Tag Archive for 'finding the beat'

I am very happy to have found out that interest in learning to dance on2 (NY/PR) timing has started becoming very popular on addicted2salsa.com. To help everyone become more familiar with the clave and the VERY important conga slap, I have edited the original salsa clave track I created in Garageband for Episode 25 : Finding the Salsa Beat and modified it for an easier learning experience. This should help everyone make it part of their daily schedule to play the track at least 3 times a day while they do some other task. Doing this will allow your brain to sink-in that conga beat and rhythm subconsciously - so that it starts becoming easily recognizable by your ears.

At first, I recommend forgetting about the clave when listening to the soundtrack. Focus on the ‘tu-ku (small pause) PA!’ (conga) sound first. The ‘tu-ku’ sound happens on the 8-AND and 4-AND counts. That ‘PA’ sound are your 2′s and 6′s when dancing on2.

I have loaded the waveform of the track and added some cue markers for you to understand what is happening in the beat. You can do the same with any audio editing program, for example, the free Audacity. Please remember that this is not a perfect graph of the waveform, but it is very accurate if you focus your attention on the peak points. (No noise reduction or normalizing was done).

The exercise video (recommended) is posted here : Salsa Beat and Rhythm Exercise.