, and do not be tempted to add beat 3 to make it feel more solid; the gap there is the genre.
• Set the swing globallyPut the whole project at 56 percent rather than swinging individual lanes. The kick sits on the beats so it is unaffected, and everything else lands late, which is exactly the effect.
• TomsThree pitched toms, gated to about 120 milliseconds, alternating so a run reads as a descending figure. Send them to a short slap delay and let the repeats overlap the next hit. The export puts the whole lane on one mid tom, so split it across three pads by hand.
• CowbellA dry synthetic bell, not an acoustic one, doubling the kick placement at about 96 and adding a stroke the kick does not have. Pan it slightly and keep it above 800Hz.
• FlutesPitch a sampled flute into your key, add a quarter note delay with the feedback around 40 percent, and leave a little of the original recording noise in. Cleaning it up removes the character.
• ClapOn beat 2 and beat 4 with a softer one on the and of 3, which is the zapateado accent. Keep it dry and layer it with a rimshot rather than reverb.

Reference points

Erick Rincon and 3BallMTY, DJ Otto, Sheeqo Beat, Toy Selectah, DJ Mouse, and the Mexico City tribal house producers who came before them. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.